SPACE EXPLORATION

Space exploration is the investigation of the cosmos beyond the upper regions of the Earth's atmosphere using telescopes, satellites, space probes, spacecraft, and associated launch vehicles.

Background

The desire to explore space is nearly primal for Homo sapiens. Early humans quickly spread out of Africa to every region on the planet, then came to speculate that the stars and planets were yet other material places worthy of exploration. The idea to travel to these other worlds was inevitable.

However for thousands of years, humans commonly drew fundamental distinctions between the Earth and non-Earth environments. In the formulation of Aristotle taught that the laws of nature that applied on Earth did not necessarily apply beyond the Earth, thus severely restricting the very possibilities for human space exploration.

During the great age of European exploration of the Earth, astronomers such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and his contemporary, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), began the modern observational exploration of the heavens, in fact of space, using new techniques and instruments of science. A result of this exploration of space was the scientific revolution itself. Science was now seen as applicable to understanding the entire world, to both heaven and Earth. Civilization was transformed.

It now seems natural that Kepler's "Somnium," about a journey to the Moon, includes a realistic description of the lunar surface and how a traveler might physically survive such a trip. But this pioneering story began a long tradition of science fiction literature examining ethical and political issues of space exploration and scientific enterprise.

Twentieth-Century Developments

Planning and experiments to develop the science and technology of physical space exploration began with Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) in Russia and Robert Goddard (1882–1945) in the United States. Both of these inventors considered the long-term implications of their work for humanity. Application of their technology to weapons of war soon became evident. Although Goddard helped the U.S. military with rocket-assisted take off of conventional aircraft, it was the Germans who made extensive use of Goddard's published rocket development during World War II.

As the war ended, the space race began in earnest between the Soviet Union and the United States. Efforts were made by both countries to enlist German scientists, who had worked on the Nazi rocket program. Many Americans were shocked when, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik I. Some Americans viewed the Soviet triumph as an indication of U.S. weakness in science and technology, and considered it a political imperative to match and surpass Soviet accomplishments. Many voiced concern about the threat presented by the combination of nuclear weapons with ballistic missiles.

At the same time, some saw a great potential for peaceful exploration and development of the space environment. Ethical issues were debated about both the commercial and military aspects of this new human enterprise. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created by Congress in 1958, at the height of the Cold War. It is remarkable that the NASA charter specifically states that the agency is restricted from military activity. (Nonetheless NASA would not always adhere to the charter. For instance, design of the space shuttle was driven significantly by military requirements at a time when Congressional support for NASA was waning.)

Space Law

Despite international competition, there was early agreement that space and celestial bodies were open to peaceful use by all nations, and that principles of international law would be followed in this new realm. Parallels with, and precedents set by, maritime law guided the formulation of space law and regulation. On December 13, 1963, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space. Further work by the United Nations resulted in the Outer Space Treaty, first signed by sixty-three nations in 1967, and adopted by most countries in the early twenty-first century.

Although much progress has been made in space law, there are challenging near-term issues. For example, the orbital location and radio frequency allocation of communication satellites is a type of territorial issue. At bottom, these resources are limited. Humans have the ancient challenge, in new guise, of how to share these resources peacefully and wisely. The information content of direct-broadcast satellite transmissions is also a complex issue involving national sovereignty on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other. Observation or spy satellites bring issues of privacy versus freedom of inquiry and information. The United States, Russia, and others have entered into more than 100 treaties and agreements regarding issues of orbit and frequency allocation, as well as launching, tracking, monitoring, and recovery of satellites and space vehicles.

Human Exploration

The first human to orbit the earth, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, returned safely from space in April of 1961. The U.S. astronaut John Glenn followed with a similar mission the next year. These flights, and the many that followed, helped to transform human perspective of the earth and its place in the universe, just as the unmanned missions were doing. Only eight years after Gagarin's flight Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.

