Showing posts with label space exploration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space exploration. Show all posts

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Magellan, the Movie

The story of Magellan's voyage is positively cinematic.

It has now been five hundred years since the first circumnavigation of the world, by Ferdinand Magellan. This feat doesn't generally get as much fame as Columbus's discovery of the Caribbean, even though Columbus didn't know what he was doing, and kept not understanding what he had done long after he returned. By the time, thirty years later, that some more of the new world had been explored, and the Portuguese had also entered the Indian ocean around the bottom of Africa, the overall geography of the earth had not advanced a great deal, still being based on Ptolemy's significantly (about 30%) too-small estimate. But the lure remained- how to get to the all-important spice islands in a more convenient way. 

And it was a very commercial lure. Magellan had little scientific interest in all this, per se. He was a mariner through and through, and had done extensive research with his colleagues, mapmakers, and astronomers. But most of all he was desperate to make some money after a wide-ranging, but not very well-paid, career with the official Portuguese fleet. He had visited India and what is now Malaysia, and had heard from a friend who had finally found the spice islands, and had decided to stay there. So when Magellan went to the King of Portugal to propose his westward voyage around the tip of South America, it was a strictly commercial venture, hopefully easier and shorter than the trip around Africa and through the Indian ocean. But the king was uninterested, as the Portuguese already were using the eastern route, and didn't seem much point in trying another, unknown one. Columbus had already tried that gambit and had not gotten much for it. Not much in the way of spices, at any rate.

So Magellan stormed off in a huff, renounced his allegiance to the Portuguese crown, and made his proposal to the Spanish king instead. Now that logic made more sense. The Spanish and Portuguese had come up with a colonial demacation line, the treaty of Tordesillas, that split the Atlantic, which is what gave Brazil to the Portuguese. But this line in imaginary fashion extended around the globe to the other side, and depending how big that globe was, might award the spice islands (the southern islands of the Indonesian archapelago) to Spain, not Portugal. Devising a route from the other side might get Spain there faster, and also avoid unpleasant conflict with sea lanes that were now busy with Portuguese shipping. So the expedition was approved and launched in 1519.

It is a fascinating story, and gets more and more interesting as it goes on, with exotic locations, spectacular discoveries, first contact with far-flung natives, mutiny, hangings, and maroonings. It is very well-told by Tim Joyner, in his definitive and meticulous 1992 book. One aspect that did not come up, however, was that Magellan and colleagues could have come up with a much more accurate estimate of the circumference of the globe by their thorough knowledge of latitude. Longitude- that was difficult to calculate, though his voyage made amazing advances in this respect as well. But if they were imaginative enough to consider that the globe was round in all directions, then the circumference around the poles, which was well within their ability to calculate with precision, would have told them that Ptolemy was way off, and that scurvy was going to be their lot in traversing the Pacific ocean (which Magellan named, incidentally).

A top-secret 1502 map of the known world, from Portugal. The coast of Africa is well-detailed, while farther areas are quite a bit murkier. Crucially, nothing is known of the southern extent of South America.


The last ship, of the five that embarked on the expedition, limped back into San Lucar, near Seville, Spain, three years later, bedraggled and desperately bailing out their bilge. But it brought back a treasure of cloves, as well as a treasure of information. The expedition had poisoned relations with numerious natives, not to mention the Portuguese, who quickly overtook and imprisoned the small contingent left at Ternate, one of the spice islands. In fact, Magellan himself died in a reckless attack on a thousand natives in what is now the Philippines. 

So the mini-series version would have to be told by someone else. And that should be Antonio Pigafetta, the self-appointed anthropologist of the expedition. A worldly fellow from Lombardy who had been employed at the Vatican, he was part of its ambassadorial delegation to Spain when he heard about Magellan's plans. He appears to have jumped at the chance for adventure, and kept detailed dairies of the events of the voyage, to which all subsequent authors are hugely indebted. He even kept a day log which he was surprised to see finally came up a day short- precisely the day that one loses when following the setting sun around the world. He seems to have been quite a character, who had high respect for Magellan, and whose adventurousness also saved him from scurvy, which tended to afflict the more squeamish eaters, who were put off by eating rats and whatever else came to hand. 

So there you have it, perhaps a twelve part miniseries spanning the globe, rich with drama, suffering, scenery, deceit, greed, blind ambition, valor, and victory, telling of one of the great adventures of mankind.


  • What are we doing in Africa? And what is China doing there?
  • Jared Huffman represents me.

