The Last Word On Nothing

Last week when NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed the sparsely-attended Humans to Mars Summit in DC, he moved the institutional goalpost past space exploration and toward space settlement. 

Bolden laid out a vague plan to establish enduring human presence in space, involving near-Earth proving grounds and skill building asteroid capture missions and risk management. “We are an Earth-reliant species at the moment,” he said. “But only multi-planet species survive for a long time.” Interesting choice of verb tense, noted the pedant in me. Had he taken an extensive survey of multi-planet species?

The wording was awkward because the script was not his, nor that of the NASA of recent decades. It’s borrowed from the NewSpace movement that has taken matters into its own hands of late. Inspired by speculative fiction and educated like modern-day Renaissance men, the people of NewSpace are working to take the next step in our species’ inexorable journey out of the Rift Valley.

As the summit went on it became clear that NASA has realized just how far behind it is likely to be left. They said things like “We need to raise radiation limits for our astronauts, because these private guys can do whatever they want.” And “It’s possible the billionaires are going to get there first.”

In fact, NASA might not be entirely out of the running – the competition could be just what they need. History shows it takes a pissing match to make NASA do anything interesting. When the pressure is off they rest on their Cold War laurels and quietly decay behind technology-based in-fighting and insanely petty politics. They regress in their moral courage to the point where watered-down statements like Bolden’s feel like progress. But here’s one from Associate Administrator John Yardley in 1976:

“I think it would be a cinch to inhabit the Moon, and it would also be a cinch to inhabit L5. A colony of 10,000 people at either place would be very straightforward. Both of these could be done by 1990 if there was appropriate public support.”

Some people never abandoned that dream and their tireless work has traveled the stages through which all social innovation must pass. They’ve confronted and threatened the status quo with their own initiatives, they’ve formed networks among innovators, they’ve amassed their own resources, and the final stage has arrived. It’s the one that tends to provoke accusations of defection, selling out and betrayal, but it’s a necessary one. The institutional resources that have been locked into less relevant programs are set to be released (too little, for sure – too late, almost certainly).

For those who feel our species was destined to continue its expansion to new frontiers, the day may well come. Let’s just hope the right people will be celebrated for it.