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(Ryan, , 8-20)

It’s a common retort when the expense of space exploration comes up: Aren’t there bigger problems to solve here on Earth? The implication is that humanity has enough to worry about, and maybe space is too expensive in light of all these issues. This oversimplification ignores the nature of humanity, the drive that has made us the dominant species on Earth. If we want to stay that way, space exploration is vital. Here are five reasons why we belong up there. New Technologies and Research Humans did not evolve to go into space, but we go there anyway. That has led to the development of various technologies that feed back into the economy and improve our lives on Earth. Without space programs, we wouldn’t have GPS, accurate weather prediction, solar cells, or the ultraviolet filters in sunglasses and cameras. There’s also medical research happening in space right now that could cure diseases and prolong human lives, and these experiments can’t be done on Earth. Space exploration could save your life. Asteroids Don’t Care About Us Speaking of saving lives, space exploration could save all our lives. The solar system has calmed down a lot since the early eons, but there are still an unknown number of big asteroids and comets out there that could smack into the planet and really ruin your day. It’s happened several times in the past, each one causing a mass extinction. It’s not a matter of if another large asteroid hits Earth, but when. A robust space program is the only hope we have of deflecting such an object. If we’re not working toward that goal, humanity already has an expiration date. Colonization Is the Ultimate Backup There are currently more than 7 billion humans, which is a lot. However, we’re all crammed together on this one planet. If something happened to Earth, our species could be wiped out. For example, the aforementioned asteroid impact. Colonizing other bodies in the solar system (or building our own orbiting habitats) is a way to create a “backup” of humanity that will survive no matter what happens to Earth. Maybe future humans will be Martians who will never set foot on Earth. The technology to make that possible isn’t going to develop itself. Space Mining Could Save the World As we develop new technologies on Earth, the strain on our natural resources continues to increase. The extraction of valuable minerals has led to a host of problems, including environmental damage and human exploitation, but there’s a wealth of precious materials in space. Startups like Planetary Resources want to mine asteroids instead of Earth, which would mean an effectively unlimited supply of raw materials that are rare on Earth. We Are Explorers There are more practical reasons for space exploration, but one of the principal reasons we must continue is that we’re explorers. That’s why humans number in the billions — from our earliest upright steps, we’ve endeavored to learn more about the world around us, and this allowed us to build civilization. Exploring space is an opportunity not only to discover new worlds and build advanced technologies, but to work together toward a larger goal irrespective of nationality, race, or gender. If we stop exploring, we stop being human.

(Frank, Charles, organizational consultant, Bringing the Overview Effect Down to Earth , 4-15)

The Overview Effect is an experience that has been reported by astronauts and cosmonauts who have traveled into Low Earth Orbit or to the moon. There are many aspects to the Overview Effect, but at its most basic level, it represents a cognitive shift in which one sees the Earth as a planet moving through a star-filled universe. (1) For most, there is also a realization that there are no borders or boundaries on this planet, except those created by human beings. Many of these space travelers returned to Earth with an altered point of view about possibility, collaboration, and the future of our species. Some of them considered the experience to be transcendent and life-changing. The astronauts have received a message from the universe about who we are and who we might become. Now, we need to transmit this message throughout society in a way that makes a difference. The question before us is this: can this shift in awareness be taught within corporations, universities, and government agencies so that they begin to operate from the perspective of a unified whole system? We believe that the answer is yes, and that “Bringing the Overview Effect Down to Earth” offers such a learning opportunity. We are convinced that the message of the Overview Effect is not only for astronauts but for all human beings. It is urgently important to teach this perspective and reap its remarkable benefits, yet there is no need to make enormous changes in organizational structures. Only our mindsets need to change, but that may be a greater challenge than might be expected. We are advancing a radical—even revolutionary— notion: if the cognitive shift experienced by astronauts can be reproduced in other settings, the world will change in subtle yet profound ways as the consequence of millions of brain cells reorganizing themselves into a new worldview. In the years since the first astronauts left the planet, the coupling of the Overview experience and the hard-edged excellent performance required for space travel has infrequently found its way back to Earth in government, universities, and business in practical ways. As astronaut Ed Gibson put it: Our coming back and sharing our experiences is like a drop of dye going into the ocean; it is quickly diffused. (2) Gibson is right, and yet the experiences of only 500 plus people have already had a huge impact on our thinking, bringing a great boost to the environmental movement as only one example. The Phenomenon and the Abstraction The Overview Effect is both a phenomenon and an abstraction. Most of what we can say about it is an abstraction, a description of what someone else experienced. Words do not do it justice, any more than the feeling you have on seeing your firstborn child, or falling in love with your soul mate, or hearing a great piece of music. For 60 years, the astronauts have been describing the feelings evoked by the Overview Effect, visions of the possibilities of a world without boundaries, a lifting up of one’s own spirit, and a sense of connection with others and the planet. However, the phenomenon itself is almost impossible to communicate with enough nuance, detail, color, and emotion to capture the sensation of rushing around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, or standing on the surface of the moon and looking back at your home rising in a star-filled sky. Beautiful pictures and videos are helpful and some have succeeded in creating “aha” moments for viewers on Earth. However, none of these are the phenomenon itself. Regardless of the challenges, when the astronauts return to Earth, they are asked to describe it, and they do their best. To date, one of the most successful efforts at communicating the Effect has been accomplished by a group of young filmmakers from the United Kingdom, Planetary Collective. Their short film, “Overview,” has now been played by 1.7 million people on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/planetarycollective/overview The Problem on the Surface Goes Deep The authors have been facilitating organizational change for more than 50 years. They have found that corporations, universities, and government agencies are divided into parts that are isolated from one another – “silos” —wherein lack of communication, superficial relationships, and individuals and departments going their own way are commonplace. In many cases, knowledge about the workings of the whole system accompanies this isolation and a grand future for the organization is beyond the vision of the people in it. The primary issue for all organizations is identity. For the most part, people hold onto their individual identities as a necessity for their survival. They contrast this individual identity against that of the larger whole. When individuals are successfully integrated into small teams, they then contrast the team against the larger organization or other teams. This tendency leads to “turf wars” and failure to get the most out of everyone. Leaders too often seek local intelligence rather than “Collective Intelligence.” By contrast, the Institute for Co-Intelligence says the following: 3 Collective intelligence is the intelligence of a collective which arises from one or more sources… Intelligence is variously defined as ‘the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge,’ ‘the ability to effectively adapt,’ or simply ‘the ability to solve problems.’ (3) In general, institutional intention to develop collective intelligence is rare because their leaders have not heard of it. They know they have a problem, but they have no concept of a solution. And all too often, bureaucracies turn the natural energy of people away from collective intelligence and toward individual survival. All of these characteristics of organizations reflect the fact that on the surface of our planet, we see a great deal of diversity or chaos, depending on how it is interpreted. The wonder of the Overview Effect is that some 500 plus people have now risen above the surface, and seen that for all the apparent disjointedness of the parts below, it suddenly reveals itself as a beautiful whole. (4) The Overview Effect Points to Co-Intelligence The Overview Effect points directly to the existence of collective intelligence. In one of the authors’ books on this subject, The Overview Effect describes a “planetary overview system” that includes the physical system we call Earth, the human system we call humanity, and the global technological system, technos. (5) An overview framework creates the infrastructure for co-intelligence not only on the planet itself but also in all organizations that are a part of it. The Overview Effect creates the awareness that it can be brought into existence on the Earth, and then to the various parts of the global human system, such as companies, universities, and governments. Our task now is to bring the Overview Effect “down to earth” so that leaders, managers, and participants in a system can experience the overview and masterful performance at the same time. This happens through a designed mix of work relevant experiments, education, and individual practices that bring out collective intelligence and release participants’ holding onto the boundaries of what they already know. In other words, these organizational systems need to see themselves as overview systems. We believe the first step lies in learning four distinctions that are inherent in the astronaut experience of the Overview Effect and practicing them as they apply to the context of one’s own work and life. Distinction One: Knowing vs. Experiencing The astronauts did not come to “know” something new when they saw the Earth as a planet moving through the universe at a high rate of speed. We, and they, already “knew” that, but they experienced it. As the first American in space, Alan Shepard, put it: I had been well briefed on what to expect…But no one could be briefed well enough to be completely prepared for the astonishing view that I got. (6) 4 Most organizational behavior is driven by what people think they know, what they already like or dislike, what they’re attracted to and what they avoid. It’s important for us to be “right” about what we know and it’s threatening to have that called into question. This tendency accounts for the stultifying effects of left/right politics and “sides.” As one of the authors of this paper (White) is fond of pointing out, however, “A planet has no sides.” A lack of “overview thinking” makes fundamental change a threat to identity. A merger becomes an attack on personal survival for leaders and administrators who have identified themselves with one company, and with policies and practices, that already exist. By contrast, space exploration is a grand experiment. It’s in the nature of an experiment to discover what new things might take place. Distinction Two: Earth vs. Space The astronauts experienced the reality that the distinction between Earth and space is a false one. The Earth is in space, has always been in space, and will always be in space. All of us are crewmembers on Spaceship Earth, but we don’t behave in that way because we don’t have the context to do so. And the astronauts not only saw the Earth from space but also in space. (7) In the words of shuttle astronaut Jeff Hoffman, speaking at the world premiere of the film, “Overview” about the view he had from orbit: You do, from that perspective, see the Earth as a planet. You see the sun as a star. You are seeing it from a cosmic perspective. (8) The transformation from an organization with segmented goals, dissociated policies, and limiting relationships among the parts cannot happen without altering the meaning that people give to their experience, moving from the limits of their individual identities as a point of view to a holistic view of themselves and the system as occurs in seeing the Earth from space. Most efforts to change or improve a system involve changing structure or process, which does not change mindset or context. It simply changes the form. The personal meaning people give to their experiences is a function of the context, their point of view, which is emotionally driven. The new perspective made visible by the Overview Effect comes from just such a change in context. When this change is deliberately put into practice in companies and schools in service of high performance, there is a surge of human energy and cooperative results. Distinction Three: Unity vs. Diversity In our own work, we have demonstrated repeatedly that transformation begins with the ability to distinguish content from context. Similarly, from the surface of the planet, it is hard to see the reality of co-intelligence because our senses are overwhelmed by a chaotic swirl of diversity. From orbit or the moon, astronauts see that unity appears as the context of that planetary diversity. The two coexist, but we will see one or the other as primary or secondary, depending on perspective. (9). This ability to 5 clarify content and context brings the Overview Effect down to earth in ways that can transform organizations and the people in them. We all have seen co-intelligence in action in great sports teams, wondrous musical performances, moments of intimacy, friendship, and sharing, or in hot projects that achieve goals everyone is proud to own. These are moments of a cognitive shift, even of transcendence, becoming more than yourself, in a boundary-less condition. Shuttle astronaut Bonnie Dunbar said: Team participation is the key. Being on a mission is like playing team sports or being on an air crew. (10) As International Space Station (ISS) astronaut Ron Garan puts it: If I had an epiphany [in orbit], it is the sobering contradiction between just how unbelievably beautiful our planet is versus the reality of life on the planet for many of her inhabitants, so it caused me to ask how we can use that perspective to inspire people to make a difference and make life for the inhabitants of our planet as beautiful as our Earth looks from space. (11) Garan is himself working on a number of projects to use his insights from space exploration to improve life on Earth. (12) In the course of work and life on the planetary surface, the unity recedes into the background. If we can discover how to communicate the Overview Effect and bring this perspective to individuals’ commitments to high performance, magic will happen. If we can trigger this cognitive shift, we will begin to see non-astronauts working together in the way that astronauts do and that will be the beginning of something really new “under the sun.” Distinction Four: Cognitive Shift vs. Masterful Performance For some astronauts—and for many who have heard about the experience—the essence of the Overview Effect is transcendence; a state of being above and beyond the norm. But without masterful performance back on the surface, transcendence is a fleeting experience and loses its credibility and power. That is why we prefer the term “cognitive shift,” something that is more easily put into practice. Bringing the Overview Effect down to Earth will eventually involve many more people going into space. The impact will be even greater if it can be done with some training and preparation of the “new astronauts.” (13) However, we don't have to wait. Similar shifts, taking place on a large scale, can be achieved through training and coaching leaders in a company, school, or government agency to appreciate the Overview Effect through simulations, dramatic, powerful visuals, listening to astronauts talk about what it is like, practice in focusing on their experience rather than what they already know, clarifying content and context, and appreciating the power of collective intelligence. 6 There can then be a movement from an identity of disparate parts to one in which people see themselves as functioning within a collective intelligence that has the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, effectively adapt, and solve problems. Then, thousands of leaders would see the content of their work from the context of the Overview Effect and Collective Intelligence. For organizations embracing these concepts, it would not only give their school and companies a creative edge but would also advance planetary civilization as a whole. To quote shuttle astronaut Story Musgrave: “Ultimately, nothing matters except performance.” (14)

