Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan [136]
A serious effort to send humans to other worlds is relatively so inexpensive on a per annum basis that it cannot seriously compete with urgent social agendas on Earth. If we take this path, streams of images from other worlds will be pouring down on Earth at the speed of light. Virtual reality will make the adventure accessible to millions of stay-on-Earths. Vicarious participation will be much more real than at any earlier age of exploration and discovery. And the more cultures and people it inspires and excites, the more likely it will happen.
But by what right, we might ask ourselves, do we inhabit, alter, and conquer other worlds? If anyone else were living in the Solar System, this would be an important question. If, though, there’s no one else in this system but us, don’t we have a right to settle it?
Of course, our exploration and homesteading should be enlightened by a respect for planetary environments and the scientific knowledge they hold. This is simple prudence. Of course, exploration and settlement ought to be done equitably and transnationally, by representatives of the entire human species. Our past colonial history is not encouraging in these regards; but this time we are not motivated by gold or spices or slaves or a zeal to convert the heathen to the One True Faith, as were the European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, this is one of the chief reasons we’re experiencing such intermittent progress, so many fits and starts in the manned space programs of all nations.
Despite all the provincialisms I complained about early in this book, here I find myself an unapologetic human chauvinist. If there were other life in this solar system, it would be in imminent danger because the humans are coming. In such a case, I might even be persuaded that safeguarding our species by settling certain other worlds is offset, in part at least, by the danger we would pose to everybody else. But as nearly as we can tell, so far at least, there is no other life in this system, not one microbe. There’s only Earthlife.
In that case, on behalf of Earthlife, I urge that, with full knowledge of our limitations, we vastly increase our knowledge of the Solar System and then begin to settle other worlds.
These are the missing practical arguments: safeguarding the Earth from otherwise inevitable catastrophic impacts and hedging our bets on the many other threats, known and unknown, to the environment that sustains us. Without these arguments, a compelling case for sending humans to Mars and elsewhere might be lacking. But with them—and the buttressing arguments involving science, education, perspective, and hope—I think a strong case can be made. If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species venture to other worlds.
Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
*Might a planetary civilization which has survived its adolescence wish to encourage others struggling with their emerging technologies? Perhaps they would make special efforts to broadcast news of their existence, the triumphant announcement that it’s possible to avoid self-annihilation. Or would they at first be very cautious? Having avoided catastrophes of their own making, perhaps they would fear giving away knowledge of their existence, lest some other, unknown, aggrandizing civilization out there in the dark is looking for Lebensraum or slavering to put down the potential competition. That might be a reason for us to explore neighboring star systems, but discreetly.
Maybe they would be silent for another reason: because broadcasting the existence