This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It seems incongruous to call all of these electronic miracles of ours the tools of a dark age. The term “Dark Age” isn’t modern. The writers of the “Dark Ages” named it the “dark age” themselves. Incongruent indeed. People of a “dark age” with the wherewithal to understand they were living in a dark age, while living in a dark age. But they looked around at Roman roads and bridges and aqueducts and said, we cannot duplicate these wonders; this is truly a “dark age” in which we live.

The Artemis 2 will reenact the Apollo 8 mission from back in December of 1968, circumnavigating the moon. With the irony being that the technology derived from the space program made our electronic miracles possible. And the technology has multiplied for everyone except the space program. Despite the technology, the computers and staff reduction, space travel is still prohibitively expensive. And we’re all the way back to 1968. Relearning what we used to know how to do.

Trying to redo what we used to do. But after landing on the moon a few times, the public interest waned. The money dried up and NASA’s math magicians did calculations. If you send X number of missions to the moon. What are the chances that eventually one of them won’t come back? The Apollo One fire was a national tragedy, but if they ever lost a crew in orbit around the moon? To be there in orbit forever, to remind us of when NASA had such a squeaky-clean image.

Moon missions were the longest stretch of 1968 human technology possible. A feeling of pushing one’s luck. All right, now we’ve done it. It’s too expensive; let’s do something else. Something safer. Like a space shuttle or a space station. Commercialize more, explore less. The original plan for the Space Shuttle was a much smaller vehicle, and being smaller offered lower operating costs. But then our friends at the Department of Defense whispered in NASA’s ear. If you make the shuttle 40% larger, like we want it to be. The DoD will gladly lavish you with $$$$! Who could say “no” to free $$$$?

The shuttle was a masterpiece of engineering. A space leviathan when what was needed was a space pickup truck. Let’s take the 18-wheeler to drop the kids off at school. An impractical masterpiece. NASA made a deal with the devil to get the shuttle built. But after the shuttle was built, the size problem became the maintenance problem. The crazy idea of launching a giant space truck into orbit to deliver two astronauts and groceries to the International Space Station with an empty cargo bay. Ain’t that just America?

Now, I guess, we’re going to build a moon colony, they say. Color me skeptical, because there isn’t a compelling reason to be there besides hydrogen 3. But they have this Arthur C. Clarke dream of finding water on the moon and making rocket fuel out of it. How much water will it take? How long will it take and where will the energy come from to convert the moon water into rocket fuel? Then we won’t have to bring our return fuel with us. We didn’t have any fuel problems with Apollo. It’s an elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme in a Buck Rogers theme.

We’re going to make hydrogen rocket fuel on the moon using electricity! What could possibly go wrong? Just the entire idea of going to the moon to make rocket fuel seems very 1930s barnstorming. Someday, my boy, they’ll be Exxon stations all over the galaxy! It’s a zeppelin of an idea. Neat, outrageous, but wholly impractical. And if the rocket fuel-making machine breaks down, then what? Scientists tend to dream big without knowing how to think small.  If rocket fuel is that much of an issue, maybe the answer is to change the fuel entirely.

But the moon base will be our gateway to the stars! Missions to Mars can stop at the moon base to rest, and fuel up, and swap space yarns. Except, there are no missions to Mars planned except by conmen and spin doctors. Elon? Elon will never get any closer to Mars than Texas. Eleven missions and he hasn’t even archived low Earth orbit yet. They haven’t even achieved Alan Sheppard status yet. SpaceX launched a rocket testing its heat shield, and it came back carbonized like a blackened Pop-Tart overcooked in the toaster.

Space travel should be getting cheaper and easier, but instead, it’s harder and more expensive. We can no longer do what we used to could do in 1968. There’s been so little progress. Where is the space equivalent of the DC-3 or the Model A Ford? Practical vehicles to do specific jobs in space. The SpaceX Dragon capsule is a step in the right direction, but why not a flying shuttle?

Now dig this for your sci-fi channel fix. A crazy, off-beat billionaire says he can land a four-story tall rocket on its tail on the unprepared lunar surface. Then an Elon naught will ride down a space elevator to the moon’s surface someday. “Ah, Houston? The space elevator appears to be stuck between floors.” That’s why the Apollo Lunar module had a ladder. A space elevator is a really cool idea, but a space ladder is practical.

Every president since Kennedy has made a joyful noise about the space program. They want to break off a piece of the “New Frontier” 1960, John Kennedy vibe even if they have no intention of funding it. We have no vision or goal in space. Except we have to beat the Chinese. The dumbest reason possible. Where there is no vision, the people are lost. The greatest leaders are those who actually lead us somewhere. Kennedy gave us a goal and a due date.  

What are our realistic goals for humans in space in a dark age? You can put a prefix in front of it if you like, and call it someone’s dark age, but it is a dark age.

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.” ― H.G. Wells,