(Daniel L, PhD, Psych@Harvard, Frank White, Mphil, Bruce W. Shackleton, EdD, Overcoming the Tribes Effect: The Overview Effect as a Means to Promote Conflict Resolution Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000414)

Although humanity has made significant progress in mitigating destructive conflict (Pinker, 2011), it now possesses the means to inflict increasingly devastating effects on individuals and groups. In response, the field of conflict resolution has sought new theoretical models and practical tools to reduce intergroup polarization. A key finding is that conflict is driven not solely by rational interests but also by an emotional matrix of threats and counterthreats that entrench each party in an opposing identity; the conflict becomes us versus them (Rothman, 1997; Shapiro, 2017). This article proposes a novel approach for mitigating such polar-ization through means of an expansive mind-set known as the overview effect (White, 2014). The Problem: The Tribes Effect Despite substantial applied research on ways to resolve social conflict (e.g., Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014; Sherif, 1958), additional scholarship is needed on how to address its relational dimensions (Shapiro, 2010). Consider social identity theory (SIT), one of the most widespread frameworks for understanding intergroup conflict (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The unit of analysis in SIT is a broad category—the group—and disputants are assumed to be “in” or “out” of it. But intergroup conflict tends to involve relationships that are emotionally fluid, and the lines of loyalty are not so categorically clear. In Shapiro’s negotiation trainings with Israeli and Palestinian leadership, for example, he has observed participants building complex relations that are simultaneously close and distant, trusting and distrusting, based on factors such as whether the workshop is in the Middle East or in a remote region of Europe; inclusive or exclusive of participants who have shared their life stories; and run during periods of relative calm or political upheaval. To account for these emotional dynamics, Shapiro has developed a model of conflict resolution called relational identity theory (RIT), which proposes that disputants constantly negotiate the perceived nature, quality, and degree of their relationship (Shapiro, 2010). The model identifies two motives that define this identity: affiliation and autonomy. How close do parties feel to one another, and what is their perceived degree of freedom to make decisions without the other’s imposition? RIT suggests that when individuals’ relational identity feels threatened—as is the case in nearly any conflict—they enter a divisive mind-set called the tribes effect (Shapiro, 2017), which bifurcates their perception of identity into an oversimplified ingroup– outgroup distinction: They see their association with the other side as adversarial, they adopt a self-righteous attitude, and they psychologically insulate from others’ conflict narratives. As a result, they are likely to act in ways that are consistent with this binary division of identity even when a collaborative relationship promises a more optimal solution to the conflict (Shapiro, 2010). Thus, this mind-set can undermine standard approaches to conflict resolution, such as interactive problem solving (Kelman, 2008) and interest-based negotiation (Fisher, Ury, & Patton, 2011), which rely on disputants’ sharing needs, listening to each other, and engaging in cooperative problem solving. Influenced by the tribes effect, disputants may go through the motions of joint problem solving without authentically engaging in it. Strategy: Identity Expansion The key to breaking out of the tribes effect is to shift from a myopic conception of identity to an expansive perspective that includes one’s tribal affiliations but also transcends them (see Haslam, 2004). Parties must redefine their identity in the conflict as not purely tribal but also communal, cultivating a broader affiliation that is connective rather than adversarial, compassionate rather than self-righteous, and open to, rather than insulated from, learning new perspectives (Shapiro, 2017). They still may disagree with each other’s way of life, stance on issues, or spiritual beliefs, but they now view each other within the same conception of humanity. In short, they must expand their relational identity in order to be in closer connection even while in objection to each other’s ideas. Three characteristics of identity expansion promote its utility in conflict resolution. First, unlike the tribes effect, which divides parties into independent adversaries (me vs. you), identity expansion links parties within a single cooperative unit (us). Thus, disputants face the conflict, not each other. However, even tactics that appear to build an expansive relational identity may do so to only a limited extent. Consider William Ury’s advice that disputants imagine themselves “going to the balcony” to gain new perspective on their conflict (Ury, 1993, p. 31). The distance from the “balcony” to the “stage” is enough to help parties reconceive of their conflict as being between “me and you”—but not so far as to make their coexistence as a single unit (“us”) entirely salient. The balcony produces distance but not transcendence. Second, identity expansion is most effective when parties emotionally internalize their unified relational identity (Kegan, 1983). Cooperative behavior and mutual influence are more likely when parties negotiate on the basis not of compliance or identification but of unconscious assimilation of interconnection (Kelman, 1958). Finally, identity expansion is most potent when the process for inducing it is generic—useful for anyone in any context. Having a single approach to dealing with a multitude of conflict situations is economical, optimizing cognitive and emotional resources and ensuring a potentially useful tactic for overcoming the tribal mindset. In the next section, we propose the overview effect as a novel approach to shifting relational identity from a tribal to communal mind-set. This perspective emphasizes the “us” over “me vs. you,” is as much experiential as cognitive, and can be used across a variety of contexts. The Overview Effect: A Potent Means of Promoting a Communal Mind-Set Over the past three decades, White has systematically interviewed more than 40 astronauts about their experiences in outer space and has uncovered invaluable data about their experience when viewing Earth from orbit or the moon. He has discovered that when these space travelers return home, they share a profound shift in their view of human relations, experiencing the world’s troubles as secondary to the Earth as a whole and believing that even significant struggles can be resolved through a more holistic perspective. White (2014) named this mind-set the overview effect. Understanding the overview effect as both an intellectual concept and transcendent experience is central to developing an effective protocol for combatting the tribes effect. The astronauts had not adopted a new understanding of their identities through a thought process. No policymaker or social scientist had manipulated their goals or incentive structures. Rather, they had directly experienced Earth from a new vantage point, which shifted the way they viewed their identity as individuals and as part of the human species. In many cases, these astronauts left the Earth with a strong dose of the tribes effect guiding them, because almost all flew as part of national space programs, but they usually returned home with a transcendent view of identity. Apollo 9 astronaut Russell Schweickart underscored the power of identity expansion through his experience, reporting that [the] whole process of what it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change. You look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, again and again and again, and you don’t even see them. There you are—hundreds of people in the Mideast killing each other over some imaginary line that you’re not even aware of and that you can’t see. (see Schweickart, 1977, p. 9) White’s (2014) research suggests that the overview effect can transform a disputant’s perspective through the power of the experience. