The penetration of space, its eventual colonization, will be an essential feature of what Michael G. Zey (1994) has described as  the coming ‘Macro-industrial era’. As evidence Zey cited plans for big engineering projects by the USA, Japan and Europe which will include a Moon base early in the twenty-first century followed by a Mars colony by the year 2019. Current proposals are less ambitious; it is more likely that the US Martian missions in the early decades of the twenty-first century will involve robots rather than humans. However, if it transpires, the Macroindustrial era will be characterized by a return to programmes of economic growth with massive wealth creating engineering projects including the exploration and colonization of space, thus liberating humanity from the home planet. This would involve terraforming projects on potentially habitable planets, like Mars, and the eventual transformation of other spheres close to the Earth. A large-scale commitment to space exploration and colonization would, argues Zey, offer an alternative to an information technology-dominated culture which has swamped the planet with white-collar bureaucra-cies and paper, where annual reports become quarterly and then daily, and on-line information and junk mail pervade everywhere. In the early days of the ‘computer revolution’ there were wild predictions of a ‘paperless society’, as computers were destined to replace paper in schools  and offices. The reality turned out to be paper nightmare. It is certainly time to reconsider the promise of the information technology revolution, which has been accompanied by a decrease in overall prosperity fuelled by the  mistaken belief in the obsolescence of such once great industries as aircraft, ship-building, steel production and textiles. These industries, and projects arising out of them, once created wealth, but there is little evidence that information technology can enrich the lives of more than a small minority, and even less evidence that its fruits will improve our standard of living, bring peace or solve any of the major problems facing humanity.

There is no disputing the fact that information technology will play a tremen-dous role in the transformation of human culture, but it raises important philosophical questions concerning the nature of freedom and truth. What might be called the Internet ideology involves a belief in freedom from physical entrapment into a cyber dimension. But those who inhabit this dimension forget that freedom is bound up with the physical bonds which tie humans together and tie us to nature, our history and the institutions and physical structures that have been created throughout history. Perhaps the time has come to re-think objectives and look beyond the information culture together with its nihilistic post-modernist philosophy. If this is the case, then large-scale space projects could be undertaken and not dismissed as outdated objectives and prohibitively expensive.

Of course, this kind of thinking runs counter to the current politico-economic wisdom which appeals for zero growth or sustainable growth – two synonyms for stagnation and austerity. Yet the gains from space exploration could be significant: a return to massive wealth-creating projects, with technological

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spin-offs which already include the manufacture of light-weight materials now used in wheelchair construction; communication technology from space satellite technology; pharmaceutical research from space laboratories, including zero-gravity laboratories in which it is possible to grow protein crystals for the development of new drugs that may one day combat AIDS and other diseases. Because of the initial investment costs, space projects will require international co-operation, employing skills and resources from many cultures, thus possibly contributing to a global spirit of peaceful co-operation.

Opponents of space science are usually dismissive of appeals to its spin-offs or serendipitous results. Frequently cited in this context are velcro, teflon and the fruit drink, Tang. It is pointed out that these gains might well have been achieved if sufficient resources had been directed at the problem, rather than indirectly through chance. Does the non-stick frying pan justify the billions spent on Moon rockets? Why not channel resources directly into improvements in the manufacture of cooking utensils? Why spend billions on space programmes when there are urgent problems to be tackled here on Earth? According to Gonzalo Munévar (1998) this kind of objection fails to appreciate the necessary role of serendipity in the evolution of science. Although serendipitous results cannot be guaranteed, they are part of the essentially transformative nature of science. For scientific inquiry is not merely a fact-gathering, problem-solving process, where data are collected in order to solve our immediate problems. Rather, it is part of the process by which our present position is likely to be transformed. Thus new scientific developments play an important role in determining the range of problems and opportunities we may encounter. But these are not always predictable. For example, Munévar points out how laser technology has dramatically changed medicine, giving opportunities for new surgical techniques and therapeutic intervention. But the revolution within physics which led to the discovery and use of lasers would never have come from medicine, no matter how much support could have been given to surgeons and medical researchers. Munévar consequently insists that serendipity is an inevitable feature of science and that space exploration, as part of the development and transformation of scientific ideas, will inevitably provide both tools and ideas that can ‘change our panorama of problems and opportunities’ (ibid.: 179). He suggests that new developments in astronomy – radio astronomy, superior forms of Earth-based telescopes, X-ray and Gamma-ray observatories – could be ‘particularly helpful in pointing to areas of physics where new directives will be fruitful’ (ibid.: 189).

According to many of the arguments developed in this book, space travel will be essentially linked to the search for extraterrestrial signs of life. Just as the presentation of claims concerning the existence of microfossils in Martian meteorites led to a wave of proposals for manned missions to Mars, so would evidence of an intelligent signal from space lead to intensive attempts to visit the source.

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