Following the first earth orbit missions, both nations continued without a reported loss of human life until 1967 when three astronauts were lost during a ground test of Apollo 1 and a cosmonaut was lost during return from a Soyuz space mission. Nonetheless, manned space exploration has had a remarkably good safety record. Any space mission must balance goal, schedule, and budget, as well as recognizing risk and the unknown. In achieving this balance in space missions, it is important to keep in mind Richard Feynman's remarks about the loss of the space shuttle Challenger: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled" (Feynman 1986, F5).

Over the last several decades launch failures have been on the order of 1 percent. The space shuttle record, with a total of 112 successful flights and the loss of shuttle Challenger, reflects this value. Columbia, on the other hand, was the first loss of an American crew on reentry. In both cases the loss appears to be due to schedule and mission demands taking priority over safety.

The loss of human life in space flight development has been relatively low compared to the pioneering days of aviation. This may in part be due to risk-benefit and budget considerations. Experimental airplanes were relatively inexpensive to create and pilots were willing to take considerable risks. It was cost effective to risk pilot and plane to develop the new technology. This is not the case with spaceflight development and exploration. The loss of one mission costs billions of dollars and results in untold costs in schedule slippage and decreased political support. It is remarkable though that during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spaceflights, there was no loss of human life. The Russian space effort has also been relatively free from loss of human life. The most well known soviet accident, Soyuz 11 in 1971, resulted in the death of three crew members as they returned to earth. Overall the loss of life in the U.S. and Russian programs has been similar, if one includes the unannounced Soviet losses of perhaps twelve.

The live coverage loss of Challenger and Columbia reminded the world that spaceflight is not yet routine. Exploration at the frontier must always remain riskier than day-to-day experience. There is, however, reasonable expectation that near-earth spaceflight will become safer in the foreseeable future. It remains to be seen how the advent of commercial spaceflight will change the equation, but the long term effect should be for improved safety.

Ethical Issues

Although certainly chartered upon a wider canvas, the challenges in space development are, in the first instance, those related to the ongoing challenges faced by the nation states. These issues are mostly of increased degree, rather than entirely new for humans. The ethics of space exploration from this perspective are addressed in such documents as the ESA-UNESCO report, The Ethics of Space Policy (Pompidou 2000).

Beyond these issues are those prompted by questions about the impact on human civilization of asteroid and comet orbit modification, space elevators-to-orbit development, or planetary, space, and asteroid colonization. Such endeavors could have impact on civilization beyond that of normal human activity.

Also of importance are issues such as interplanetary contamination, the terraforming of planets, and contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. These issues center on questions about the effect of the universe on human beings, and their effect on it.

An elementary case of this sort is the detection of primitive extraterrestrial life in the form of microbes or microfossils. Because the nature of such life is not known, one can only make informed speculation about what the effects might be on civilization and on life on Earth. Or, indeed, what effect humankind might have on such life.

Space exploration may result in the detection of extraterrestrial life or even other civilizations. A scientific Copernican-Darwinian worldview suggests the likelihood of finding evidence of this sort. In any case, it appears likely that people will continue to look for such evidence.

Several outcomes of the detection of life elsewhere in the universe have been suggested: a mostly harmless event, with gain in the knowledge that other life exists in the universe; a major change in life itself or civilization; the loss of civilization; the change or loss of dominant species; loss or change of all higher order species; loss of the planetary biosystem; or some unpredicted transformation of life and civilization. These changes are not necessarily in only one direction.

Several decades prior to the physical exploration of space the British ethicist and philosopher Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) and the crystallographer J. D. Bernal (1901–1971), wrote about some of these wider issues of space exploration. Their pioneering efforts influenced later thinkers from the futurist and novelist Arthur C. Clarke (b. 1917) to the British-American physicist Freeman Dyson (b. 1923).