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell observed that it is precisely this shift in viewpoint and what it implies for the capability of the human being and for our view of the universe that makes it so powerful. Until the last 20 years, all philosophers, thinkers, scientists, and poets have been Earthbound. They had an Earthbound point of view. Spaceflight is one of the more powerful experiences that humans can have, and the technological event of breaking the bonds of Earth is far more important than the technology that went into it, because of this perspective. (p. 194) Not all astronauts reported experiences matching those of Mitchell’s and Schweickart’s, but all the astronauts whom White interviewed reported a fundamental shift in worldview, and most found that spaceflight had induced a feeling of self-transcendence. Although the overview effect is, on balance, a positive experience, there is a painful aspect to it, because astronauts often feel a contradiction between the beauty of the planet they are seeing from space and their knowledge of the suffering that is taking place on the surface (White, 2014). RIT conveys the same discomfort as the inescapable dialectic between autonomy and affiliation, in which disputants wish for freedom from their counterpart’s influence but realize the necessity of working together to resolve their differences (Shapiro, 2017). But this tension is surmountable. When disputants struggle through conflict, they tend to constrict their conception of identity and resist efforts to expand it, moving toward the tribes effect. The overview effect provides a powerful remedy, fundamentally reorienting the way disputants view conflict and their relation to each other. Creating an Overview Analogue The overview effect offers a powerful possibility for conflict resolution, but it is currently impractical. Sending disputants into orbit is at present difficult and costly. Current prices for private flight are high, only a few passengers are able to fly at once, and conflicting parties locked in the tribes effect are unlikely to have much appetite for the joint flight. Therefore, one must look for “overview analogues”—Earth-based methods of induction into the overview experience (White, 2014, p. 193). There is a wide variety of overview analogues, including the following illustrative examples. First, third parties could organize political mediations in locations that induce the overview experience. The World Economic Forum, for example, hosts its annual summit in the mountains of Davos, creating a sense of distance from the rest of the world. Second, an overview analogue may be induced through what Maslow (1970, p. 19) described as a “peak experience,” such as intense prayer, meditation, or climbing to a mountaintop. In even the most pernicious conflict, a mediator may be able to persuade parties to begin the session with a prayer or wish for the well-being of future generations. Third, with the rapid advance of virtual reality (VR) technology, mediators could consider the nontraditional intervention of meeting separately with each side’s disputants prior to the negotiation and inviting them to use a VR headset to engage in a simulated experience of the overview effect. Fourth, conflict resolution instructors could introduce students to the overview experience through online videos incorporated into the classroom curriculum. Finally, disputants could learn how to regain emotional equilibrium in conflict situations by imagining themselves on the space station looking back at the Earth. The scholarly arena is ripe for additional research on the overview effect as a means for countering the tribal mind-set. For example, researchers can examine similarities and differences between the brain activity of astronauts and nonastronauts in times of conflict. At this point, one can only conjecture that overview analogues are “similar” to the overview effect, because no one has yet conducted rigorous comparison experiments. But researchers can create and test novel overview analogues and evaluate the impact. For example, does showing disputants a 5-min video on the overview effect change conflict behavior? Or does the experience affect behavior only if internalized through VR technology? How might the overview effect be infused into political negotiation processes? Summary This article extends relational identity theory by proposing the overview effect as a means for overcoming the tribes effect. Overview analogues—such as envisioning what Earth looks like via photographs, space movies, and pure imagination—can create unique emotional experiences that have the potential to expand disputants’ relational identity and open new possibilities for conflict resolution. As many astronauts have observed, “We are all in this together.” (1-3)

(Michio, , 3-2)

Your own preferred solution is what you call laser porting. Explain what this is—and how the Human Connectome Project may be laying the foundations. The first big scientific project was the Manhattan Project, which gave us the atomic bomb. The second was the Human Genome Project, which gave us the human genome. The third could be the Connectome Project. Many nations, including the U.S., have said that the brain is the key to understanding mental health, depression, and suicide. All that could perhaps be unraveled if we understand the connectome, which is a map of the entire brain. We expect to have this perhaps by the end of this century. But once we have it, what do we do with it? We could look at mental illness, but we could also put it on a laser beam and shoot it into outer space. In one second, you’d be on the moon; in 20 minutes you’re on Mars; and in years you’re on the nearest star. So laser porting is perhaps the most efficient way to explore the galaxy without booster rockets, radiation dangers, or problems from asteroid impacts. You just laser port yourself!

(Michio, , 3-2)

Another problem with deep-space travel is that it may take hundreds of light-years to reach your destination. You suggest deep freezing astronauts, then thawing them out at the other end. To quote John McEnroe: You can’t be serious, can you? The stars are extremely far away, but one day we hope to use advanced physics to go faster than the speed of light—warp drive. Until we get warp drive, we’re stuck with rockets that are below the speed of light and the planets we have discovered that are Earth-like would take hundreds of years to reach. This means we have to find the secret of extending the human lifespan or learn how to freeze ourselves. Some companies already offer to freeze your body so that when you are thawed out, there’ll be cures for cancer and other diseases. Don’t believe it. These companies, I think, are bogus. However, it’s a possibility that has to be looked at. We’ve discovered about 60 genes that seem to influence the lifespan of human beings and we know that certain genes allow animals to live for centuries. The Greenland shark, for example, lives to be over 400 years of age. So genetics may make it possible to slow down the aging process.

(Michio, , 3-2)

You use the phrase “the fourth wave of science.” Explain what this means and how it could one day make it possible to terraform Mars. We’ve had three waves of scientific innovation. The first wave, the Industrial Revolution, gave us the steam engine, the locomotive, and factories. The second wave was electricity and magnetism, whereby we had TV, internal combustion cars, a beginning of the space program. The third revolution is high tech: computers, lasers, the Internet. Now we have the fourth wave of innovation: artificial intelligence, biotech, and nanotech. That’s going to change the way we view Mars. Many people say Mars is cold and desolate, and there’s nothing to grow there. We can genetically modify plants and algae to thrive in the Martian atmosphere. But who’s going to do the heavy lifting? We all would like to see futuristic cities on Mars, but robots are going to become much more adapted to working in these harsh environments by the end of this century, so we expect to see robotic construction workers building the fantastic domed cities you see in science fiction novels.

(, 10-3)

Human exploration of Mars need not stop before it starts, though. Space agencies and private companies are actively working to mitigate space radiation. An Israeli startup is developing a body vest designed to more fully absorb radiation, for example, and one NASA scientist recently pitched the idea of deploying a satellite that’d serve as an artificial magnetic shield to divert harmful radiation around Mars. And as the researchers noted in their study, “significant differences” exist between mouse-model cancer rates and those actually seen in people. “These differences could limit the applicability of the predictions described in this paper,” they wrote. But the scientists add that this knowledge gap is precisely why future deep-space explorers and their respective agencies should exercise caution. “[S]tudies … are urgently needed prior to long-term space missions outside the protection of the Earth’s geomagnetic sphere,” they said.

