Category Archives: space program

The Death of a Dream and the Need for Manifest Destiny

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I always knew I would see the first man on the moon.  I never dreamed I would see the last.

            Dr. Jerry Pournelle

Tomorrow, as I write these words, and earlier today, as I post them (thank you software glitches for the delay), the last Space Shuttle, Atlantis, will land for the final time.  And then, for all practical purposes, it will be over.  America’s manned space program will be gone.

Yes, I know we’ll still have an astronaut corps.  They will still fly, on other nation’s launch systems, to the International Space Station.  At least until it’s deorbited in a few years.  But we won’t have the capability to send our people into space.  We’ll simply be hitching rides on some else’s rockets.  Like other countries used to do on ours.  We will no longer be the wold’s leader in manned space exploration.

The government, through NASA, originally said that a replacement launch vehicle will be built and are continuing to say that.  Let’s ignore for a moment that retiring your launch vehicles without having a replacement is akin to quitting your job without finding a new one or selling your car when you haven’t bought a replacement and are a few hundred miles from home, shall we?  These are the same people who have been promising for decades to balance the federal budget and reduce the national debt.  Given the negative progress they’ve made, I’m not holding out hope for a replacement vehicle from the government.  Especially since our leerless feeder fearless leader last week said that it was time for private industry “to capture the flag.”

That’s almost certainly the only way we’ll ever get back into space.  Through private industry.  Our government won’t do it.  The Chinese might.  The Russians will probably keep something going not only to service the Station, but as a matter of pride.  “The Americans beat us to the Moon, but we’re still in space while they’ve quit and gone home.”

If our government wants to implement a real stimulus package, perhaps our elected officials might like to consider this little fact:  For every dollar spent on the space program, the government has received approximately $7 back in corporate and personal income tax due to the development of spinoff technology.  For that type of increase in taxes, there would have to be more money circulating in the economy.  There are several websites that list some of the things we enjoy today that came out of research and development in our space program.  For starters try this one, and this one, and this one. 

I know that we’ll send probes on various missions.  At least for a while.  And I know all the arguments for using robots and unmanned probes rather than people.  And to a point, they’re valid.  But there are some things robots can’t do.  Do we quit when we get to the point that we’ve done all we can with robots?  Or do we keep going?

There’s something in the human spirit that needs frontiers.  Well, the healthy human spirit anyway.  That’s why as a species, we’ve always been explorers.  America was settled in part due to a belief in a Manifest Destiny, that it was our God-given duty to tame the wilderness.  Now I realize that attitude is about as politically incorrect as you get these days.  And I’m not issuing a call to return to imperialism or rampant environmental desecration.

Just the opposite in fact.  We have only a limited amount of resources here.  There are plenty of resources out in the inner solar system, in the asteroids and comets.  If we are going to be good stewards of what we have, part of that stewardship could, and should, involve using the resources available off-planet. 

We need to recapture that sense of Manifest Destiny.  Only instead of taming the wilderness, we need to see space as the focus of that Manifest Destiny.  Our future lies not only on Earth but in this solar system, and hopefully others one day.  Cheesy Hollywood movies are probably not the way to instill that dream.  It’s become pretty clear that in the area of space exploration, as in most areas, government isn’t the best choice either.

Private industry on the other hand…private industry can provide the motivation.  I pray that it happens.  There’s money to be made in space, just like in the 1500s and 1600s there was money to be made in the New World.  Yes, it will be expensive.  Yes, the risks are great.  But I’ll take risk over stagnation any day.  If there’s one thing we learn from biological systems, it’s grow or die.  There is no such thing as stasis.  There’s a book I’ve been meaning to read entitled When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433, about how the Chinese turned from being a society of explorers to isolationism.  There’s a lesson here for the Space Age.

I grew up dreaming of one day living in a spacefaring society.  I’m afraid I’ll die doing the same.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Explore. Dream.  Discover.

                        Mark Twain

Long Looks at Short Fiction: "What’s It Like Out There?" by Edmond Hamilton

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With the final mission of the Shuttle ending next week, I thought this would be an appropriate story to write about. 

“What’s It Like Out There?” is probably Hamilton’s best known story, certainly his most reprinted, and arguably his best.  It concerns an astronaut, Frank Haddon, who has returned from the second Mars expedition and his adjustment back to civilian life on Earth.

A victim of Martian sickness, Haddon had just been released from the hospital in Arizona, where the Mars program is headquartered.  Before he goes home, he has to honor some promises to visit the families of some of the men who didn’t come back.  As he travels, everyone wants to know what it’s like out there.  They usually don’t bother to listen to the reply, or try to tell him how dry/cold/etc. it’s been locally. 

The truth is that the whole experience was a living hell.  Yet he can’t bring himself to hurt the grieving families and finances with the facts, so he makes things up about how they died.  Rather than pain, their passings are peaceful; rather than shot as a muntineer, one’s death is described as an accident. 

Instead of the quiet homecoming he’s looking forward to when he finally makes it back home to Ohio, the whole town is waiting to welcome him and talk about what it’s like out there.  He wants to lambast them.  The Mars expeditions are searching for uranium to power all the luxuries on Earth, and Haddon doesn’t think the cost of cheap energy is worth the lives of good men.  He sees the hopeful faces looking up at him and understands why the men who returned from the first expedition didn’t talk about how hard it was.  His friends and neighbors needed heroes and they needed something to dream about, a glorious undertaking for all of humanity.  So Haddon tells them a whitewashed version of the truth. 

For a story published in 1952, “What’s It Like Out There?” holds up remarkably well.  The first-person narrative moves at a good pace, and Haddon’s voice is real and believable.  The picture of Mars Hamilton paints is one not too far off from the Mars of today.  Rather than the canals of Bradbury and the ancient cities of his wife Leigh Brackett, Hamilton’s Mars is dry and cold, windswept and empty.  It’s a hostile place.  Only the promise of uranium and the plentiful supply of energy is holds entices men to journey there.

Unlike our current space program, the commitment to go to Mars is a real one.  The second expedition consists of 20 rockets and hundreds of men.  At one point the fourth expedition is mentioned, and it consists of one hundred rockets.

The story ends with Haddon feeling a sense of age from his experience and doubting he will ever feel young again.  The story implies he’s in his early 20s.  This was pretty grim stuff in 1952, when space travel was usually depicted as being easy.  Yet Hamilton didn’t shy away from harsh realities, physical or emotional, in this tale.  That’s what gives the story its power.  This is the work of a mature writer.  Hamilton got better the more he wrote, and he was still writing up until near the end of his life. 

As I said earlier, this story holds up better than most from the early 50s.  While there’s probably not much uranium on Mars, the ever-growing need for energy is something a contemporary reader will relate to.  And while the ubiquitous cell phone technology we enjoy is absent, the story still feels real because it’s not about gadgets.  The best science fiction is that which has people at the center.  When a story is focused on a gadget or a piece of technology, it’s almost certain that it won’t age well.  When the human aspect is the focus, then even if the technology or science becomes a little dated, the story will normally last.  If you haven’t read “What’s It Like Out There?”, you should.

Haffner Press is bringing all his short fiction back into print, with the first three volumes available now.  Since Hamilton started writing in the 1920s, it will be a while before the series reaches 1952.  Your best bet of finding a copy of “What’s It Like Out There?” is the reprint of The Best of Edmond Hamilton.