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The Case for Mars
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Arthur C. Clarke reminds us of a quote from H.G. Wells in his foreword for the English edition of The Case for Mars, which in essence was: the choice for humankind is "the Universe -- or nothing." Humankind most assuredly will go the way of the dinosaur or the trilobite if we do not engage extraterrestrial environments. So, here we are, standing on the brink of the cosmic diaspora of the human species, constructing the International Space Station, planning to return to the moon, and following a robust agenda of unmanned Mars explorations. And, we are making some interesting discoveries now that the Cold War Era and its Space Race is history. What we are fast finding out is that these efforts are much more than national demonstrations of technology as once they used to be. They are 1) very unique engineering solutions ironically engendered by tight budgets and hard economic times; and 2) they are the invention of new social forms engendered by our entree into long-durational extreme environments and the unprecedented level of international cooperation required for human permanency in space. The new technologies will open the cosmos for us like never before. The challenge of humans being there will have evolutionary effects. On the macrosocial scale, the peopling of non-terrestrial environments will rapidly draw the whole planet together in ways that diplomatic alliances have not. On the microsocial scale, the small bands of multinational pioneers living in scattered enclaves on-orbit, on the lunar surface, on Mars, and beyond, will decipher optimal ways to live together which respect and reflect their hostile environments. The new technologies and these social innovations will intertwine, feedback on one another, catapult the human species into ever more exotic environments, and make us more than we are. We can do it with what we have now. This is what Robert Zubrin says about Mars exploration and settlement, and it is the overriding theme of this book. Sure, when Zubrin wrote The Case for Mars, he had a distinctly American and, specifically, an American space industry viewpoint. For years, he had been advocating for Mars within that cantankerous stew of competing NASA field centers and contractors. He argued, as he had for his previous audiences, that the exploration and settlement of Mars would revive the American space program and would come to elaborate the pioneering character of American society. This is reflected in the book. But, the author’s viewpoint would change rather quickly as the English version began to be distributed around the world and readers began to write the author. A watershed event emerged in the middle of August 1998 when the Mars Underground and its followers convened in Boulder, Colorado to found The Mars Society. And, what came up out of the Underground was from the whole Earth. Representatives arrived from France, Mozambique, Germany, Egypt, Italy, Canada, China, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switizerland, Finland, Brazil, Romania, as well as other places. From Russia, Dr. Evgeny Shafirovich, Institute of Structural Macrokinetics, Russian Academy of Sciences presented. The editors of this Russian edition also gave papers. A broad spectrum of expertise was exhibited with people coming from major world-class laboratories, from state universities, from the smaller entrepreneurial organizations, and even those who expressed themselves as individuals. Sure, there was some International Space Station-bashing and a few presentations along nationalistic lines ("my country can do that better than yours"). But, all of that was quickly overwhelmed in the groundswell of internationalism. It was clear: the Mars venture would be a project for the entire planet. In the days, weeks, and months which followed, the Mars Society was strengthened and was expanded by its Internet ties and the casual nature with which its members and interested parties could communicate, a planetary dialogue at the level of neighbors talking over the fence, McLuhan’s global village come to life. Only this hasn’t been just any old global village. It is the foundation of the human Mars, the sponsors, mentors, and parents of the first Martians, and indeed the first Martians themselves constructing a Martian manifesto. The way the Internet is used by these new Martians has made the Mars Society something of a new social form itself : a modern voluntary association with a lot of the old-time advantages of a face-to-face organization more reminiscent of the nineteenth century community service society. Add to this the broad spectrum of representation among the membership and it is clear to see a relative permeability in their interactions. These Martians cross so many national and agency boundaries that the Mars Society, to use computer terminology, is a "work-around". The Mars Society membership goes beyond the usual bureaucratic conventions and national boundaries to seek the solution of Mars exploration and settlement. Zubrin’s Mars Direct has become something more than a cost-effective way to get to Mars. It is becoming a world-wide ideology, a way of thinking. For those of us who work on International Space Station projects, it is institutionalizing something we have suspected