by Ed Finn
That is utopia … especially for primitives and scientists, which is to say everybody.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
This project was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant Number NNX15AI31G.
The stories and essays in this report reflect the views of its authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the United States Government.
Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures.
Copyright © 2017 Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich
The copyrights for all illustrations, including the cover image, are owned by Maciej Rebisz.
The copyrights for individual short stories and essays are owned by their respective authors, as follows:
“Editors’ Introduction: The Flag and the Garden” by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich. Copyright © Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich.
“Human Exploration of Mars: Fact from Fiction?” by Jim Bell. Copyright © 2017 Jim Bell.
“Vanguard 2.0” by Carter Scholz. Copyright © 2017 Carter Scholz.
“Reflections on the ‘Dual Uses’ of Space Innovation” by G. Pascal Zachary. Copyright © 2017 G. Pascal Zachary.
“Mozart on the Kalahari” by Steven Barnes. Copyright © 2017 Steven Barnes.
“Past Empires and the Future of Colonization in Low Earth Orbit” by William K. Storey. Copyright © 2017 William K. Storey
“Expanding Our Solution Space: How We Can Build an Inclusive Future” by Deji Bryce Olukotun. Copyright © 2017 Deji Bryce Olukotun.
“The Baker of Mars” by Karl Schroeder. Copyright © 2017 Karl Schroeder.
“Exploration Fact and Exploration Fiction” by Lawrence Dritsas. Copyright © 2017 Lawrence Dritsas.
“Death on Mars” by Madeline Ashby. Copyright © 2017 Madeline Malan.
“Life on Mars?” by Steve Ruff. Copyright © 2017 Steve Ruff.
“The Use of Things” by Ramez Naam. Copyright © 2017 Ramez Naam.
“Toward Asteroid Exploration” by Roland Lehoucq. Copyright © 2017 Roland Lehoucq.
“Night Shift” by Eileen Gunn. Copyright © 2017 Eileen Gunn.
“Rethinking Risk” by Andrew Maynard. Copyright © 2017 Andrew Maynard.
“Shikasta” by Vandana Singh. Copyright © 2017 Vandana Singh.
“The New Science of Astrobiology” by Sara Imari Walker. Copyright © 2017 Sara Imari Walker.
“Negotiating the Values of Space Exploration” by Emma Frow. Copyright © 2017 Emma Frow.
“The Luxury Problem: Space Exploration in the ‘Emergency Century’” by Kim Stanley Robinson and Jim Bell. Copyright © 2017 Kim Stanley Robinson and Jim Bell.
“The Economics of Space” by Clark A. Miller. Copyright © 2017 Clark Miller.
“High Hedonistic and Low Fatalistic” by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton. Copyright © 2017 Linda T. Elkins-Tanton.
ISBN 978-0-9995902-1-8
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Credits
Editors
Ed Finn
Joey Eschrich
Guest Editor
Juliet Ulman, http://papertyger.net
Project Leaders
Ed Finn
Ruth Wylie
Jim Bell
Clark A. Miller
Illustrations
Maciej Rebisz, http://maciejrebisz.com
Ebook Design
Emily Buckell, [email protected]
Cover, PDF, and Print Design
Mark Dudlik, http://markdudlik.com
Research Assistants
Alissa Haddaji
Mateo Pimentel
Special Thanks
To Kim Stanley Robinson, for allowing us to use excerpts from his magisterial novel Red Mars throughout this volume, and for making himself available for a fascinating and thought-provoking interview.