Responding to Ethical Issues

Humans have attempted to develop some approaches for dealing with the new ethical issues presented by space exploration. Prevention of potential contamination to the Earth's biosphere was practiced during the first lunar expeditions. Astronauts, spacecraft, lunar samples, and equipment were isolated upon their return to Earth from the Moon. The Lunar Receiving Laboratory is in operation to this day, protecting lunar rocks and soil, even though there is now no risk to life on this planet. Space probes are decontaminated prior to leaving the Earth in most cases. Considerable care of this sort was taken with spacecraft, such as Viking (1975) and Sojourner (1996) that would land on the Martian surface. The trajectory of Galileo (1989) was purposely changed, at the end of its mission, in order to send the spacecraft to fiery destruction in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter to insure no contamination of the Jovian moons with terrestrial microorganisms.

In 1991 the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence was drafted by the International Academy of Astronautics (Billingham 1994). The Board of Directors of the International Institute of Space Law approved the declaration. This document is an effort to outline a responsible and orderly set of activities for scientists and others to follow after the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. An obvious objective of this protocol is to protect life and civilization on Earth.

One can optimistically view the development of portions of the agreements regarding space exploration as the emergence of a principle of non-interference with extraterrestrial life. In a sense humankind seems to be developing a sort of prime directive rule of space exploration, which was once only addressed in science fiction. The prime directive restricts human beings from interfering with any extraterrestrial life that is less developed than they are.

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) and others have argued that the sort of extraterrestrial life that is likely to be detected will either be of an elementary sort, or a civilization well beyond our imagination. If this turns out to be the case, then the proper conduct, in either of these situations, will not be the sort fancied in the popular space operas of interstellar diplomacy and conflict. Humans would be either the fortunate caretakers of a wholly new primitive life system or the subjects of scientific interest, perhaps protected or transformed beyond recognition.

The American biologist and essayist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002), pointed out that the revolution of Copernicus and Galileo was about real-estate, but that the Darwinian revolution was about essence and thus had much the greater impact. This situation is reflected in questions about the present and future exploration of space. Presently human explorers are experiencing the Galilean, or real estate, phase of the space enterprise. But soon the essence, or Darwinian, phase may commence. Beginning in the mid-1990s, many planets, orbiting other stars, were found by astronomers. Space-born experiments directed at trying to detect some telltale signs of life on planets of other solar systems are planned for the first half of the twenty-first century. Even in the Earth's home-system there is hope for detecting life: The oceans that may exist below the ice surface of the Jovian satellite Europa are currently of prime interest to astrobiologists.

The nation states of Earth have created many agreements for the peaceful exploration of space. Space law is now an active field. Humankind has made a start in constructive and peaceful conduct during the early stages of space exploration.

Space exploration is not a one-way enterprise. The "pale blue dot" vision of earth in space, the close-up images of the many worlds of this solar system, returned samples from space, and the countless Hubble space telescope vistas, are transforming the human mind. This transformation is playing a key part in the evolution of the ethics of space exploration—an evolution that may now be at a stage where there is a need to develop a preliminary "prime directive," in order to define conduct with other life in the galaxy. The need may be closer than imagined.

MICHAEL GILMORE

SEE ALSO Apollo Program;Galilei, Galileo;National Aeronautics and Space Administration;Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia Accidents;Space Telescopes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernal, J. D. (1969 [1929]). The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Billingham, John, et al., eds. (1994). Social Implications of the Detection of Extraterrestrial Civilization. Mountain View, CA: SETI Press.

Chaikin, Andrew. (1994). A Man on the Moon. New York: Penguin Books.

Crowe, Michael J. (1986). The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dyson, Freeman. (1979). Disturbing the Universe. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Feynman, Richard P. (1986). Appendix F, Personal Observations On The Reliability Of The Shuttle. Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, vol. 2, p. F5. U.S. Government Printing Office.

McDougall, Walter A. (1985). ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books

Pompidou, Alain, Co-ordinator. (2000). The Ethics of Space Policy. New York: UNESCO.

Shklovskii, Iosif S., and Sagan, Carl. (1966). Intelligent Life in the Universe. San Francisco: Holden-Day, Inc.

Stapledon, Olaf. (1968). "Last and First Men" and "Star Maker": Two Science Fiction Novels. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.