Extraterrestrial Civilizations - Isaac Asimov [109]
This prospect does not obviate the need to lower our birthrate in the long run, for if human beings continue to multiply at their present rate, the total mass of flesh and blood will equal the total mass of the Universe in 9,000 years or so.
In fact, it does not obviate the need to lower our birthrate right now, for long before we could put that first billion into space, Earth’s population would have increased by 25 billion and that would be disastrous. And yet the presence of space settlements would offer a bit of an escape valve; the birthrate need not drop quite as far with space settlements in existence.
In addition to allowing some space for human numbers, the burgeoning clusters of space settlements will lend additional variety to human cultures. Each settlement might well have its own way of life, and some might be quite a distance off the norm. Each settlement might have its own styles in clothing, music, art, literature, sex, family life, religion, and so on. The options for creativity in general, and for scientific advance in particular, would be unbounded.
There could even be items of life-style unique to the settlements and impossible to duplicate on Earth.
Mountain climbing on the larger settlements would have comforts and pleasures unknown on Earth. As climbers moved higher, the downard pull of the centrifugal effect induced by the settlement’s spin would weaken, and it would be easier to climb still farther. Then, too, the air would grow neither thinner nor colder to any substantial degree.
Finally, in carefully enclosed areas on the mountain tops, where the centrifugal effect is particularly low, people could fly by their own muscle power when they were outfitted with plastic wings on light frames, thanks to the thick air and the small downward pull.
SPACE MARINERS
For the purposes of this book, however, the chief value of the space settlements would be this: They would make possible the exploration of the Solar system—not so much for physical reasons, as for psychological ones.
Consider:
To begin with, space flight is an exotic matter to the people of Earth, something that would take them away from the world on which they live, and on which ancestral life has developed over a period of more than 3 billion years.
Space flight would, on the other hand, be of the very essence of life to the space settlers. Their worlds would have been populated as a result of space flight; and their labors on the Lunar mining stations and at construction sites would involve space flight as a matter of course.
Tourism would also exist among the multiplying settlements.
Because each settlement would have no perceptible intrinsic gravitational pull of its own, and because all are at roughly the same distance from the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon, travel from one to another would take very little energy. It would be something like coasting on level ice.
Considering the low cost in energy and the fact that various settlements might be each considerably different in culture from others, visitors would have much to be amused by and interested in. It would be quite possible that all space settlers would be space travelers from an early age and the concept would have no terror for them.
Even if the settlers wanted to leave the libration points, or even if they were on the Moon and wanted to leave that world, there would be no need for the strong initial acceleration blast that is required to lift a rocket through the Earth’s atmosphere against the Earth’s large gravitational pull. That instantly removes the most uncomfortable part of space travel.
Therefore, where Earth people might, on the whole, hesitate to venture into space, and where only a tiny fraction would qualify physically and temperamentally as space explorers, the entire population of the space settlements might be potential explorers.
Then, too, the conditions of