(Denise, , 8-9)

But some experts are not so willing to throw in the towel. Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and founder of the Mars Society, disagrees with the study’s conclusions. He said the researchers “grossly underestimated” the amount of carbon dioxide on the planet. In a 1993 paper, Zubrin calculated that there is enough carbon dioxide in Martian soil that, if it were released, could create an atmosphere comparable to the air atop Mount Everest. Zubrin acknowledges that efforts to terraform Mars are unlikely to happen anytime soon, but he remains optimistic. “I’m a 21st century engineer grappling with a 22nd century problem,” he said. “There’s no question that it can be done. The question is: how hard is it, and at what point do humans get the industrial capability to do it?” Musk also seems unconvinced by the new research. Several hours after the paper was published, he tweeted, “There’s a massive amount of CO2 on Mars adsorbed into soil that’d be released upon heating. With enough energy via artificial or natural (sun) fusion, you can terraform almost any large, rocky body.” But Jakosky said the study was never meant to sound the death knell for terraforming Mars. “Our results are not the be all and end all,” he said. “It’s the best estimate today of where that gas is on the planet. But this isn’t a dead end. It’s really just a next step in the process.”

(Ross, Editor@RealClearScience, , 1-16)

In 2020, scientists with the European Space Agency announced that they had successfully used bacteria to extract rare earth minerals from basalt inside a small bioreactor onboard the International Space Station. The experiment was meant to simulate the microbial harvesting of elements from rocks similar to those found on the Moon and Mars, a process called biomining. Its success suggested genuine potential for what may seem like a science fiction future: using microbes to extract useful materials on the Moon, Mars, and beyond that can sustain space colonies. If humans ever hope to establish permanent settlements elsewhere in the solar system, we are going to need a steady supply of water; oxygen; essential nutrients for plant nutrition as well as our own; gaseous elements like hydrogen, nitrogen, and helium to make fuel; and metals like iron, copper, and vanadium for structures and electronic components. Luckily, these all can be obtained from extraterrestrial rocks, and microorganisms can help. Biomining Right now on Earth, specialized microbes are used to leach precious metals from rocks. Around 20-25% of copper and 5% of gold are harvested with biomining. Bacteria can also extract zinc, nickel, cobalt, uranium, and various other elements straight from mineral ores. What if we could do the same thing in space? The process would require relatively little energy and mitigate the need to import materials from Earth. Charles S. Cockell and Rosa Santomartino, scientists at the UK Centre for Astrobiology and the University of Edinburgh, along with Luis Zea, an assistant research professor in aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado, are a few of the thinkers trying to lay the groundwork for space-based biomining. In a recent article published in the journal Extremophiles, they explained how it might work. For starters, any biomining would require liquid water and need to take place in sophisticated bioreactors where internal conditions can be controlled. Bioreactors would protect microbes from damaging radiation, hold in oxygen if the microbes require it, maintain internal pressure, and keep a suitable temperature. Regolith and rock would be loaded in, then microorganisms added depending upon the material type and what elements users seek to extract. After a certain amount of time, the bioreactor is opened and the materials inside removed for use. Thanks to new, exciting advances in bioengineering, microorganisms could be engineered to improve their biomining abilities. “Although synthetic biology applications to biomining are still young, approaches to ameliorate resistance to space conditions, to enhance extraction of elements under these, or overcome issues, could be an excellent opportunity for space biomining,” Cockell, Santomartino, and Zea write. As biomining has already been demonstrated to work in small quantitites in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station, a next logical location to try it would be on the surface of the Moon in a larger bioreactor. After all, water is widely available on the lunar surface and lunar regolith (soil) contains heaps of useful elements. Such a specialized experiment would be difficult to perform robotically, however, and thus would likely require human boots on the ground, a tall task in and of itself. A blueprint for long-term habitation If we want those boots to stay there long term, however, we will probably need to sort out biomining. Maintaining a constant supply line from Earth would be taxing and treacherous, but biomining has the potential to make space colonies self-sustaining. Pair the practice with advanced 3D printing, and we may just have a blueprint for long-term human habitation of the solar system.

(Passant, Passant is is an award-winning journalist from Cairo, Egypt, who relocated to New York to pursue a master's degree in science journalism at New York University. , 1-22)

The 2020s are shaping up to be a new era of human space exploration. The industry has set its eyes on a return to the Moon by the year 2024, followed by the first human mission to Mars. The ultimate goal is to build human colonies on the lunar surface, which would serve as a kind of rest stop for future missions to Mars and other deep-space destinations. The most-ambitious plan comes from private aerospace company SpaceX, which hopes to colonize the Red Planet by the year 2050. But as we inch closer to making human colonies in outer space a reality, we're getting some of our first solid ideas of how these lunar habitats and Martian ecosystems might look. It's also becoming clear that to be sustainable, these space cities will have to rely on some rather unusual tech — from mushroom homes to a lunar nuclear reactor. Here are three tools that could help us make our space-colony dreams a reality sooner rather than later. FUNGHI ARCHITECTURE Our imagination paints a picture of futuristic space cities composed of modern, sleek buildings. Just a glimpse at some of the mock-ups from Blue Origin or SpaceX envisaging these cityscapes demonstrates that the expectation for future space cities is that they will be modern and sleek, composed of glass buildings and impressive steel structures. But in reality, future buildings on the Moon and Mars may actually require us to revert back to one of the most basic elements in nature. NASA’s myco-architecture project is prototyping a technology that uses mushrooms to grow habitats in space. The idea behind the project is instead of carrying your entire house with you on your journey to Mars, future human settlers of the planet would be able to bring a compact habitat made of mycelia, which is the vegetative part of the fungus which forms fungi colonies through underground threads. Once humans have landed on Mars, they would grow their own home by adding water and letting the fungus grow. COOKING UP OXYGEN ON THE MOON The Moon’s atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth's. And while it does contain some oxygen, it is certainly not enough for humans to breathe long enough to get on a ride to Mars. But lunar samples returned to Earth during past missions reveal there may be another source of this crucial element for humans to exploit. Lunar bedrock is made up of 40-45 percent oxygen, bound chemically as oxides in the form of minerals or glass. Mining the bedrock may help future lunar colonizers survive and sustain new habitats. Currently, the European Space Agency is working on creating an oxygen plant to extract oxygen from the Moon’s bedrock. The oxygen plant works by placing the moon dust in a metal basket with molten calcium chloride salt to serve as an electrolyte. By heating the bedrock material to 950 degrees Celsuis, and passing a current through it, the oxygen would be extracted and migrate across the salt to be collected at an anode. A prototype of the plant is currently in place at the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. GENERATING ENERGY OFF-EARTH One of the ultimate challenges for lie in a space colony is being able to power all of that machinery. There's an idea that solar power could offer a renewable and sustainable energy source — especially in places where the Sun always shines. But solar panels may be inefficient in areas where there is little to no sunlight. On the Moon, this would quickly become a problem — the surface is dark for 14 days at a time, so there would be no constant source of power. In order to address that challenge, NASA is developing a mobile nuclear reactor as part of Project Kilopower. The reactor would work is by splitting atoms and releasing energy in the form of heat, which is would then be converted into electricity. The reactor would be able to produce 10 kilowatts of electrical power on a continuous basis, and can last for up to 10 years. NASA demonstrated the reactor in action in May 2018 — four Kilopower units would provide enough power to several households. “Safe, efficient and plentiful energy will be the key to future robotic and human exploration,” said Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at the time. “I expect the Kilopower project to be an essential part of lunar and Mars power architectures as they evolve.” As we continue to meet new challenges in bringing humans into space for the long-term, these three tools are likely only the start of a new era of innovation. Watch this space.

(Tony, , 2-8, this article has no date listed but is commenting on this https://phys.org/news/2022-02-laser-mars.html)

One of the biggest challenges that we need to solve to colonize Mars is how to resupply astronauts on the Red Planet quickly. To that end, a team of researchers came up with a clever plan using a laser to send a spacecraft to Mars in just 45 days — cutting the travel by months. The team from McGill University designed a system that uses a 10-meter wide laser array on Earth to power up an orbiting spacecraft, Phys.org reports. The laser would heat hydrogen plasma in the ship until it creates enough superheated hydrogen gas to propel it to Mars. Basically, it would allow us to supply interplanetary thrusting power from down on Earth — without worrying about launching all that heavy fuel into space. “Laser-thermal propulsion enables rapid transport missions of one ton with laser arrays the size of a volleyball court,” Emmanuel Duplay, lead author of a paper and former student at McGill University’s Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering Program, told the website. Express Trip The team created the concept after NASA issued an engineering challenge to design a method of getting to Mars that could carry a 1,000 kilogram payload in no more than 45 days. Their system, detailed in a paper in the journal Acta Astronautica, would be able to take crucial supplies and astronauts to Mars colonies in a trip that would typically take months in traditional chemically-fueled rockets. Once it gets to Mars, it’ll use the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere to “aerobrake” — a delicate and potentially dangerous maneuver that rapidly decelerates the ship. While traditional spacecraft would use chemical propellents to stop, that requires more weight in the payload to carry the fuel. Using Mars’ atmosphere circumvents that. The design is incredibly fascinating and offers a lot of promise, but it’s still very much in the conceptual stage. For now, we’ll just have to deal with pesky rockets that can potentially explode on the launch pad.

