The latest issue of Mindjack, an online 'digital culture' magazine (on the web where you would expect it to be), has an article by Dr Adam L. Gruen, former historian for the International Space Station Program, about sending men to Mars.
Dr. Gruen believes there is no justification to send men to Mars - everything we want to do, we can do using machines. He believes that sending men to Mars and/or setting up a colony just to do it is simply not a valid reason to incur the massive expense to taxpayers. I certainly understand his sentiments and agree that there should be a concrete justification for government to spend tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds on anything.
However, just because government doesn't pay for it doesn't mean it won't happen; private firms and individuals will take up the slack. Most likely, they'll do it much faster and cheaper than government would have anyway. But wait - Dr Gruen doesn't like that either:
Well, argue the true believers, then just enable people to go themselves. All we have to do is design the equivalent of the space raft, and people will just kon-tiki themselves across the Earth-Mars divide and set up their own colony. Except, why should Earth governments allow that? Get rid of a billion malcontents? That makes even less sense than trying to colonize with the best and the brightest. Besides, what would that do to the Earth economy? Why lose all those brains and all that talent, not to mention labor?
It's amazing to me that Mindjack published an article with these sentiments. Why doesn't the United States restrict its citizens from leaving the country? For the same reason that the US would not restrict its citizens from leaving the planet, should that opportunity present itself - because we are free. The fascist concept of control represented in this paragraph is repulsive and incompatible with freedom.
Dr. Gruen makes a number of other related points in the article - for example, he states that the 'Save the Species' argument isn't valid because "why would we want such a species to spread out and ruin two planets?"
He fundamentally can't seem to grasp the idea that people might act, by choice, in different ways, leading to different outcomes in different locations. I guess this is because in Dr. Gruen's world, everyone is forced by the state to act in it's 'best interest'.
On the positive side, Dr Gruen has demonstrated exactly why Space exploration should most definitely not be left to international bureaucrats such as himself.
UPDATE: Adam Gruen emailed to say that he is neither a fascist nor an international bureaucrat, and that, while he agrees that government should in general stay out of people's business, the reality is that government can and will interfere with these types of activities. He views his article as an assessment of political reality in the modern 'Age of Paranoia'. Unfortunately, he could very well be correct.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at January 13, 2004 05:26 PM