Our Children, and Theirs
Kim Stanley Robinson, author of, amongst other things, the acclaimed RGB Mars trilogy, has written a powerful piece for The Washington Post about the reasons for continuing, or not continuing, to explore outer space:
So why even talk about this? It is useful to take the long view from time to time. This is what science fiction does, and though science fiction has been bad about space, it has been good about time. Taking that long view, we no longer seem like the most sophisticated culture ever; indeed, much that we do now will look silly or even criminal in the future. The long view also reminds us that we are a species only about 100,000 years old, evolving on a planet where the average lifetime of a species is 10 million years. Unless we blow it, humans are going to be around in 1,000 years — and if we make it that far, it’s likely that we’ll last much longer than that.
So, what actions, taken today, will help our children, and theirs, and theirs? From that perspective, decarbonizing our technology and creating a sustainable civilization emerge as the overriding goals of our age. If going into space helps achieve those goals, we should go; if going into space is premature, or falls into the category of “a good idea if Earth is healthy,” it should be put on the science fiction shelf, where I hope our descendants will be free to choose it if they want it.
An interview Robinson gave to SPACE.com around nine years ago touched on similar issues:
[Interviewer]: Why is Mars important? Or, more generally, is space exploration important at all, when people are still starving down here?
[Kim Stanley Robinson]: No. Mars is not important, compared to people starving down here. It’s interesting, but in the historical context you bring up, interesting is not enough. Same with space exploration. The Only Good Excuse for our focus on Mars and space more generally, in this moment of history, is that we can learn things out there that can help us deal with the environmental crisis unfolding here on Earth. It has to be asserted that space science is an Earth science, and that like the other Earth sciences it is needed to help us get through the next couple centuries with less environmental damage than otherwise would occur. But having asserted that, we need to make it so; to configure our efforts in space and on Mars toward that end.
I think we should go, want us to go; but I also know that we have a huge amount of work to do here first, that we have immense problems to deal with on this fragile planet. I wish there was a stronger desire both to go and to fix the problems.
A painting by Chesley Bonestell, the “Father of Modern Space Art” and “the bridge between Buck Rogers and John Glenn, between Flash Gordon and Neil Armstrong, between imagination and reality.” (Source)