Saturday, October 8, 2022

Science Fiction as Theology

Let's look higher than the clouds. Let's look to the stars.

I have always been rather dismissive of theology- the study of something that doesn't exist. But if one takes it in a larger sense of a culture of scripture, story telling, morals, and social construction, then sure, it makes more sense. But then so do alot of other stories. I have been enjoying the Foundation series via streaming, which is at best "inspired" by the original books, yet takes its premises reasonably seriously and grows a complex and interesting set of story lines to what by the end of the first season is a positive and promising conclusion. I would ding it for excessive adherence to Star Wars-style action and simplistic morality, compared with the more cerebral original, but that is only to be expected these days.

Science fiction is having a golden age, as a way to tell important, probing stories and consider alternative futures. The Star Trek franchise generally sticks with hopeful futures, which I certainly favor. Their world is post-money, post internal conflict, post-disease. But philosophically alive through contact with other civilizations. The theological implications are momentous, as we envision a culture very different from our own, and blessed with various magical means of deliverance, like transporters, replicators, and warp drives. Where the "science fiction" books of the Bible were mostly dystopian (Job, Revelation, Genesis), Science fiction in our era straddles the line, with plenty of dystopian offerings, but also hopeful ones. Whether Star Wars is hopeful might be a matter of debate, since bad guys and bad empires never seem to go away, and the position of the resistance is always impossibly dire.

White male mathematician Hari Seldon takes on the role of god, in the Foundation series. He calculates out the future of the galaxy, clairvoyantly predicting events, and then comes back from beyond the grave to keep guiding his flock through crisis after crisis.

Are Star Trek futures any more realistic than those of Revelation? Are they theologically more sound? I think yes on both counts. Revelation is a rather unhinged response to the late Jewish era in its apocalyptic relations with Rome, as it headed into exile and the diaspora. There is a welter of reworked Old Testament material and obscure references, turning into florid visions that have misled Christians for centuries. Star Trek and the other science fiction franchises, on the other hand, are a bit more restrained in their visionary quests and escatologies, and more hopeful, for abundant futures where some problems have been solved while other forms of politics and history continue to call for strong moral values. This is quite different than the bizarre and ecstatic culmination of Revelation at the end of history, in the last days.

We also get to live out the visions, on a small scale, as technology advances in the real world. Smart phones have transformed our lives, for instance, one promise kept from the early science fiction days. And our only real hope for dealing with climate change is to harness better technologies, rather than going down dystopian roads of degrowth, famine, and war. So there are real futures at stake here, not just visions of futures.

While our current physics totally bars the adventures that are portrayed in contemporary science fiction epics, their theological significance lies in their various visions of what humanity can and should do. They, as Revelation, are always keyed to their historical moment, with America ascendent and technologically advanced over other cultures. But they do not use their magical elements and story arcs to promote quiescence and slack-jawed wonder at the return of the son of god, who will make everything right and mete out judgement to all the bad people. (Or do the opposite, in the case of Job.) No, they uniformly encourage resistance against injustice, and hopeful action towards a better world, or galaxy, or universe, as the case may be.


Saturday, July 20, 2019

We'll Keep Earth

The robots can have the rest of the universe.

The Apollo 11 aniversary is upon us, a wonderful achievement and fond memory. But it did not lead to the hopeful new-frontier future that has been peddled by science fiction for decades, for what are now obvious reasons. Saturn V rockets do not grow on trees, nor is space, once one gets there, hospitable to humans. Earth is our home, where we evolved and are destined to stay.

But a few among us have continued taking breathtaking adventures among the planets and toward other stars. They have done pirouettes around the Sun and all the planets, including Pluto. They are our eyes in the heavens- the robots. I have been reading a sober book, Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which works through in painstaking, if somewhat surreal, detail what artificial intelligence will become in the not too distant future. Whether there is a "singularity" in a few decades, or farther off, there will surely come a time when we can reproduce human level intelligence (and beyond) in machine form. Already, machines have far surpassed humans in memory capacity, accuracy, and recall speed, in the form of databases that we now rely on to run every bank, government, and app. It seems inescapable that we should save ourselves the clunky absurdity, vast expense, and extreme dangers of human spaceflight and colonization in favor of developing robots with increasing capabilities to do all that for us.