Table of Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Credits
A Note on the Epigraphs
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introduction: The Flag and the Garden, by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich
Human Exploration of Mars: Fact from Fiction? by Jim Bell
Section I: Low Earth Orbit
Vanguard 2.0, by Carter Scholz
Reflections on the “Dual Uses” of Space Innovation, by G. Pascal Zachary
Mozart on the Kalahari, by Steven Barnes
Past Empires and the Future of Colonization in Low Earth Orbit, by William K. Storey
Expanding Our Solution Space: How We Can Build an Inclusive Future, by Deji Bryce Olukotun
Section II: Mars
The Baker of Mars, by Karl Schroeder
Exploration Fact and Exploration Fiction, by Lawrence Dritsas
Death on Mars, by Madeline Ashby
Life on Mars? by Steve Ruff
Section III: Asteroids
The Use of Things, by Ramez Naam
Toward Asteroid Exploration, by Roland Lehoucq
Night Shift, by Eileen Gunn
Rethinking Risk, by Andrew D. Maynard
Section IV: Exoplanets
Shikasta, by Vandana Singh
The New Science of Astrobiology, by Sara Imari Walker
Negotiating the Values of Space Exploration, by Emma Frow
Section V: Concluding Thoughts
The Luxury Problem: Space Exploration in the “Emergency Century,” Kim Stanley Robinson, in conversation with Jim Bell
The Practical Economics of Space, by Clark A. Miller
High Hedonistic and Low Fatalistic, by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
About the Contributors
Bibliography
A Note on the Epigraphs
We are pleased to pay homage to Kim Stanley Robinson’s visionary 1992 novel Red Mars on its 25th anniversary. Throughout this volume, at the beginning of each section, you will encounter a brief excerpt from Red Mars, the first in Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, which traces the process of terraforming the Red Planet over 200 years. Robinson’s resolutely utopian, deeply researched stories about human space exploration and settlement are animated by compelling characters and thought-provoking conflicts over values and politics. They also contain moments of arresting beauty and human connection. For all these reasons, Robinson’s visions of the future remain a major source of inspiration for the stories and essays in this volume. Beyond that, they have helped to shape our broader cultural imaginary for human endeavors in space, both in science fiction and technical communities. We are proud to have Red Mars serve as a frame for our work here, and we hope that our readers will seek out Robinson’s entire oeuvre, which encompasses a number of human journeys into space.
An interview with Robinson and Jim Bell appears at the end of this collection, in the “Concluding Thoughts” section.
Acknowledgments
The stories in this volume are not predictions. None of us know how space exploration, space technologies, and the commercialization of space will play out. Engineers and leaders at NASA and in companies like SpaceX may have clear ideas of what’s possible, and what’s desirable from their standpoint, but not even they know how these technologies will play out in practice, as real people in real organizations put them to work to create a future in space for all of us. In that sense, William K. Storey is exactly right in his essay. If we
read these stories critically, we ultimately probably learn far more about ourselves, our societies, and our anxieties today, than we do about how the future of humans and robots in space will play out.
In the end, though, we are less interested in a critical deconstruction of how the stories were written and why they took the exact form that they did. We are much more interested in whether they stimulate creative, interesting, and relevant thoughts and conversations among their readers. And we are interested in whether those thoughts and conversations can help inform NASA and commercial space companies, other national space agencies, Congress, the people of the United States, and the people of the world, as we work our collective ways toward the creation of new possibilities and new worlds. This book is not the end of the experiment. It is the beginning.
Ed Finn:
I am deeply grateful to the many people who made this experiment possible. The thread begins with Mason Peck, who first invited us to propose a workshop on the relationship between popular imagination and technical possibilities. That incredibly generative gathering—too heavily populated with wonderful colleagues to list them all here—inspired this project as well as related work on the feedback loop between science and science fiction. The story continues with our colleagues at NASA, Alexander MacDonald, Zachary Pirtle, and Jacob Keaton, who originally supported our proposal for narrative space futures, as well as Ashley Edwards, who helped us shepherd this book out into the world.
As the work got underway a small army of collaborators from ASU and beyond took a shoulder to this wheel. Clark Miller, Jim Bell, and Ruth Wylie have been wonderful collaborators and co-investigators for this effort. Alissa Haddaji and Mateo Pimentel have bookended the project as graduate research assistants and, respectively, fomented and documented our strange collaborations. Bob Beard, Cody Staats, and the whole team at the Center for Science and the Imagination helped orchestrate our on-site workshop and engage Maciej Rebisz, who deserves his own thank-you for creating the stunning illustrations that accompany these stories. Juliet Ulman played a vital role in editing the manuscript as we moved into the final stretch of the project. Beyond all of these, Joey Eschrich deserves an editorial medal of valor for his work managing, editing, coordinating, and improving this collection in every way imaginable.
Jim Bell:
I would like to thank Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn for significant editorial assistance on an earlier draft of my contribution, and in general would like to thank all of the participants in the Space Futures project for an inspiring and invigorating experience. In particular, interviews and discussions with Alissa Haddaji, Kim Stanley Robinson, Karl Schroeder, and Madeline Ashby have been insightful and darned fun. Let’s do it again!
Joey Eschrich:
I would like to thank all of the contributors to this project for their brilliance, patience, rigorous thinking, good humor, and receptiveness to editorial meddling. I became fascinated by space as a bookish kid with a star atlas (but alas, no telescope) in New England. After that I took a long hiatus away from the cosmos, and it’s been thrilling to look up and out again. I owe that opportunity to the generosity and trust of Ed Finn, Ruth Wylie, Jim Bell, Clark Miller, and all of our collaborators and supporters at NASA.
