Emz-the-geographically-variable

This evening I attended a panel discussion on the subject of entrepreneurship in the space industry, among the panel of which were some CEOs of the current big names in international private space enterprises, and one of ISU’s founders, of whom I have already developed a positive opinion of from previous encounters.  After some intro speeches and questions, the floor was opened to the audience.

(I prefaced my question with a statement that I too am enthusiastic about current changes in the space industry that will lead to further and faster development, and would take the chance of going into space if I had a lot more money to avoid sounding like a tree hugger, though I do have a certain affection for trees, and also rocks).

Previous space endeavours thus far have for the most part somewhat balanced their environmental costs with benefits for humanity and for our environment (remote earth monitoring, navigation, forecasting, aiding development of poor countries, disaster relief, spin-off technologies, etc.). However, panel members had mentioned the goal of making space flight affordable, and had drawn parallels to commercial aviation. If even a fraction of the number of people who fly commercially decided to fly into space, that would be a whole lot more stuff being combusted in the high atmosphere. I find it hard to imagine that several thousand enormous rockets going off a day would be a good thing environmentally, and could conceivably be an extremely bad thing, if someone decides to use some kind of propellant that interacts in some unforeseen way with our delicate and vital atmosphere or even if the volume of new particulate matter in the upper reaches increases cloud formation and alters local climate (who knows?)… and for what?  We run this risk so rich people can amuse themselves? My question was – are we doing a good and responsible thing stimulating this forecasted explosion of space usage for these kinds of commercial purposes?

The ISU founder answered that he believed space travel was humanity’s only hope of survival and of preserving the Earth, that the temporary damage is inconsequential as compared with other things we are doing down here on Earth, and it worth the benefit of humans expanding off the Earth. He is a visionary type and seems to have a wider perspective than most, and from previous presentations I believe he means it.
One of the purebred businessmen also answered, with one sentence that was something like “I believe commercial space travel will be the single best environmental policy”. Difficult to define, but I found that quick answer somewhat disturbing (which is why I am still thinking about this instead of sleeping). This answer was a little bit too packaged-to-pacify-crazy-tree-huggers. More likely for this type of individual, space is an interesting and inspiring way to make money, and environmental concerns guide decisions only when absolutely necessary (as legislated, or demanded by customers).

The mass commercialization of space is in some ways the same, and some ways different to many inventions like the automobile and the aeroplane. It is the same in that they significantly changed our lives. Also, each machine is not a big deal environmentally, but a lot of them definitely is. The difference now with rockets is that we should know better since we have some related history to examine, and plenty of technology, brains, and expertise to analyze and mitigate such a problem.

But how can groups of highly intelligent, educated people who are our industry leaders and international policy makers guiding our future in this department not feel a bit uncomfortable putting such a risky experiment purely in the hands of the free market? There is no excuse that fear-mongering tree-huggers are the cause of such feelings - the world is increasingly becoming aware of the fragility of our environment and of our impact on it (though a bit slowly!).

There is no conclusion to this line of thought. Commercialization of space will happen. It will not solve our problems as humans, though it could one day provide a partial solution to overpopulation and resource depletion. I just hope the costs are not more than we are counting on. For some reason I can’t get the image out of my mind of a petrie dish my grade 10 biology teacher showed us full of dead bacterial colonies who used up their resource supply and poisoned themselves with their own waste products. If they can do that to one, why not two petrie dishes?