MarsBlog - Part 12

An Annoying Feature of Non-Fiction Books

Introductions or prefaces which are longer than the book’s chapters.

I’ve been doing a lot of background reading lately as part of writing the sequel to In the Shadow of Ares, and this seems to afflict every book I’ve picked up. I’m slowly getting over the notion that I ought to read them before reading the book proper.

Indian Migrations and Space Settlement

I’m doing some reading in Indian history as part of my research for the sequel to In the Shadow of Ares. In John Keay’s India: A History, I came across this interesting passage in his discussion of the ‘epic age’ of the Mahabharata and Ramayana:

As for the retreat into exile, the other central theme in both epics, this is taken to indicate the process by which clan society resolved its conflicts and at the same time encroached ever deeper into the subcontinent. Eventually population pressures on land and other resources would encourage greater social specialisation and he assertion of a central authority, two of the prerequisites of a state. But during the first centuries of the first millennium BC, these same pressures seem merely to have encouraged a traditional solution whereby clans segmented and split away to explore new territories. [emphasis added]

In the context of the chapter, he is taking a common thread of the two epics (the exile in the wilderness of their respective protagonists) as a hint as to how the ?r?an colonists gradually spread to the east and south from the Indus Valley.

What struck me as interesting is that much the same thing could happen with space settlement, especially given some TBD mode of practical interstellar travel.

In the near term (say, the next 100 years), if efforts to commercialize space access pan out and we begin building colonies in space, on the Moon, and on Mars, we will have established a new “wilderness” in the sense Keay describes elsewhere in the chapter: an untamed space where danger may lurk away from the safety of established civilization, but where the freedom exists to build afresh. The process of settlement and ongoing development will due to resource and labor shortages limit the degree to which a central authority can be asserted, providing a breathing space for innovation between the continuously expanding frontier and the expanding boundary of civilization trailing behind it. Political or social conflicts unresolvable in the civilized regions can be defused through one or another party choosing to escape to the freedom of this breathing space or the wilderness beyond, thereby pushing the frontier further outward — versus being kept bottled up in a finite arena where the intractability of the disagreements and the inescapable proximity of the conflicting parties can foster discontent, unrest, and violence lasting generations.

In practice, this might mean expanding to lunar colonies as near-Earth orbital habitats become too regulated or restricted by Earth governments or international treaties. On the Moon, disaffected individuals or groups frustrated with their circumstances in an existing settlement might decide to start their own settlements on or beyond the fringes of areas already settled or explored. As the lunar frontier ‘closes’ due to Keay’s “social specialization and assertion of central authority”, similarly frustrated settlers might decide to try their fortunes on the martian frontier, then among the asteroids, and so on through increasingly less-desirable properties.

It’s not like this hasn’t happened already, in our own history. The story of the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims, the Mormon migrations to Utah, and the “Go west, young man” ethos of the Old West were clearly manifestations of this same concept.

In the longer term, given some means of practical interstellar travel, this process of expansion-by-exile into the wilderness could happen on a vastly larger scale. If this turns out to be true, the ‘wilderness’ becomes effectively infinite.

Of course, this depends on a conservative view that we will continue to be recognizably human over such long time scales, as the development of new frontiers will likely result in an acceleration of technological innovation – including ‘transhuman’ technology like cognitive enhancements, targeted genetic improvements, or even ‘uploading’ into non-biological (or who knows, even non-physical) forms. What makes the expansion-by-exile concept useful for science fiction is that it can avoid the trap of having to tell a story from the difficult-to-conceive perspective of these transhumans by giving an author the choice among worlds on a spectrum of development — after all, given the Amish as a present-day example, it’s not difficult to imagine that some of those irreconcilable differences that might drive settlers into exile in the wilderness would concern the adoption of certain transhuman technologies, resulting in worlds (whether at the center or the periphery of civilization) whose inhabitants are still relatably human.

