Beyond Earth (ATWG) Preface by Bob Krone

From The Space Library

PREFACE

This book is about science, not science fiction.

It is about space science as a means to achieve the lofty goals of new knowledge, economic benefit, and peace. And it is about space as a destination and an adventure that can, by means of the striving for it and through the outcomes that may be achieved in reaching it, bring multifold benefits to all of humanity.

It's been almost fifty years since the dawn of the space age, as marked by the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Now, in 2006, we can realistically anticipate that humans will one day live and work in space, and as we contemplate that day we know well that we, too, may have a part to play in the planning and preparation required to accomplish this remarkable vision. This book is the joint effort of more than forty co-authors, who contributed their experiences, insights, and ideas for the benefit of people all around the world who are interested in a peaceful future for humans in space.

Many of the co-authors spent their entire careers as participants in the global space community, and together they have a combined total of roughly one thousand person-years of experience in space science. They worked on every major space program this country has ever mounted, and most of the minor ones as well. Readers will find brief descriptions of the authors following each chapter.

These are accomplished individuals with expertise based not only on theory, but on hard-won experience. They are extraordinary individuals who come from Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America. They have felt the elation of successful launches, successful missions, and successful splashdowns; and they have suffered the devastation of failure, have felt the anguish of watching colleagues die in pursuit of knowledge and adventure beyond Earth. They have labored in the vast NASA bureaucracy, and in small start-up companies, and today they continue to work on space; they design, manage, engineer, teach, write, advocate, negotiate ... within the halls of NASA, in skunkworks searching for the next breakthrough, and in universities educating future leaders of the ongoing space movement.

No matter where in space science they work, they have another thing in common, for they certainly agree that it is the human destiny as well as our responsibility to go to space, and it is, of course, precisely because we agree about the importance of space that we have worked together to write this book. We are also a diverse and opinionated group, quite capable of deep disagreement, and quite willing to engage in heartfelt discussion on many issues, as you will see in these pages.

Thus, among the 36 chapters of this book you will find a wide variety of conceptual, philosophical, and technical viewpoints. Some chapters are highly personal, exploring the psychological dimensions of space, while others deal with engineering topics, assessing the technical merits of various alternative approaches and issues. Still others concern governance, management, biology, physiology, law, strategy, vision, beliefs, attitudes, and challenges that we face as we consider our future in space.

So how, you may well ask, did these people come together? The answer is that all the authors are participants in an extraordinary, and perhaps unique organization called ATWG, the Aerospace Technology Working Group. ATWG was established in 1990 as forum for collaboration among NASA, its contractors, and academia to support effective communication and the development of new ideas and technologies. It's bi-annual meetings have been held around the country, always under the leadership of its founding director, Dr. Ken Cox. Ken tells the full story in Chapter One, so suffice it to say for our purposes in this Preface that after ten years under the NASA banner, ATWG moved outside the agency to become an independent organization. Its bi-annual meetings have continued without interruption, involving leading space experts in compelling presentations and rich dialog about every conceivable aspect of space science.

And in this rich milieu of concepts and discoveries, it gradually became obvious that in light of the ongoing turmoil at NASA, which you will also read about in these pages, there was a compelling need for a new vision of the future of humans in space to be written, one that integrated the visionary, managerial, philosophical, and technical perspectives.

And so we have taken it upon ourselves to write this book, and we offer it as a testament to our shared commitment that this is absolutely something which humanity must do, and which humanity certainly can do, for a myriad of reasons and via a variety of means which are the very subjects of the chapters that follow.

Humans will go permanently to space not only for adventure or for opportunity, but primarily for the betterment of all humankind; research conducted in recent decades shows conclusively that we can anticipate tremendous benefits when we set about to face the many challenges, exploit the vast resources, and come to understand the profound capabilities that are uniquely to be found in space.

We began this adventure in authorship with three assumptions that have not been changed by the year of intellectual exchanges that has gone into the preparation of this book.

First, the urge for flight is part of our human nature. Perhaps it is in our genes, but from wherever it originates, it is undoubtedly our need to explore and our unquenchable curiosity about the universe that drives us to space.

Second, even if these urges were ignored, the continual improvement of the quality of life for the human race on Earth, and perhaps even our ultimate survival, may hinge on the success of human exploration and habitation of space.

And third, we are all aware that this is a critical time for the space movement, and for all of us. Human society around the world is in turmoil, and the prospects for our future are frightening. But we remain optimistic that we will overcome these challenges, and we see clearly that our generation can use the opportunity presented by our outward expansion into the solar system to design a rewarding and exciting future for human collaboration, and to capitalize on the lessons learned from the venture into space to redirect human history on Earth toward peace and cooperation.

And as we do so, even the significant steps that we've taken since the dawn of the space age in 1957, including getting into orbit, going to the Moon, and building space stations, will in retrospect seem to be tiny ones compared to what lies ahead. Migrating into space will test us beyond anything we have previously accomplished, as we are destined to face challenges both fantastically breathtaking and supremely dangerous.

Beyond Earth: The Future of Humans in Space describes a vision that is accessible to anyone interested in humankind's great space adventure, the human settlement of the Solar System. Scholars, scientists, engineers, managers, astronauts, artists, authors, and university professors engage with the important questions that shape our unique circumstance: Why does space matter to us? What can we use it for? How can we get there efficiently? What will ordinary life be like in space? What will our homes be like on the Moon? On Mars? In orbit? Will we play? Will we love? It also documents, in Appendix A, a considerable list of research questions and hypotheses about the still unknown or partially known aspects of the future of humans in space.

Space offers many unique opportunities for us to solve many of the problems we face on Earth. A hundred years of effort enabled us to solve the problems of flight in our atmosphere, and for fifty years that urge, combined with our curiosity about the universe, has propelled us into space. Now, as the 21st Century begins, we know with certainty that human exploration of, and migration to, Earth's moon and our Solar System must occur.

In the end, there are two fundamental reasons why now is the time for the serious planning for an off-Earth, space faring civilization. Both are rooted in the compelling need for survival:

Benefits for Earth from space are significant - improvements for Earth's biosphere, energy appetite, health sciences, industries, and limited resources. These will have revolutionary societal, political, and physical impacts.

Threats to humanity emanate from countless natural causes, Earth-based and space-based, or from human-produced phenomena such as population growth and pollution; weapons for mass-killings; hurricanes and climate change; disease pandemics; gamma-ray bursts; asteroid-Earth collisions; Earthquakes and volcanoes. Many of these can be avoided, reduced in impact, or completely eliminated by the exploitation of the new capabilities that our journeys into space will require us to generate.

This is the conviction of those who contributed to this book, a conviction that comes from the basic conclusion that space challenges, resources, and environments are essential for the improvement of the quality of life for humans on the Earth; and perhaps even for the ultimate survival of our human race.

Bob Krone, Langdon Morris, and Kenneth Cox, Editors

1 April 2006

Please note: The views, ideas, and opinions expressed in these chapters are those of the individual authors only, and are not necessarily official positions of the organizations for which they work.

Extracted from the book Beyond Earth - The Future of Humans in Space edited by Bob Krone ©2006 Apogee Books ISBN 978-1-894959-41-4

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