To Fade in All

© Laurence B. Winn

Feb 1, 2000

Around 1444 the arrival in Portugal of the first fruits of exploration along the West African coastline caused a shift in public attitudes toward the man known as Prince Henry the Navigator. Henry, champion of Portuguese voyages of discovery, had been widely criticized for wasting the public substance on pointless maritime investigation. Now a hero to the merchant class, his endeavor had turned a profit.

It is a persistent theme in history. Since before Columbus, before Plymouth, before Lewis and Clark traversed the American Northwest, no public has ever failed to damn the cost of exploration, nor to embrace the wealth brought by the exploitation of its discoveries.

Daniel Boorstin, writing in The Discoverers (Random House, 1983), credits Henry with being among the first to understand the value of exploring unknown lands.

In our own new century, the voices for sustained, systematic expansion of the space frontier reach, via the Internet, millions of voting men and women who will make the decision to go and thrive or to stay and die.

And here is what some of those voices say:

"Mars is the final hope for Earth," writes Dr. Robert Zubrin in "The Significance of the Martian Frontier" which appeared in the September/October 1994 issue of Ad Astra ("to the stars"), a publication of the National Space Society (NSS). The NSS, it should be said, is a vigorous advocate of any and all activities which contribute to the evolution of a spacefaring culture. Dr. Zubrin has been an advanced space systems expert for Lockheed Martin Astronautics and a member of the board of directors of the NSS. Zubrin now devotes much of his time to conducting the affairs of his own company, Pioneer Astronautics, and of the Mars Society, which he founded. "The Significance of the Martian Frontier" is a strong echo, intentionally so, of historian Frederick Jackson Turner's famous 1893 paper, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". It presents compelling arguments for the colonization of Mars, later amplified in his book The Case for Mars:

* That Mars is sufficiently remote to allow free development of a new society. This constrasts sharply with Earth, where "In this day and age, no matter how remote or hostile the spot ... the cops are too close."

* That Mars has plentiful natural resources, including the essential elements oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon.

* That Mars offers resources without proprietors, the absence of a ruling class, an important role for each citizen without undue emphasis on certification and abundant incentives for the unleashing of creative talent.

• That Mars offers human beings the best chance for peace via an escape from a closed environment where resources are fixed, competition dominates all, and "each person is ultimately the enemy of every other person".

In "The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization", Zubrin provides some logical underpinning for the proposition that his project is doable. Here, he outlines four phases of Mars colonization and discusses life support, interplanetary commerce, population dynamics, the selling of Martian real estate and historical analogies.

Author Sylvia Engdahl's 1971 novel The Far Side of Evil is based on the concept of a "critical stage", during which a species has the capability to break out into space or to destroy itself. It will do one or the other, but not both. Engdahl believes we are passing through such a watershed period now, and in "My Views on the Importance of Space", she expresses her fear that we are leaning the wrong way.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania offers a first year/sophomore exploratory design unit called "Space Colonies". In it, students are required to consider the design of a colony with an independent biosphere like the Biosphere II project in Oracle, near Tucson, Arizona.

"Humanity must expand its range if it is to continue to flourish," says roboticist Dr. Han Fastolfe in Isaac Asimov's novel The Robots of Dawn. "One method of expansion is through space, through a constant pioneering reach toward other worlds ... Of course, we might substitute other expansions -- an expansion of scientific understanding or cultural vigor, for instance. I fear, however, that these expansions are not separable. To fade in one is to fade in all."