Come Fly With Me

So just how old and busted was the ice-damaged Space Shuttle Columbia? In this hi-res NASA shot, it’s looking more crappy and worn out than a VW Campervan from the 60s. As Greg Easterbrooke points out, the Shuttle is not about space exploration (better done through robots, telepresence, and self-replicating machine assemblers) but more about old-fashioned pork-barrel politics with the occasional PR-friendly conversion-via-immolation of a few button-pushing human guinea pigs into exploring heroes using high-tech, explosive, US-flag-emblazoned flying wicker man pyres. People knew decades ago that the Shuttle program was a lethal, tragic bust but these kinds of bureacratic dogs can just bumble along for ever, chewing up money and people while achieving nothing of consequence. What we need are rovers-with-webcams on the moon, and autonomous mechanical bugs assembling long, ugly solar-powered electromagnetic linear accelerators to slingshot refined ores and extracted ice into L5 orbits. Give it 50 years or so and some biomechanical hybrid successors, it becomes feasible to talk about expanding into space. The current program reminds me of the Vikings’ abortive attempts to colonize North America. They were defeated by their level of technology and their lack of preparation. The later European invaders were more methodical. The Portugeuese and Spanish spent decades mapping the trade winds so that they could route quickly in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. They conquered the Canary Islands before moving further out in to the isolated Atlantic and Caribbean islands, seeding them with pigs and other European biota. They knew that someday, some Europeans would return to these islands and be able to harvest familair protein. And using these springboards, they succeeded where the Vikings failed. It also reminds me of Julius Caesar’s abortive invasion of Britain: he went there and won some initial battles, but the cost of staying was too high and, conscious of budgetary and political restraints, Rome withdrew for a century while it prepared. Then when Rome went back to Britain it was better prepared. Sometimes you just have to know when to quit.