Seite 2: 4. Sidereal Space

As mentioned above, Biosphere II is the great model for future space colonies. The project was born out of this idea, although it is also valid as a model for a new, technically possible living environment on Earth. Why should one think of the colonisation of space? NASA first listed some simple biological reasons like geographical expansion and unrestrained growth: "Why did life move out of the oceans and colonise the land? Because life grows and wants to expand. We have the possibility to live in space and that's why we will do just that". However they also learned their lessons from history and thus have since come up with more reasons for the colonisation: "The main advantage of space colonies is the possibility to acquire new land without having to take it away from someone. This allows for, but doesn't guarantee, a huge expansion of humankind without wars and destruction of the Earth's biosphere." By emigrating we would be able to escape overpopulation on Earth, the destruction of its biosphere and the possible impact of asteroids.

a) First Millennial Foundation (URL)

But there are also private organisations who promote the colonisation of outer space and wish to turn it into a national mission. For example, the First Millennial Foundation sees our modest destiny as bringing life to the dead stars, something that should keep us busy for at least the next thousand years. This is seen as a holy duty, especially as life would be condemned to die if it stayed earthbound. Life could be destroyed at any time by a comet or an asteroid and, moreover, the sun is going to explode sooner or later. They say that as it is, life on Earth is in deep crisis due to the population explosion. How will 10 or 15 billion people find space to live and food to eat?

As usual, when trying to find simple solutions for complex problems people don't try to work out the current difficulties on Earth or analyse the relationships of power and production. More land, more living space is the propagated solution. In fact, the first step towards colonisation that this foundation proposes is the construction of floating islands in warm areas of the oceans. According to them, the islands would form automatically when a conductive metal is brought into contact with the water and electricity run through it. The dissolved minerals in the water would then join to the metal and form thick layers of artificial limestone. If metal constructions were then added to strengthen these formations, together with electrical wire netting, it could result in a sufficiently solid base for the floating islands. The people living on them would live off the sea, cultivating fish and algae, and producing energy in an environmentally-friendly way. At the moment the oceans appear to be "empty continents" and "biological deserts", but life on these floating islands in warm tropical seas would be very pleasant. As life would develop around the same environmentally-friendly principles that are employed in these closed cycles, we are promised security because the colonies will be "relatively free from crime and other evils which we see dominating the cities" . This is so because we are talking about "a community of closely related individuals", in other words, a non-urban community. The ocean colonies will prepare us for life in closed systems and in "isolated and highly integrated communities", something which is after all a prerequisite for leaving this planet and which makes these conditions necessary.

b) NASA: Space Settlement Basics (URL)

The people at NASA obviously want to force the idea of colonising space for institutional reasons of self-preservation. Although they still continue the important activity of launching satellites -hundreds of which are now orbiting Earth- since the end of the Cold War, manned space programs which had become too expensive were drastically reduced. In their eyes, space travel has to become something available to everybody and not only to highly qualified specialists. Therefore only when space flights have become safe and inexpensive can thousands or millions of people take the opportunity of giving relief to our planet. After all, one hundred years ago nobody had ever travelled by plane while at present some five hundred million people are flying every year.

It is interesting to see that certain groups of people are mentioned who could find the colonisation of space especially attractive. For example, they suggest that being in space without the burden of gravity could be advantageous for the handicapped. They wouldn't need any machines or aides for moving as they could float around. Furthermore, the possibility would exist to send involuntary colonists to space colonies as they could be considered relatively inescapable prisons, like islands were in former times. This seems a rather obvious idea, although perhaps not in the way that the authors had intended, given that space colonies will always be a kind of prison even when constructed as protective settlements. They also suggest that they would be appropriate for some religious groups not wanting to live near "infidels", or else for those who would like to experiment with new types of social or political forms.