all along: international cooperation in the pursuit of large space projects could lead to new social forms, a kind of "group optimization"of the people of the Earth, which could be turned on the more routine problems of macrosocial life -- like war, disease, and other hazardous and disastrous events. Until this time, humanity has not really gotten on all that well, not even when nations ally in times of war or establish trade relationships. But, there is something socially more profound which emerges when a construction designed from hundreds of different components, made by many different contractors in as many nations must fit together and optimally function in the extremest of environments. And, that goes for the human systems, too: the multinational groups which have to work and live in the thing and together make it go in spite of different national agendas. It is no wonder that the "Founding Declaration of the Mars Society" which was signed by the Founding Members at the August gathering explicitly stated:
Another thing which has evolved since the original publication of The Case for Mars is Zubrin’s outlook on the human factor. While the book accurately reflects the need of the human element in the Mars equation and many nearby and far-reaching benefits to humanity, the author treated the needs of the human sciences in what seemed a cavalier fashion at one point. He called the human factors problem "one of the more bizarre dragons" in the quest for Mars. We admit that at first we were disappointed with this stance, and said so at meetings on manned spaceflight, because indeed, as psychosocial scientists dealing with extreme environmental situations, we know that dysfunctional individual and group behaviors can seriously downmode expeditions. To make the point more of a sore one for us, this aspect of spaceflight has been the least studied and underfunded of all, each space mission going begging in the issue and real incidents being smoothed over. However, the author’s view on this has expanded, with a future book to be devoted to this subject. We choose now to focus on the point he was trying to make in naming the concern with human factors a dragon. That point was, don’t use the need to study the human element as a means to stall the Mars venture. One might say, our view has expanded, too. In his favor, Zubrin was very much "on target" with his comparison of Mars exploration and settlement and the penetration of the Arctic. That the Eskimo and later explorers were able to "live off the land" in the high northern latitudes is an appropriate analog to the Mars Direct approach. The Mars Society is quite right to try and establish a Mars research base in the high Arctic as a step to Mars. There is much about the northland which resembles the challenges of the Red Planet. Moreover, there is a connection from an ideological standpoint, In the early part of the twentieth century, explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spoke of human expansion into the Arctic as a continuation of the "coldward course of progress", an idea which addressed the ever-increasing spread of humanity from its more temperate original lands. He sought to promote the Arctic on this theme and envisioned the industrial skyline on the high northern landscape. And, of course, to the consternation of environmental interests, a lot of this has come to pass. Perhaps it would have surprised the master advocate of the Arctic more to know that boreal lands will serve as a staging area for the technologies and regimens of working and living on Mars. The establishment of a permanent human presence on Mars is not only a continuation of the "coldward course of progress", but would represent the most distant breach to date of the human species from its cradle. Without these cold and inhospitable frontiers, the human species would soon knock against the walls of its Petrie dish, metaphorically speaking. It would not only drown in the material wastes of its numbers, but in the effluvia of old customs, hackneyed ideas, and a route of history which grows rutted, but never branches out from the planet. There must be a fresh medium. As Zubrin points out, our remotest regions of the Earth are not now remote enough to allow the development of a new society. (Maybe not remote enough, we would add, to challenge the development of a wholly new and articulated subsistence-technical phase beyond the early post-industrial one our more advanced societies now enjoy.) Zubrin says plainly, "the cops are too close" today no matter how remote and hostile the terrestrial spot. In the same vein, he points out the technological slowdown in the period between 1966 to the present, created by controversy over technological advances and a vast service sector of bureaucrats and menials. Something needs to happen to force us from this stagnation. The original hunters-gatherers followed the receding glaciers, the early maritime societies had their Mediterranean, the Americans their West, and the Russians their East. We of the Earth now turn our eyes to Mars. Just as Robert Zubrin’s grandfather left Russia in the 1800s for what he perceived as his new frontier in America, we of the Earth perceive that small red dot in the deep of night and think of a new home in that far frontier. Our choice will be the Universe.
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