The Space Movement has dedicated today, July 20th,
as a commemorative day in which bloggers have been asked to provide a blog post
relating to the Settlement of Space.
Well, we here at Plasma Wind are all about Space Settlement.
In fact, Space Settlement is a necessary condition for the
survival of terrestrial life, and certainly for human life. If we fail at this task, it’s just a matter
of time before we become extinct. And
even if we succeed, there are no guarantees, either.
As we consider settling space, or as I like to think of it
in more general terms, as we consider carrying life off of Earth and out into
the Cosmos, there’s a few points I think are worth reiterating.
First, when we think of space settlements, I think we tend
naturally to think of settlements that sit on a planetary surface, like Mars,
or the moon. But in many important ways,
planetary surfaces are some of the worst locations for space settlements. Large Gravity wells, planetary atmospheres, possible
indigenous life forms and ecosystems to disrupt and contend with,
non-continuous sunlight, et al. Although
certainly not the first, Dr. Gerald K. O’Neil advocated for the fabrication of
space settlements as free-orbiting, manmade structures, with artificial gravity
supplied by rotating the axi-symmetric structures. These notions were articulated in his seminal
book, “The High Frontier”, which explained how such space living structures
could be built, and providing a development pathway by which we could finance
and grow these types of settlements. Dr.
Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, referred to the notion of
having to settle on the surface of planets as “planetary chauvinism”, which seems in some ways apt.
The second point I was to make, is that human beings are
precious and valuable, and are worth saving. As living creatures we can and
should be allowed, yea encouraged, to thrive and grow. And we should not be trifled with.
This notion is not universally popular, and in fact, the opposite notion is much
more familiar and bandied about. Because
of the continuously-increasing constraints on our civilizations here on earth,
we’ve come to imagine ourselves as the great and powerful beings, with little restraint to our enormous powers to create chaos and
destruction. Yet from the perspective of
the solar system, and even the Earth itself, we’re tiny, fragile, and barely
hanging onto life. My image of humanity is that of a small
flower, tenaciously clinging to a bit of soil on a volcanic island, whilst all
around us molten lava flows, great gouts of steam and gas vent forth, and a
powerful ocean pounds the lava into sand.
Lastly, I think we need to be reminded that, whatever we
create, to whatever heights of technological prowess we climb to, whatever great
knowledge and wisdom we come to grasp, eventually all of it, and ourselves as
well, will all pass away. Someday we will
be gone. We like to think that we, as a
species, as a civilization, will go on and on.
But if we’ve learned anything about civilizations here on Earth, it's that even
the greatest, perish in the end, and crumble to dust and memories. Yet it is this very perishability that makes
life, terrestrial life, so previous. We
will have our day in the sun. We will
grow, reach our zenith, and then we will die out. This is perhaps the most natural cycle there
is in the Cosmos.
In closing, I will mention that, In the past several years,
I have come to believe that these, and related notions and philosophies can come
under a general umbrella philosophy which, for lack of a better term, I call
“Exvironmentalism”. The word
environment comes from the word “environ”.
Your “environs” would be the places in you immediate region around
you. It comes from the old French word
which literally means “to turn in a circle inwards” (en- in, viron- a circle or
circuit, virer- to turn). So the
environment is the firmament in which you circle around in, inwards. Thus, the word exviron would connote “to turn
in a circle outwards”. The exvironment would thus be the firmament
that we would circle out into.
We can use the definitions to reframe our considerations, to
open up the notions life-expansion and life preservation, and to use the best
of the ideas of environmentalism and the transition of mankind off the planet
and out into the cosmos. We can
positively combine these ideas, these philosophies, to make something better
than the sum of the parts. This then, is
the essence of Exvironmentalism: the synergy of the space movement, the
environmental movement, and perhaps many others, to productively encourage,
identify, and promote the expansion of life outwards from the planet Earth, and
into the Cosmos.
Recently, the first International Exvironmentalism
Conference was held outside of Cayucos, California, USA.
Despite it’s invitation-only format, there was good participation, and a number
of interesting presentations. Perhaps
the exvironmentalism movement will take off, and more conferences will come to
be. And perhaps, that’s something that
could be a big boost to Space Settlement.
A copy of the Keynote Speech from the First
International Exvironmentalism Conference can be downloaded here:
Download Opening Keynote Speech