(Robert, interviewed by Charles Monroe-Kang , for the date at the end it says this Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 Post date: February 15, 2022, but its not Feb 15 yet so…)

CMK: How would this work, exactly? What’s the plan? RZ: The way to go is with a few small exploration missions to find the right place for a permanent outpost. Then you send lots of cargos with habitations. Then you send a few groups of people to set up greenhouses for food production and facilities to manufacturer plastics, steel, propellant, and oxygen. And once you create the capacity for people to be self-supportive, you can send more and more of them. So it won’t be like the Normandy landing, with 100,000 people the first day and another 100,000 in the second wave. It’ll be more organic growth. CMK: What about water? RB: There's water on Mars — and not just at the poles. That’s one of the discoveries to come out of NASA’s very successful robotic planetary exploration program. We have now discovered glaciers on Mars at about the same latitude as San Francisco on Earth. They contain more water than the American Great Lakes and they're covered by only a few feet of dust and sand. So they're within shoveling distance.

(Flinders University, https://scitechdaily.com/experts-say-humanity-faces-a-grim-and-ghastly-future-state-of-planet-is-much-worse-than-most-people-understand/)

The state of the planet is much worse than most people understand and that humans face a grim and “ghastly future” unless extraordinary action is taken soon. A loss of biodiversity and accelerating climate change in the coming decades coupled with ignorance and inaction is threatening the survival of all species, including our very own, according to the experts from institutions including Stanford University, UCLA, and Flinders University. The researchers state that world leaders need a ‘cold shower’ regarding the state of our environment, both to plan and act to avoid a ghastly future. Lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia says he and his colleagues have summarised the state of the natural world in stark form to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament. “Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth’s ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization” Professor Bradshaw says. “In fact, the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. “The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymying the action that is crucial for survival” he says. Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University says that no political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. “Stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country’s priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability. “While it is positive news that President Biden reengaged the US in Paris Climate accord within his first 100 days of office, it is a minuscule gesture given the scale of the challenge. “Humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations to pay for short-term economic enhancement today.” “Most economies operate on the basis that counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with disinformation campaigns to protect short-term profits it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time” Professor Ehrlich says. Professor Dan Blumstein from UCLA says the scientists are choosing to speak boldly and fearlessly because life literally depends on it. “What we are saying might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But we need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future. “Without political will backed by tangible action that scales to the enormity of the problems facing us, the added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the Earth’s life-support system upon which we all depend. “Human population growth and consumption continues to escalate, and we’re still more focused on expanding human enterprise than we are on devising and implementing solutions to critical issues such as biodiversity loss. By the time we fully comprehend the impact of ecological deterioration, it will be too late.

(Meghan is a senior writer at Space.com and has more than five years' experience as a science journalist based in New York City. , 9-13)

Two conservation scientists have published an editorial in the prestigious scientific journal Nature today (Sept. 13) calling for more space on Earth to be set aside for wildlife. But what does that mean for space exploration, and what does our history in space teach us about the wisdom of such an effort? Space exploration and the environmental movement have long been intertwined, with the latter galvanized by space-based imagery like the Apollo 17 crew's Blue Marble photo of the full Earth disk and the Voyager mission's Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken across 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) of our solar system. Before space exploration began, "there was no perception of Earth as a single entity and certainly no context for it in space," Lisa Ruth Rand, a historian of science, technology and the environment who is currently the American Historical Association and NASA fellow in space history, told Space.com. [Wild! Scientists Are Watching Baby Turtles from Space] "That was revolutionary at the time," she said of the sentiments inspired by the Blue Marble image. "Not only are we alone in space in this hostile, barren void, but also we are all in it together," she said. Now, the view of Earth from orbit has become commonplace, but space is still changing the way we think about Earth. Over the past two decades, as exoplanet studies have blossomed, the connection has taken on a new spin as we identify more and more worlds around other stars — but still find ourselves liking Earth best. That's true closer to home as well, where even as we continue to learn about the worlds around us, we fail to find life, much less vibrant, complex ecosystems. "This is a wonderland," John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute and a former planetary protection officer at NASA, told Space.com of Earth. "We have been ignorant about the things that we have been doing to the Earth's biosphere and it is much more complex and amazingly interdependent than anything we're likely to see in this solar system." Can we build a biosphere? The new editorial calls for meeting the goals that governments around the world have already agreed upon at a 2010 conference, of protecting at least 17 percent of land and 10 percent of ocean areas by 2020 — goals that humans currently fall far short on, at just 14.7 and 3.6 percent, respectively. But those targets may not be what we need to keep Earth's ecosystems functioning, some planetary scientists fear. "Now we are talking about a bioengineered world, we are not talking about a planet anymore; we are talking about a national park on a planetary level and it's not a biosphere anymore," Nathalie Cabrol, an astrobiologist at the SETI Institute, told Space.com. "We are going to create an artificial bubble when what we had was a beautifully working natural system." Cordoning off land and seas to manage all the creatures around us isn't so different from building the type of artificial biospheres would-be explorers have dreamed up for other planets and moons. The similarity could mean that space endeavors offer lessons for managing life here on Earth — but those lessons may not be as encouraging as we might wish. "I think in understanding how to build an artificial biosphere and make it work we will provide more information about how to keep this one going," Rummel said. That said, there won't be an easy solution. "Even at best, any biosphere that we could construct for centuries to come is going to be a mere shadow of what we have every day on the Earth," he said. [NASA's Best Earth-from-Space Photos by Astronauts (Gallery)] And even without ever having laid a brick or planted a seed on another world, humans have dipped their toes in the world of biosphere construction. Perhaps the most enthusiastic experiment came in 1991, when a crew of eight stepped foot inside a facility dubbed Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 being Earth, of course) in the middle of the Arizona desert. The two-year experiment was meant to be a self-sustaining miniature replica of Earth with 3,800 species, but while all eight crewmembers survived, it was a troubled experience. One crewmember briefly left the biosphere for emergency medical care. Sweet potatoes thrived so much better than most crops in the high carbon levels that crewmembers' skin picked up a faint orange sheen from eating so many of them. A whopping 40 percent of the species humans had carried with them went extinct. "It didn't turn out well for a majority of the species — including the humans — that were living there," Rand said. "Ultimately, there's a lot of challenges to creating life in microcosm elsewhere, even here." She used the term "hellish" to describe a video of life in the facility, which was overrun by invasive ants and cockroaches and bereft of species crewmembers had wanted to retain. One of the first to go was the honeybees, which unbeknown to the humans who built the biosphere, couldn't see in most of the facility. They were found dead, clustered near an emergency exit, the only place where the biosphere's glass let in the ultraviolet light bees use to navigate, Rand said. "Even this seemingly very controlled experiment still had problems with biodiversity," Rand said. That's a powerful lesson the history of this sort of endeavor can offer about the limitations of our power to build ecosystems ourselves. "If we can take advantage of what's already here and work with nature instead of trying to recreate it somewhere else, we have a much greater chance of success," she said. While space offers a new perspective on Earth and its problems, space scientists cautioned against the common viewpoint that other planets can offer refuge if Earth becomes untenable for human existence. That's the wrong approach, according to some. "We are not going to fix any of the problems that we have on Earth by going to Mars," Cabrol said. "If we are not capable of understanding our problems here on Earth," she said, "we are just going to transfer this mentality onto another planet." (Rand added that such projects would almost certainly perpetuate the same power relationships and inequities that have shaped terrestrial societies for millennia.) [The BFR: SpaceX's Mars-Colonization Architecture in Images] And fleeing is particularly risky given how grim life on another planet is likely to be for the foreseeable future. "Maybe what Mars is going to give us is a consciousness of how beautiful, precious, fragile Earth is." Cabrol said. "We should not use planetary exploration as an escape." That isn't to say there's nothing space can offer us when it comes to solving our problems, Cabrol said. She said that one of the gifts of planetary exploration is that it puts new challenges in our path and forces us to solve them promptly, creatively and often remotely. That's the sort of skill with obvious implications for life on a fast-changing Earth. And if we continue to lose biodiversity here on Earth, space exploration may slip out of reach, Rummel said, as species losses ripple through food webs and cause accelerating change. "The very basis of the economies and support systems on the Earth that allow us to envision going elsewhere with both robots and people, those are the things that are in jeopardy." He points to the host of ecosystem services we rely on without blinking an eye, from insects that pollinate crops to plants that filter air and soil that retains stormwater. The same is true of climate change, which is raising temperatures and strengthening storms around the world. NASA satellites have spent the week monitoring Hurricane Florence and a host of other tropical storms that will leave death and destruction in their wakes — and one of which has also delayed a cargo launch to the International Space Station. Last year's hurricanes Irma and Harvey damaged Kennedy Space Center and shuttered Johnson Space Center. But biodiversity loss and climate change are both massive, incremental, depressing problems — precisely the sort of challenge humans hate to tackle. "Innovation is sexy and fixing things that already exist that can be repaired is not," Rand said. "It's much more fun and glitzy to imagine trying to build something new in a new place." But here, the history of space exploration may be able to offer a more productive mindset, despite the temptation of looking to the next horizon and the next mission. NASA has a long track record of extending missions and reprogramming damaged telescopes or robots already at work. Perhaps those examples, coupled with the nitty-gritty data and big-picture views that the agency offers of our home planet, can teach us to embrace a culture of conservation.

