could not get all the essay in one blog. Here is, hopefully, the rest of it!
Because of more evidence, current researchers disagree with Huxley. In 'The Third Wave,' which is futurist Alvin Toffler's sequel to his 'Future Shock' book, he reveals that Dr. Gerard O'Neill, a prominent Princeton University physicist, has been suggesting creation of space cities for decades. Dr. Brian O'Leary, a colleague of O'Neill, has been working on formulation of space mining techniques for the same time span. Both are considered by many scientific journals to be the world's best authorities on the subject. Toffler, O'Neill, and O'Leary conclude that colonization for the interlocking purposes of mining and permanent living is both possible and practical, because we have already paid for most of the necessary dreamland technology required through earlier space ventures. The recent failures in the space program were not due to lack of technology, they were due to cheap and off the shelf parts. The ill-fated Mars polar lander is a graphic illustration of this. If you were building a house, you would not necessarily take the cheapest bid, as NASA is often forced to do.
“Smithsonian” magazine discussed an example of the high tech state we are now in. Tiny asteroids usually less minerally rich than, and about the same size as a regular A-type have passed, and will continue to pass only a few million miles form earth. Even an asteroid of this lower quality and size could meet earth's iron demand for nearly a year, and the nickel consumption for two and one half decades, if it can be placed in an orbit around earth. It can. The most probable method of bringing this overgrown nugget to earth would be by using a mass driver. This is a machine that would attach itself to an asteroid, and turn the asteroid into a rocket by spewing useless, scooped up dirt out the back of the machine; thus creating action and reaction.
Dr. Gerard O'Neill himself had his own article in 'Omni' magazine some years ago, in which he reaffirmed and further supported his pro space beliefs. He also wrote about another species of mass driver. This one would toss material mined from the moon up to a catcher waiting in lunar orbit. Both types of mass drivers are defined as magnetic catapults. Yes, they will implement the limitless properties and powers of magnetism. Does this idea sound like a fantasy book? Experimental, workable, miniature, and exceptionally powerful mass driver models already exist!
Actually, the benefits of space have already trickled to earth through technological spin-offs like countless computer uses, vision operated wheel chairs, electronic brain-scanning devices, bio-chips, and the inexpensive, practical space blanket. Let's not let that trickle stop, or slow down. We must not, will not, allow that. 'Omni" magazine revealed that for every dollar put into the space program, we have received four to nine dollars in return. If you were an entrepreneur, would you open a business if the profit return were 400 to 900% or even higher? Many persons are now studying ways of turning space into an enterprise.
The words “business” and “enterprise” can produce negative thoughts such as the rape of Terran landscape, and needless eradication of the environment done in the name of progress by certain ultra exploitive firms for 'sacred' profit. In most jobs, employees are allowed fifteen-minute breaks. The earth has had the tough job of being the only supply store for all our resources, and it could use a fifteen hundred year break to repair itself, with needed help from humankind. Considering space's infinite benefits, we may be able to give the home world a permanent break.
Space research and mining could also promote peace instead of war through the external benefit of literally limitless raw materials, and the internal and soothing benefit of being aware of this limitlessness. The Orwellian vision in “1984” was “peace through war,” Ronald Reagan's policy was “peace through strength,” and the future policy may be peace through space.
The conclusion I have reached is that we must leave our ever shrinking planetary jail, cross the bridge of enlightenment extending from the tiny atom of earth to the indescribable vastness of space to obtain new resources, and it is imperative that we begin now. In his highly acclaimed book, “The High Road,” Ben Bova simplifies this idea into one sentence: "To survive on earth, we must expand into space.”
I believe that one day we will have virtually full employment because of help wanted ads for such jobs as space miners, spaceship pilots, asteroid prospecting technicians, mass driver co-pilots, zero gee interior designers, lunar architects, space mining engineers, astrodietitians, off world employment consultants, space medicine physicians, and space traffic controllers.
With the previously unimaginable threshold we now stand on, we will have a much larger share of history than even that venerable and foresighted futurist, Christopher Columbus, who was a good enough salesman to sell his then preposterous idea of a new trade route to India to Queen Isabella. How do the Ninta, Pinta, and Santa Maria compare to the Apollo rockets, space shuttles, and Voyager probes? In literature, a subplot, which parallels the main plot of the play, is termed a dramaturgical juxtaposition. Columbus's historic expeditions could be termed a dramaturgical juxtaposition when compared to our global manifest destiny of space. The idea of infinite wealth and full employment is truly something new. And we must realize and advertise that the purchase cost will be cheap.
Now for a clincher. The “Omni: The New Frontier" television show said that 'a single Voyager space probe costs less than eight days of the Vietnam War. What a paradox! Instead of investing money into a limitless pit called space, which would overfill its infiniteness with returns, money was thrown into a truly bottomless pit of no return called the Vietnam War. Because the war was impossible to reap any benefits from, it was in one area, larger than the universe itself. Don't tell me we can't afford space mining and colonization!
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