Biosphere II is once again the obvious model: a technically produced "independent biosphere" with closed cycles. The authors suggest, however, that it may be necessary to take at least some oxygen and a little food. Anyway, the idea wouldn't be to go straight into colonising planets or even the Moon. Rather, the first step would be to have some sort of gigantic containers orbiting the Earth so that at least people could still see and maybe visit her. Only later would we spread ourselves around in the solar system or move to distant stars because in later generations it won't matter anymore to people where they are. They do not go into detail here about the technical realisation of these suggestions. They put their money on nanotechnology, which will do everything by itself, and make possible the building of an "orbital tower" rising from the Earth's surface into space. In this way, materials and people could be brought by elevator into orbit with minimum expense. And even if everything would take lots of time and money, one has to remember that "New York, California and France" weren't built in a day and "Canada, France and San Francisco" cost a lot of money too.

We have already learned some of the reasons why outer space will be "a nice place to live". But there are more which I don't wish to withhold from anyone. The authors list several reasons, the first being the aesthetic one of having a "nice view". Not clouded by air pollution, from out there you can enjoy the marvellous panorama of the solar system and of course revel in the beauty of Earth. Secondly, the reduced gravity would be ideal for dancing or practicing sports. Two extremely attractive reasons for leaving Earth. But naturally, there are more.

The third reason has to do with freeing ourselves from our interdependence with the environment given that, unfortunately, living on earth means sharing only one biosphere and suffering the ecological crimes committed by others. As every space colony would be totally sealed off from the environment, the global ecological effects of our risk-taking society would not affect them: "If one colony pollutes the air, no one else has to breath in their filth." The fourth reason is paradigmatic to our topic which is why I will quote it in its entirety: "On Earth different groups have to learn how to live together very closely. It requires a great effort to live together with five or six billion homosapiens and some people don't tolerate this very well. Space colonies offer an alternative to trying to change human nature and to endless conflicts. The possibility of living in almost completely homogeneous communities as was the normal form of human existence during millions of years. Those who cannot adapt to living so close together have the opportunity of cutting themselves off from others by millions of kilometres of the finest vacuum, something that sometimes seems like a necessary thing. Access to space colonies would be through air gates and thus immigration control wouldn't play an important role." Up to now we can only choose amongst limited options of what the place where we want to live is going to look like. This "having-to-restrict-oneself" is very difficult to bear for genuine space travellers who are all individualists and builders of worlds, striving for their personal happiness. I will now quote the fifth reason, unable to formulate it better: "As the entire environment will have been created by man, you will be able to obtain whatever you want. Would you like an estate on a lake? Then simply build lakes. Do you love sunsets? Then program simulations of hourly sunsets into the weather system. Do you like walking barefooted? Then just make the whole environment foot-friendly."

Perhaps none of this is meant to be taken seriously but is only a 1995 satire on all those early dreams of emigration. In any case, the spirit of our times is reflected in these Space Settlement Basics from NASA, which maybe doesn't even know what one of its members has put on its web site. But there are others who obviously do take one thing dead seriously: the American dream of a new frontier intertwined with the colonisation of space.

c) Welcome to the Revolution: The Space Frontier Foundation (URL)

The Space Frontier Foundation, based in New York City, is an association of American citizens who are strongly represented on the Internet and maintains a mailing list with contributions to the series "The Frontier Files". It demands the colonisation of space as soon as possible as otherwise humankind will perish. For them, the USA as the "Frontier Nation" has a special responsibility in this area. In an effort to arouse national pride, this Foundation claims that America is getting nervous at the end of the 20th century. There are too many doubts in the "greatest nation that ever existed". The Cold War having ended, people need a new "vision of tomorrow" which offers something better than what we have in the present. According to the Foundation, Americans are "a nation of pioneers without a new frontier. There is no longer a clear, exterior enemy around which they could organise. History is repeating itself." In other words, times are bad.

Too many people see the future as obstructed. Images of a declining culture, in large part of cities in decay like in the film Blade Runner, haunt us. Unemployment, poverty, social struggles, the retreat into the private sphere and decreasing living standards produce insecurity, fear and individualism. The nation is falling apart. The Space Frontier Foundation has the solution: "The USA has to acknowledge the philosophical discrepancy between the things the nation should be doing in space and the things which we are in fact doing at the moment. Then we would be able to re-formulate our misguided space program into a new one that is more comprehensive, more exciting and more profitable. By putting these changes into practice, we, who understand the chance that the space frontier offers us, can provide America with a new image of its future -a future full of hope, an exciting future that motivates the entire society. A future of continuously expanding options...". The finite, whether in space or time, seems to be very difficult to bear. The future has to progress in the form of a continuously rising curve, otherwise everything falls apart, just like the capitalistic market when it stops growing. In the same way that a nation fighting an external enemy grows closer in times of war, the "emptiness of space" is supposed to generate a new type of society which includes everyone.