(Annalee, , 5-15)

When the Russian asteroid became a fireball in the air over Chelyabinsk, destroying buildings and injuring hundreds, we were lucky it wasn’t worse. What about when the next one hits? Just for fun, let’s say a 10-kilometer-diameter asteroid—much larger than the one over Chelyabinsk but close to the size of one that hit the planet 65 million years ago—smashed into central California. It wouldn’t just destroy Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It would punch a hole in the atmosphere. That’s what surprises people the most. Every disaster-from-space movie we’ve ever seen prepares us for fire and explosive destruction. Instead, blowback from the strike would be so powerful that it would hurl millions of tons of debris back into space. A thick, toxic cloud layer would settle over our upper atmosphere, wrapping itself around the world within hours after the impact, cutting off the sun. We’re not talking about an ordinary cloud, either. Packed with carbon, dust, and sulfur particles, it would reflect a lot more sunlight than a normal cloud would. Our satellites would record images of a once-blue planet gone brilliant white, like a pool ball. On Earth, it would be twilight for months. Temperatures would plummet. Crops would die, and then the forests. ADVERTISEMENT There would be fires the whole time, of course, especially around the impact site. Plus earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But most of the 5 billion people who are likely to be killed by an asteroid strike like this would die of famine. In many parts of the world, permanent dusk would mean nothing to feed our animals, let alone our families. Food supplies would dwindle. And that’s when the riots would start. This is an all-too-plausible scenario for the near future if we suffered an asteroid strike comparable to the one that killed most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It wasn’t a giant explosion that exterminated Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and their kin. In reality, most of those giants died out over thousands of years, their numbers winnowed down to nothing as their food-rich, tropical environments grew barren and cold. Today, we have solid evidence that confirms environmental changes like these can be blamed directly or indirectly for most mass extinctions that have scourged the Earth. And that’s why our space program isn’t just something educational we’re doing to learn more about the universe. It’s vital to our survival as a species, because the Earth isn’t going to be a safe place for us in the long term. I learned about the many pathways to mass death while researching my book published this week: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. There is a pattern to how mass extinctions happen. A calamity like an asteroid strike or an enormous volcanic eruption causes an initial disaster that kills a lot animals and plants at once. And this leads to climate changes that eventually kill more than 75 percent of all species on the planet, usually in less than a million years—the blink of an eye in geological time. There is a pattern to survival, too. Every mass extinction has its survivors. A group of furry, mouselike mammals took over the planet after the dinosaurs’ heyday and eventually evolved into us. What these survivors have in common are three abilities encapsulated by the title of my book: They are able to scatter to many places in the world, adapt to them, and remember how to avoid danger. Humans are exceptionally good at all three, but perhaps our greatest strength is an ability to reconstruct the deep history of our planet—and to plan for the future. Because we know Earth is inherently dangerous, any long-term plan for humanity has to involve building communities on other worlds, or maybe in vast, artificial environments in space. But the process of doing so will take a lot longer, and be a lot weirder, than what you see in most science fiction stories. It’s likely we won’t have bustling cities the size of San Francisco on Mars or Titan in the next hundred years, so in the meantime we need to come up with a plan to deal with threats to Earth from space. Already, the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and space agencies like NASA monitor the skies for potentially deadly asteroids in our neighborhood, called near-Earth objects (NEOs). These groups have already proposed simple solutions to the asteroid problem, all of which are within our technological grasp. Currently we are using powerful telescopes to map NEOs in the heavens that are bigger than a kilometer—a task that, thanks to NASA, the European Space Agency, and others, is largely complete. If we see an NEO that’s headed our way, we can deploy a small group of spacecraft to nudge it out of the way. As long as we catch an NEO when it is still years away, it is easy enough to push it just enough to change its trajectory so that it misses Earth by tens of thousands of miles. Again, we have the technology to do this today, and a growing space economy to support our efforts. Next, we need a cost-effective way to leave the planet on a regular basis. Rockets just aren’t going to cut it. Rocket fuel is expensive, heavy, and injects huge amounts of carbon and other toxins into the environment. It’s worked pretty well for our first baby steps into space, just as reed boats worked really well for our ancestors 50,000 years ago when we were first engaging in intercontinental ocean travel. But it’s not a good long-term solution.

(Chris, , 7-13)

With such soap opera shenanigans, it's no surprise many observers on Twitter rolled their eyes. The same argument deployed against the Apollo moon shots in the 1960s — space is too expensive when we have problems at home — were rolled out again. (Never mind that the Pentagon's bloated $705 billion budget is more than eight times larger than the entire planet's spending on space.) This time the argument came layered with an extra assumption, that the Virgin Galactic vs. Blue Origin vs. SpaceX race represents nothing more than rich boys playing with their toys. However, that argument makes about as much sense as claiming that Juan Trippe ordered his first batch of Boeing 707s just so he could go on joyrides with his rich friends. In fact, what the Pan Am vs. TWA rivalry did in the 1950s would change air travel forever. The more Boeings they bought, the more ticket prices plummeted. The more people could afford to fly, the more service scaled up, until a trip to Paris was no longer completely out of reach for a U.S. middle-class household budget. That's the long-term plan for these companies' orbital rides too, with the added challenge of building infrastructure in our solar neighborhood so that we don't have to come back to Earth so soon. (Imagine if Trippe and Hughes also had to create Paris from scratch.) Space tourism isn't all about providing joyrides for the rich and famous (Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga are among the celebrities who have signed up for $250,000 Virgin Galactic tickets); it's about using that revenue as seed money for our brave new cislunar world. I have previously argued that the space economy in the next century will mint trillions of dollars to the benefit of us all; this is how it begins. Jeff Bezos noted way back in his high school valedictorian speech that more space-based industry will take the pressure off Earth's environment, and he was right about that. Industries like Big Pharma may do better making its products in zero G — and solar satellites can provide the entire planet with clean energy in one fell swoop. In the long run, growing the space economy might be capitalism's single best response to our climate emergency. Does this mean Bezos, Branson, and Musk are immune to criticism? Absolutely not. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I've written about how Bezos' wealth has turned him into a raging asshole (to his own detriment; Blue Origin might have gotten off the ground faster if he'd had a better handle on how disgruntled his employees were). Branson demanded a bailout for his airline, Virgin Atlantic, even as he furloughed its staff. And Musk, of course, seems to spend as much of his life being a Twitter troll who pisses off the cryptocurrency crowd as he does doing actual business. Meanwhile, it's as clear as a space telescope that this trio of wealthy white dudes need to pay more than they are currently paying in taxes. Back when Trippe and Hughes were buying Boeings in the 1950s, they were on the hook for 91 cents out of every dollar over their first million. There were deductions and loopholes then as now, of course, and it's estimated that the actual top effective tax rate in the 1950s was a less sky-high 46 percent. Still, that was a lot more helpful to all of us than the average 3.4 percent tax rate the richest Americans — including Musk and Bezos — paid on $400 billion in new wealth between 2014 and 2018, according to a ProPublica investigation of IRS files. With the pandemic lifting billionaires' wealth by $1.6 trillion, there's even more of a crying need to legislate that these guys pay their fair share. Again, this would not impede their space activities, and would actually benefit their business in the long run by creating more customers. America's rising middle class in the 1950s, aided by government investment, was the source of its booming economy. We have enough data now to know that trickle-down economics is not a thing, not on this or any planet. So no, we shouldn't freak out about space billionaires who are at least helping to build out the infrastructure of the future. But they too can walk and chew gum at the same time, using their immense wealth to lift more of us off the planet at the same time as they contribute to our social security and our infrastructure. Their increasingly sprawling wealth can pay for universal healthcare even as we explore the universe. Branson, Bezos, and Musk can boldly go where air pioneers went before — by sending larger checks to the IRS.