I’d also like to thank Bob Beard, Cody Staats, Nina Miller, Peter Nagy and the rest of the Center for Science and the Imagination team for their hard work and intellectual companionship, and Juliet Ulman for grappling with a strange and occasionally imposing editorial project at a late stage of the game—and for teaching me some new editorial tricks and habits of mind. Thanks to Kathleen Pigg for providing timely botanical expertise for Steven Barnes’s story. Finally, I’d like to thank my perspicacious wife Jennifer Apple for an endless barrage of incisive comments, helpful suggestions, and reasons to be inspired.
Clark A. Miller:
This has been an amazing project to work on. A decade ago, my colleague Ira Bennett and I argued that science fiction stories had the potential to be a kind of technology assessment for the rest of us.[1] Science fiction has always played this role, in part. Stories such as Frankenstein, Brave New World, and 1984 have become important sources of symbol and imagery in modern societies, especially around the power of technology to shape humanity’s future. Ira and I meant something somewhat different, however. For us, the literary forms of science fiction, which force writers to put new technologies into the lives and stories of people, provide a potential counter to some of the more lamentable characteristics of traditional technology assessment. Rather than dry, technical assessments that divorce the rational evaluation of technology from consideration of the social contexts in which it is applied, science fiction errs in the opposite direction. The stories draw readers in; engage their passions; explore technologies from the perspectives of those who live with, use, and encounter them amidst their lives. Fiction invites readers to participate in a rich, lively world, and draw their own judgments about what a new technology might mean.
For Ira and I, then, science fiction stories could be a tool through which people who are not experts in a specific technology could:
• Learn about that technology, how it works, how it might plausibly develop in the future, and how it might intersect with other technologies.
• Explore its potential intersections with diverse human values and experiences, ways of living and working, cultures, and/or patterns of social and economic activity.
• Anticipate what it might mean for themselves, their families and communities, or even their countries.
• Discuss with others how the technology should be developed, used, and/or regulated responsibly, either today or in the future.
We all owe a debt of thanks for the opportunity to try these ideas out to Ed Finn, the director of the Center for Science and Imagination at Arizona State University, to NASA, and to the writers who helped us out. I must say, I’m hopeful. I am not an expert in space. Yet, in reading these stories, I explored new territory and found my vision of our future among the stars expanded. I learned how people participating in the commercial space arena think space technologies might develop in the future and interact with other innovations like synthetic biology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies. I considered how a diverse array of different kinds of people, living in different kinds of circumstances, might think about, engage, get excited about, use, and even reject different kinds of space technologies. I thought about my son—who is eight, who is constantly making things with whatever materials are lying around the house, and who was deeply engaged by the cartoons and videos NASA created for its Curiosity mission—and what the future of commercial space activities might mean for his life and his future. And now I am writing to you about what I learned and how we might collectively try to make sense of that future.
[1] Clark A. Miller and Ira Bennett, “Thinking Longer Term about Technology: Is There Value in Science Fiction Inspired Approaches to Constructing Futures?” Science and Public Policy 35, no. 8 (2008). [back]
Editors’ Introduction: The Flag and the Garden
by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich
Why should we go to space? Our answers to this question have changed significantly over the past 70 years as the people, the methods, and the funding for space exploration continue to change. Many Americans enraptured by the “flags and footsteps” pride of the Apollo landings assumed that we would soon be doing the same on Mars—and yet generations of leaders have failed to galvanize that kind of commitment and excitement, to recapture the spirit of John F. Kennedy’s famous line: we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Over the past two decades, private space companies have joined their public counterparts and offered new rationales for their work. Initially dismissed as the hobbies of billionaires, several of these enterprises have had a real impact on the logistics and possibilities of space exploration, and more importantly, they have offered new answers to the question of why. Elon Musk’s claim th
at he wants to retire on Mars puts space into a very different context: a personal and commercial one, where the notion of planting flags gets replaced by planting gardens. Musk plans to retire on Mars not because he thinks he should, but because he thinks he can.
The idea of space as a canvas for human possibility has proven compelling to those in the nascent commercial space industry, but the vision has not galvanized broad public engagement in the same ways as the iconic era of Sputnik and the Apollo missions. Creating a new collective understanding, a fresh answer to the question of why should we go, is more than just a public engagement project. Until enough people buy into a public and private narrative of space, commerce can only take place in a very limited way. Insurance companies are less likely to underwrite complex, high-risk ventures in space. Legislators and regulators are less likely to focus on or value the potential benefits to society of public-private space exploration. Investors and individuals are less likely to support space ventures with their dollars and their attention.