But what was it like in the old days when the wild West was being colonised? Was a new type of society created? Were new towns founded without suppressing others? But the facts of real history have little importance. In the foreground we have the wave that colonised the land (including its inhabitants) under the hopeful slogan "Go West". "25 years after Lewis & Clark railway carriages rolled into the West towards Oregon, thousands of pioneers were brought from the boats to the Californian coast... 25 years after the Wright Brothers, people could buy a plane ticket and fly around in airplanes... but 25 years after having landed on the Moon, we still sit in front of the TV watching old astronauts remembering the good old days." Things have to look up eventually in what regards morale as well as space. The ideology of "sustained development", directed towards the preservation of the biosphere, is said to be paralysing people when what is needed is the creation of "a new age of continuously growing hope". Once we commit to the vision of colonising space, which can only be positive given that space hasn't been colonised yet and because in this way we also protect our biosphere, then the "questions of where we are going as a race, how we fit into the big picture and what we have to do next will no longer have any importance. The only thing we will have to do will be to direct our gaze towards the thousands of stars in the night sky and we will find the answer. And the world is going to follow us. Because we are a nation of pioneers, this is our new country. And because we are all capable of doing this, it is high time that we are given the opportunity to prove it."

But who is standing in the way? The state is, because it is impeding access to space. Viewed as purely a means of oppression and not as an institution which exercises democratic procedures and social balancing acts, the state cannot open the way into the future. This can only be done, in the well-known capitalistic and individualistic style, by individuals concerned with the pursuit of happiness and profit -as deregulated as possible. Space as the new wild West. America, according to this Foundation, is a nation of free people, united by the belief that "man comes before the state and should have the right to create new riches, unimpeded by the state". The West was won using such a doctrine. The Foundation doesn't explain however how this typical, anti-state, extreme individualism can go hand in hand with the creation of new communities. It believes that if only individuals and companies were left alone in the "marvellous chaos of the free, democratic entrepreneurial system" then prosperity, freedom and a better life for all would be possible. Like at one time in the wild West, money is the exclusive driving force: without profit there will be no new goal".

Conclusion

As with the propagandists of cyberspace, the Space Frontier Foundation links the colonisation of space to individualism, which is always identified with a free, capitalistic market and the reduction of the state. Deregulation is the only maxim of happiness. Public life doesn't matter so long as it doesn't generate money. Individuals have to be successful and win, otherwise they will be lost and relegated to oblivion like the Indians were in their time. Freedom only means freedom of the market; in other words, competition. In this amalgam, typical of our times, utopias can only sustain themselves while moving forward, and cannot describe the place that will emerge at the end, let alone formulate collective rules of how it is to be socially organized in an acceptable way. The anti-state attitude and the orientation towards triumphant individuals, groups and communities is much too strong.

What then will the colonies in space and cyberspace look like? Not much different from those in the real world which are increasingly marked by the same maxims of capitalistic individualism and deregulation -like adventure parks, Disneyworlds and shopping centres, like suburban areas that spread around old cities without providing urban life, like cyberspace, increasingly commercialised and marked by private organisations with their intranets and fee zones. In a nutshell, like the way Mike Davis and others describe the future of our cities: breaking apart into segments, citadels and scanscapes under the pressure of multinationals and the new virtual class. Scanscapes according to Mike Davis are protected areas, models for all biospheres and space colonies, and serve homogeneous communities in which every step is being monitored in order to ensure against any foreign intrusion. They are linked through cyberspace and by highways, high-speed trains and airports.

Thanks for the translation to susy Ramsey and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who have organised the 5. Cyberconference.