(Alice, , 7-14)

My Instagram feed is shouting at me today with reasons to hate on billionaires who go to space, the latest of whom is Sir Richard Branson. Elon Musk has been working to send rockets into space since 2002 and Jeff Bezos is set for his own personal space launch this Monday, July 20th. Why don’t they invest that money into building communities for the unhoused? Insta-activists assert. Why aren’t they solving the increasing problems of climate change? How dare these rich white men compete to see who gets to space first while the rest of us wave at them from a burning, freezing earth? Fair questions. Except, like life, they’re not fair. Sir Richard Branson and charity fundraiser Omaze partnered with Space for Humanity, a nonprofit seeking to send citizen astronauts of diverse racial and economic backgrounds into space, to give away two seats on a Virgin Galactic commercial flight. Branson’s extensive list of donations supporting LGBTQ rights, climate conservation, and countless other causes ought to put any critic of his to shame. Elon Musk is giving away $100 million to entrepreneurs who can come up with a way to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lock it away permanently. This is on top of the nearly $150 million Musk has donated directly to charities this year alone supporting schools, coronavirus research, and food banks. Jeff Bezos, perhaps today’s most-hated billionaire, donated $10 billion to combat climate change when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO and launched Bezos Earth Fund. $100 million of that has already been donated to The Nature Conservancy where it will be used to fund reforestation in partnership with local Indigenous and Tribal communities. This is on top of the $100 million Bezos donated to Feeding America during the height of spring 2020’s pandemic and the $100 million he gave to independent charities combating homelessness. I found these stats with a five-minute Google search. Are Insta-activists just not looking to see if the billionaires they critique have already donated to the causes they say would be better alternatives to give to than space? Or are they willfully ignoring such donations with dismissals like, “Well, it’s through their own charity, so they’re still benefiting from it,” which, um, the donation receivers are, too? But sharing the charity work of space-bound billionaires isn’t actually why I started writing this article. What I really want to tell you about is this… We all benefit from rich people going to space. Critique the 1% and talk about wealth redistribution all you want, but please don’t overlook the countless benefits space exploration has given humanity. Many articles have been written about the everyday items that we have space exploration to thank for. I’m going to share with you ten of my personal favorites. 1. Do you have a smartphone? Odds are you’re reading this from your iPhone or Android, and odds are, you take selfies and videos with its built-in cameras. Odds are you have a social media account where you share your photos and vids, and odds are, said social media accounts wouldn’t exist without the plethora of photos enabled by camera phones. None of this would be possible without the space invention of Dr. Eric Fossum. In 1992, Dr. Fossum worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and invented the CMOS active pixel sensor (APS) camera-on-a-chip technology. He did this to make space photography more lightweight. Its development led to the smartphones, backup cameras, Go Pros, HD televisions, medical imaging machines, and more that we have today, forever changing industries far beyond space travel. 2. Are you or is anyone you love augmented by technology? Is there anyone in your life with a prosthetic limb? NASA’s artificial muscle systems that were originally designed for space vehicles led to today’s artificial limbs that are far more comfortable and utilitarian than their predecessors. Know a diabetic? If they use an insulin pump, it’s because it was developed for astronauts first. If you’ve ever used Invisalign braces, it’s because NASA needed a material to protect heat-seeking missile trackers, leading to the translucent polycrystalline alumina that eventually allowed invisible braces to be manufactured. Cochlear implants, cardiac implants, CT and MRI scans, LASIK eye laser surgery, and drugs and devices helping conditions from osteoporosis to heart transplants are all made possible thanks to space-first engineering. ravi-palwe-H0FHpRQVh1A-unsplash.jpg 3. Do you use Apple or Google Maps to navigate? It is because of—gasp!—an ego battle between rich white men that we have GPS navigation. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into space on October 4th, 1957, it lit a fire under the United States’s ass to track it utilizing Doppler effect technology. By 1960, TRANSIT was developed as the first satellite navigation system. Its objective? To launch nuclear missiles more precisely. But by 1996, this technology became operational for civilian use and now we don’t have to use paper maps from AAA anymore. We can simply say, “Hey Siri, take me home.” Photo by Maria Di Lorenzo 4. Do you drink filtered water? As space flights became longer in the 1970s, astronauts needed a way to have safe drinking water. NASA partnered with family-owned business Umpqua Research Company to develop the microbial check valve cartridge, which used iodine to purify the water supply on space shuttles instead of chlorine. That space technology now purifies municipal water systems in developing nations, bringing safe drinking water to thousands of people. Photo by Danny G 5. Do you sleep on memory foam? If, like me, you’ve gotten some of the best sleep ever on a memory foam mattress, pillow, or Tempur-Pedic topper, we have aeronautical engineer Charles Yost to thank for it. In the mid-1960s, NASA contracted Yost to create a seat padding that would increase astronauts’ odds of survival during landings and crashes. Yost invented what he called “temper foam,” an open-cell, polymeric memory foam that was energy-absorbing, pressure-contouring, and extremely pliable. It made its way from space shuttles to wheelchairs and into our bedrooms. 6. Do you wear sneakers? The spacesuits made in the Apollo Era were designed to cushion the soles of astronauts with shock-absorbing air hollows known as “blow rubber molding.” The insoles were so effective that a former NASA engineer named Frank Rudy pitched the idea for similar shock absorption in everyday athletic gear to a corporation called Nike. In 1978, the Nike Tailwind runners were born, which evolved into Nike Air, and tennis shoes have never been the same since. shutterstock_1734612494.jpg 7. Do you prefer your vacuum—and other tools—cordless? My cordless Dyson is all I use—seriously, worth all the money—and I have Black and Decker’s collaboration with NASA to thank for it. Although cordless tools predate space travel, it wasn’t until NASA told Black and Decker they needed a self-powered drill for moon exploration that wireless technology took a giant leap forward. The DustBuster vacuum followed the cordless drill and soon households everywhere had wire-free appliances and tools as a matter of course. Lonnie Johnson with an early prototype of his water gun. | Photo by Mike McGregor Lonnie Johnson with an early prototype of his water gun. | Photo by Mike McGregor 8. Do you remember the Super Soaker? Of course you do. Any American kid who grew up in the ’90s does, and if you didn’t grow up in the ’90s, there is much to feel sorry for, but your loss that is the Super Soaker is in the top three. NASA engineer Dr. Lonnie Johnson came up with the idea of a hand-pumped, air-pressured water gun when he was experimenting with ideas for refrigeration systems. He hooked a nozzle to his bathroom sink and, “I accidentally shot a stream of water across the bathroom,” he told Popular Mechanics, “and thought to myself, ‘this would make a great gun.’” don-delfin-almonte-KymTanwide0-unsplash.jpg 9. Do you wear glasses? Whether they’re sunglasses or prescription, did you know they’re 10 times more scratch-resistant than they’d be before 1983? This is because NASA developed scratch-resistant plastics to make the visors of astronauts’ helmets clearer. In 1983, NASA awarded Foster-Grant a license to replicate their scratch-resistance technology on everyday eyewear and other plastics that help keep us safe today. Bottle-feeding a baby formula | Creative Commons License 10. Do you know a baby who was formula-fed? Maybe their mother died or was herself starving of hunger. Maybe the baby struggled with latching issues, or was adopted by non-nursing parents. Maybe you were this baby. There is no telling how many lives have been saved because of baby formula, which we have NASA to thank for. In the 1980s, NASA explored the potential for algae to be used as a recycling agent for long-duration space travel. This led to the creation of algae-based vegetable oil which led to Formulade in 1994. Today, over 90% of baby formulas contain nutritional enrichment as the result of NASA-sponsored research. All of these transpired because humans with big egos wanted to go to space and were funded by billions of dollars. I know you can retort that these benefits to humanity were perhaps unwitting gifts, accidental byproducts of capitalism that shouldn’t be lauded as selfless acts of charity. Go for it, I’ll wait for your mentions to roll in telling me that donations from the uber-rich are tax write-offs and therefore self-benefiting. I’ll read your arguments about why billionaires should be taxed into non-billionaire-hood because of socio-democratic visions of economic equality (but let’s not call it Communism). I anticipate your comments about why no one should have a billion dollars when there are so many people, animals, and climates literally dying out there that wouldn’t be if fractions of said billions were given to help. But surely you know that it takes more than money to solve the horrors of the world. You know that people aren’t starving in Yemen because Bezos didn’t feel like donating money to feed them—you know Yemenis are being starved because Houthi rebels are obstructing aid in their conflict with Saudi Arabia, which is being armed by the United States with the steady sale of guns, aircraft, and bombs. You know that the lack of safe drinking water in rural communities and the extinction of forests and animals worldwide are due to problems far greater than money can solve, right? Problems like cultural differences, religious differences, and political differences, all of which have historical domino effects that will likely take centuries to reroute or reverse? Because you’re informed. You want to talk about unfairness and inequality? Blaming today’s wealthy for the millennia of conflict that have led to our world’s suffering isn’t fair. Demanding wealth redistribution won’t bring racial equality because belief is stronger than evidence. Ideas are mightier than dollars. Culture cannot be bought. Time, innovation, and individual responsibility are what lead societal shifts. Money and other resources are among the help facilitating the changes we so wish to see implemented, but ignoring the other factors at play by conveniently blaming billionaires and capitalism isn’t helpful. It’s short-sighted and ignorant. But what do I know? I’m just another 30-something, big city-dwelling, privilege-wielding American with access to Google in her pocket. So call me Ayn Rand, but I observe that the pursuit of selfishness often has benefits for all. Kind of like how loving yourself first helps you love others, or how taking care of your needs allows you to better care for someone else’s. Why shouldn’t this philosophy apply to wants, too? So what if some rich people want to go to space? Why shouldn’t they? History shows their pursuit of happiness will lead to improved lives for us all. That, in my awed observation, is to be celebrated. So thank you for Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson. Thank you for Space X, Elon Musk. Thank you for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. I can’t wait to see what new prosthetics, household items, safety improvements, and fun gadgets come our way because of your pursuits of wealth, innovation, and personal delight. My hat is off to you all and I am honored to be alive at the same time you are.