Promising Radiation-Exposure Treatments

This could certainly be useful in martian and lunar settlements, and perhaps moreso on the way to and from them – Researchers successfully treat previously lethal doses of radiation:

“The fact that this treatment can be administered up to a day after radiation exposure is so important,” said Millie Donlon, DARPA’s program manager for this effort. “This is because most of the existing treatments we have require they be administered within hours of exposure to potentially lethal radiation – something that might not always be possible in the confusion that would likely follow such an exposure event.”

The treatment – a combination of two readily-available and stockpileable pharmaceuticals – increases in mice the survival rate from a normally lethal dose to 80%, and there are indications it could be even more effective in humans. Note that it appears to treat only the immediate effects (“radiation sickness”) and there’s no mention of whether it reduces rates of long-term medical problems stemming from the exposure, such as cancers. Of course, one mustn’t be too greedy — I’m sure someone exposed to a lethal dose of radiation would consider the potential for cancer later in life an okay tradeoff to not dying a rapid and horrible death.

What might come of this discovery, if it does work as indicated?

Long-term space activities outside LEO (including transportation to and from deep space destinations) might be perceived as less risky if solar flares or other high-exposure events are less of a problem;
Spacecraft, stations, and surface facilities could be made simpler and lighter – if it’s accurate to consider this treatment as effectively raising the lethal dose (and again ignoring the long-term consequences in favor of short-term survival), structural countermeasures for extreme events don’t need to block quite as much radiation, and lighter or larger “storm cellars” become possible;
Nuclear power accidents become less hysteria-inducing (but then so might nuclear weapons use – c.f. Michael F. Flynn’s The Washer at the Ford)

Interesting.

Apparently, Resveratrol also has some anti-rad properties.

USSR, Twenty Years Later

Good riddance.

Unfortunately, it was late in coming, and in the form of fifth-column movements, former client-state kleptocracies in the third world, the mainstreaming of thinly-disguised Marxist ideas, a defense arrangement which has infantilized Europe, etc., we are still living with the USSR’s ugly and destructive legacy.

On the bright side, at least NASA is finally starting to shake off the institutional structure and outlook it developed as a result of the early space race with the now-defunct USSR (ironically, while temporarily relying on USSR-heritage equipment).

Trivially, I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t find the news video of Yeltsin and Gorbachev signing the final documents of dissolution late on December 31st just before the flags were changed over the Kremlin — that’s my main memory of the event, highlighting just how surprisingly uneventful the end really was. (My second memory was of how ironic it was that I completed my poli-sci degree less than two weeks before…the end of the USSR pretty much rendered a lot of the acquired knowledge no longer relevant.)

This Year, Give Them Mars for Christmas

Know someone who owns (or will be getting) an e-reader? Send them a copy of In the Shadow of Ares as a gift!

Over at AresProject.com, I explain how to do it via both Amazon and Barnes & Noble — it’s as easy as can be.

Over the regolith and through the catenas to Grandmother's house we go...

Hawaii Five-O Insults Pearl Harbor Survivors

This is sad. But predictable with Hollywood, unfortunately – FIVE-O CREW DISGRACEFUL TO WWII PEARL HARBOR SURVIVORS:

The TGGF program had brought 24 red roses to place at the gravesites on the opposite side of the Punchbowl. The program crew actually had one of their men wearing a backpack and earplug walk through – infiltrate – our rose-laying ceremony hushing everyone.

It was a disgrace.

He ruined the somber mood and my blood was now beyond boiling. Thankfully most of our vets were so focused on placing their roses they didn’t catch what was going on. This moron laughed as he communicated with some other crewmember on the other side of the cemetery via his cell phone headset. About this time, a caterer walked over grass and flat headstones, through our vets gathering, with a plate of blackberries and salmon for the actors to snack on.

Remember this the next time you hear some actor or director or other worthless but self-important celebrity whining about how they or their personal cause celebre doesn’t get the respect they think is due.

SpaceX Gets Approval for ISS Flight

Good news – NASA clears SpaceX for trial run to space station:

To encourage commercial cargo runs, NASA has hired SpaceX and a second company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 countries, which orbits about 240 miles above Earth.

A successful test flight by SpaceX — as well as a similar run by Orbital scheduled for next year — would begin restoring U.S. access to the station, which is expected to remain operational until at least 2020.