(Valerie, https://www.forbes.com/sites/valeriestimac/2021/07/11/virgin-galactics-historic-flight-wasnt-just-space-tourism/?sh=232e7816792f)

However, despite grumblings on social media about billionaires and their billion-dollar space hobbies, the Unity 22 mission was not solely focused on proving the commercial readiness of Virgin Galactic. Nor was it an excuse to finally send Branson to space after nearly two decades in business. One of the four specialists on the mission was onboard with the primary focus of conducting scientific research. Sirisha Bandla, an astronaut, who serves as vice president of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic was traveling with a special goal. She wanted to evaluate the ability to conduct human-tended research aboard Virgin Galactic flights. Bandla’s experiment was supported by NASA and was conducted on behalf of a research team at the University of Florida. Co-investigators Dr. Robert Ferl and Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul were in attendance for the mission and day’s festivities at Spaceport America. Her research looks into a plant’s gene expression at different stages of flight: 1 g during ascent, just before microgravity, and at the conclusion of microgravity. The research is similar to previous studies supported by NASA on other suborbital flights; this aimed to be the first human-tended (rather than passive) research as part of the Flight Opportunities program. (For those interested, the research has its own social media: @UF_Space_Plants) “My role was to demonstrate the capability,” Bandla shared after landing. “I actuated all three of the Kennedy fixation tubes that I went up to space to do.” From the research project’s perspective, the mission was a success and Drs. Ferl and Paul will have specimens and data to study. When asked about her suggestions to improve future experiments, Bandla shared that timing (of experiment protocols) is key. “I think it’s really important to actually look out the window, and I’d work with [future] researchers to ensure that they can conduct everything they need to do an also enjoy the experience.”

(Javier E., , 10-17)

After decades of space exploration and countless movies on the subject, why exactly does Mars continue to inspire such high levels of cultural and scientific fascination? Both the red planet and NASA are coasting on a wave of newfound popularity, taking center stage in big-budget Hollywood productions. Whether by coincidence or design, the favorable treatment of NASA by Tinseltown comes at a time when the space agency recently discovered evidence for flowing water on Mars, and last week openly declared colonizing the planet within the next 20 years "an achievable goal." And at least a few scientists think the survival of humanity may hinge on finding a new, hospitable planet to colonize. Just a few years ago, NASA critics and even some supporters were openly questioning whether the Mars science laboratory was worth its $2.5 billion price tag. Fast forward a few years, and the space agency is moving full speed toward establishing a human presence on the planet — a quest that looks less and less quixotic by the day. "Mars is obviously the logical next place to expand our capabilities and getting Earth crews there," Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin told CNBC in a recent interview. The famed astronaut and second man to walk on the moon's surface said sending humans to the planet would be an accomplishment "that's unparalleled in humanity." In a document outlining its rationale for sending humans to the far-flung planet — which lies 140 million miles from the Earth — NASA invoked the 1969 Apollo voyage, adding that unlike the moon, a mission to Mars would involve "going to stay." Mars' atmosphere is noted for its thin, carbon dioxide-filled air and ferocious dust storms that last for months. But given the right conditions, some think Mars could eventually be capable of sustaining humans. "We need to keep public interest stimulated and demonstrate to our leaders ... this is a most historical opportunity," Aldrin said, speaking from a conference in Israel. He added the human race was in a prime position to become "pilgrims in setting up permanence on Mars." In fact, the prospect of humans pioneering on Mars is gradually becoming more and more of a reality — and in some ways may be a necessity, a top-ranking NASA scientist told CNBC recently. "If the human species is going to survive, is it going to survive solely on Earth or not," asked Jim Greene, NASA's director of planetary science. "The appeal has been that as we explore, the next frontier beyond our atmosphere is Mars. That captures a lot of imagination in science, but also in science fiction." Yet Greene also underscored the inherent dangers of outer space, and the imperative to discover other systems capable of sustaining human life. He characterized Earth as existing in "a dangerous part of the solar system" that runs the outside risk of being hit by a "planet-killing" asteroid. Although it may sound like a plot from a science fiction movie, Greene explained that NASA has identified 876 out of more than 12,000 near-Earth objects that the agency is "really monitoring carefully." "In the last 500 million years of the Earth's history there have been five mass extinctions of species. The last one was the end of the dinosaurs," Greene said, referencing the event that scientists surmise brought about the extinction of dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. Within the known range of potential "planet killers" — asteroids that are at least 2 km in size — that the space agency monitors, "there are more than 150 that we're really watching carefully," Greene said. These "potentially hazardous asteroids" will come within 5 million miles of the planet over the next 100 years. “They cross our orbit frequently, and we know we're going to get hit again," Greene said. "It’s not a matter of if, but when." Within the last several decades, there have been minor brushes with asteroids, but none that have the potential to endanger human life on a large scale — at least not yet. Recently, NASA disclosed it was monitoring a 480-meter asteroid that could collide with the Earth sometime within the next four decades. British astronomers have been even more stark in speaking of the likelihood that a space rock of large enough size could create pandemonium around the world. Read More from CNBC: Forget Rockets, This 'Space Elevator' Could Loft You Into Orbit Asteroids "cross our orbit frequently, and we know we're going to get hit again," Greene said, underscoring that factors such as trajectory and conditions in space can determine whether asteroids hit the earth or pass it by. However, "it's not a matter of if, but when. This planet won't have a planet killer hit it for many hundreds of years, but it will happen," he added. The panoply of risks makes it important to seek out viable alternatives to ensure humanity's survival. Likening the idea of an extraterrestrial colony to a computer's external hard drive, Greene told CNBC that "If we're going to live as a species, we're going to have to 'back up' in other places ... and that place is Mars."

(CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI is an associate editor at Reason. , 7-12)

The idea of billionaires launching themselves into space on their own rockets has provoked apoplexy from some progressives, who view the spectacle as an ostentatious display of economic inequality that must be fixed with a wealth tax. Witness the response to Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson's successful journey to the edge of space yesterday on his company's Unity spaceship. The flight—which carried Branson and five other crew members more than 50 miles above the Earth's surface—represents an important milestone for the nascent private space tourism industry. But several commentators were only concerned with what the British billionaire's money could have funded instead. On Twitter, Mother Jones' Clara Jeffery declared it an "advertisement for a wealth tax": Journalist Teddy Schleifer said on CNN that the press should cool its jets when covering billionaires' space travels, saying that "it's impossible to talk about the billionaire's success without talking about the system that creates this in the first place." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) struck a familiar dyspeptic note: Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) asked, a few days before Branson's launch, whether that money could be spent on health care and education rather than "space travel fantasies." Khanna doesn't see such a stark trade-off with the government's own resources, given his co-sponsorship of the "Endless Frontiers Act," the initial version of which would have given $100 billion to the National Science Foundation to research such sci-fi ideas as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Surely that money could be spent on health care too? And Khanna is a member of Congress' "NASA Caucus," so he isn't objecting to spending money on space exploration per se. In any case, billionaire-backed space companies—which includes not just Branson's Virgin Galactic but also Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX—can help to eliminate wasteful space spending. That's certainly the case with SpaceX. Back in May 2020, the company's Crew Dragon vehicle ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time since 2011, when the accident-prone Space Shuttle was retired. To develop and launch Crew Dragon, SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. In comparison, the Constellation program run directly by NASA—which had a similar goal of developing a launch system for putting astronauts in low-earth orbit—was estimated to cost closer to $34.5 billion. SpaceX was "effectively doing what the Constellation Program was doing with about the same amount of money, total, that they were burning in a single month," NASA engineer Mike Horkachuck told ArsTechnica's Eric Berger. The billionaire class is going to space decades after government did it first, using surplus resources that should have gone to finance that government but didn't, and then using that dubious achievement as proof that they are more efficient than government. — Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) July 12, 2021 In time, the competition between these various private ventures will put yet more downward pressure on prices while spurring the development of new, better space technology—helping the government's space efforts as well as the private sector's. Even if you aren't convinced of the value of space travel, given that we've yet to reach a utopia free of poverty, disease, and war here on Earth, there's something to be said for a private space industry soaking up the legions of engineers and other aerospace professionals who might otherwise be spending their careers designing faster-flying missiles for traditional military contractors.