As others have pointed out, space policy is the one area where the Obama administration seems to be getting things more or less right – and that’s all the more amazing for it involving commercial endeavors. (It’s early, of course – if and when these commercial startups hit their stride, that will be when the federal government starts taxing and regulating them out of business like every other successful industry.)

Another Dead Russian Mars Probe

Maybe the Russians should just cut their losses and focus on another planet or the Moon – ESA Abandons Effort To Contact Russia’s Stranded Mars Probe:

NASA had also lent its tracking assets to the Phobos-Grunt salvage effort but was unable to pick up any signals from the spacecraft, which was launched Nov. 8 on a mission intended to land on the martian moon Phobos and return samples to Earth. The spacecraft also carries a small Chinese satellite intended for Mars orbit.

“The mission is no longer feasible,” said Manfred Warhaut, head of operations at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. In a conference call with journalists, Warhaut and ESOC operations engineer Wolfgang Hell, who had been in regular contact with Lavochkin, said Russia is unlikely to give up on Phobos-Grunt.

“We are not in a position to continue, but they definitely will not give up,” Warhaut said. “They will continue to try to send thruster commands” to get Phobos-Grunt’s engines to function.

It seems the more ambitious their Mars missions, the more quickly they fail. Which is too bad – the more Mars missions, the better, but also because the Phobos sample return on this mission would have been really interesting.

Vielleicht…

…all those German classes weren’t wasted after all – The Rise of the Fifth Reich? (Did I miss the fourth one?)

Corn’s sensitivity to the possibility that actions Americans do not anticipate based on the very different priorities of policy makers in other parts of the world could radically reshape the global picture animates his article on Germany. He begins provocatively:

“If Clausewitz is right that “war is the continuation of policy by other means”, then Germany is again at war with Europe, at least in the sense that German policy is trying to achieve in Europe the characteristic objectives of war: the redrawing of international boundaries and the subjugation of foreign peoples….

Germany’s goal?

A constitutionalization of the EU treaties, which would irreversibly institutionalize the current “correlation of forces,” and allow German hegemony in the 27-member European Union to approximate Prussian hegemony in the 27-member Bismarckian Reich.

This is much more exciting than the usual bland pap about European politics one reads in the US, and Corn’s analysis is deeply grounded in what serious people are thinking and writing in Paris, London and Berlin.

Exciting indeed, but I’m not sure if that comment at the end about “serious people” is meant to be irony or not…

As Mead notes, Corn may just be getting over-excited, but it’s still worth considering as a thought experiment. And in my case, it’s interesting as fodder for a future history — if a resurgent Germany dominated the EU like the Zollverein and succeeded in bringing a demographically cratering Russia to heel in exchange for help shoring up its eastern border defenses, etc., what would that world look like in fiction?

Nuclear Propulsion Research Revival?

One can only hope – Marshall Eyes In-Space Nuclear Propulsion:

During the Constellation years, Marshall worked with the Department of Energy on nuclear-power technology that might one day power a lunar outpost. While Los Alamos and other national labs handled the radioactive material, NASA experts here used heating elements to simulate nuclear fuel and concentrated on the power systems that would generate electricity on the Moon.

That work continues, but it has expanded to encompass another technology goal under the new Obama policy: advanced in-space propulsion. In a nondescript high-bay building, the power-plant team has installed a nuclear-thermal rocket environmental simulator, which flows gaseous hydrogen over heating elements that mimic different nuclear-fuel configurations. The idea is to test the way different materials react with the hydrogen at high temperature and pressure.

Unfortunately, given the mindless apocalyptic hysteria that greets any use of nuclear materials in space nowadays (such as fretting about the MSL rover being a potential “Fukushima in space”…no, really…someone actually wrote that…), it probably won’t be possible to build and use in-space nuclear propulsion until it can actually be done in-space.

I haven’t looked into the abundance of uranium on the moon, but I’m guessing that even if it were as abundant and accessable there as on Earth it would be a while before there is a suitable industrial base to support this use…

(Note that the accompanying photo is not of Marshall but of Michoud, which to my knowledge has no connection to nuclear propulsion programs.)

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