It is our fleet of robots that can easily withstand the radiation, weightlessness, vacuum, boredom, and other rigors of space. As they range farther, their independence increases. On the Moon, at 1.3 light seconds away, we can talk back and forth, and control things in near real time from Earth. The Mars rovers, on the other hand, needed to have some slight intelligence to avoid obstacles and carry out lengthy planned maneuvers, being roughly 15 light-minutes from Earth. Having any direct control over rovers and other probes farther afield is increasingly impossible, with Jupiter 35 minutes away, and Neptune four light hours away. Rovers or drones contemplated for Saturn's interesting moon Titan will be over a light hour away, and will need extensive autonomous intelligence to achieve anything.

These considerations strongly suggest that our space program is, or should be in large part joined with our other artificial intelligence and robotics activities. That is how we are going to be able to achieve great things in space, exploring far and wide to figure out how we came to be, what other worlds are like, and whether life arose on them as well. Robots can make themselves at home in the cosmos in a way that humans never will.

Matt Damon, accidentally marooned on Mars.

Bostrom's book naturally delves into our fate, once we have been comprehensively outclassed by our artificial creations. Will we be wiped out? Uploaded? Kept as pets? Who knows? But a reasonable deal might be that the robots get free reign to colonize the cosmos, spreading as far as their industry and inventiveness can carry them. But we'll keep earth, a home for a species that is bound to it by evolution, sentiment, and fate, and hopefully one that we can harness some of that intelligence to keep in a livable, even flourishing, condition.


Sunday, September 10, 2017

A Cosmos of Fear

Not Your Father's Star Trek Federation: Cixin Liu's dark vision in "The Dark Forest". (Warning: Spoiler alert)

After slacking off most of the book, Luo Ji gets down to the business of saving humanity in the last couple of chapters, even as he is spat upon by his beneficiaries as a false prophet. It has not been easy for the wallfacers project, which Earth developed after learning not only that there are extra-terrestrial aliens, but that they are intent on taking over Earth, and are also listening in to everything humans are doing. The idea was to nominate a few super-people to think and scheme in the privacy of their own minds, where the Trisolarians (aka Alpha Centurians), couldn't listen in. Sure, this involves a total lack of accountability. But on the other hand, it is humanity's only hope for secure strategic innovation. Sadly, Luo Ji's three colleagues have either committed suicide or disgraced themselves with schemes bordering on insanity.

Luo Ji's strategic insight is borne of a shockingly negative view of how intelligent civilizations would operate and relate in the greater cosmos. It incidentally offers a fascinating and neat hypothesis to the question of why we have never detected, let alone been visited by, aliens. The hypothesis is that natural selection operates in a particularly brutal way among rapidly developing, and far-distant civilizations. Communication is essentially impossible due to the distances involved. Yet the technological scope of civilizations that have a billion or two years on us is still remarkable, including missiles made of strong-force matter, vastly harder than regular matter, missiles capable of destroying whole stars, star-based amplification of messages that can easily be heard by the entire galaxy, and manipulation of sub-atomic / string theory dimensions to create protons with special computational and communication properties. The upshot is that a civilization can grow to highly threatening capability before others even know of its existence. All civilizations at some far level  of advancement are mortal threats, in principle, to others they know about, and given some with fewer scruples, some of them will simply extinguish any local threats they learn of, before asking too many questions.

Thus the cosmos becomes a very dark place, where announcing your existence is tantamount to a death sentence, there being far, far more advanced civilizations always listening and on the lookout for either room to grow, or just threats to their own comfort and security. Nothing could be farther from the positive vision of Gene Roddenberry, which, admittedly, was developed out of a social agenda rather than a study of galactic sociology and biological imperatives.

What is one to think of all this? Firstly, much of the science underpinning this vision is fictional, such as star-killing technologies, and matter manipulation at theoretical or inconceivable scales. Secondly, insofar as the model is biological evolution, it takes far too dim a view of the possibilities and benefits of cooperation. Evolution has shown countless times that there is room for cooperation even amidst the struggle to survive, and that cooperation is the only way to gain truly vast benefits, such as from multicellularity, eukaryotic organelle specialization, and human sociality. Thirdly, we also know from our strategic games with existentially destructive weapons, such as is presently playing out with North Korea, that deterrence rather than offense becomes the principal goal among those having achieved such powers. Would deterrence work in cosmic game theory? It is a problem, since, given a star-killing capability that takes many years to travel to its target and presumably could not be detected at launch or perhaps even at close proximity, offense might happen with impunity. (The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across.)

But perhaps the most persuasive argument is simple morality- that despite the cold logic Cixin Liu develops, intelligent beings of such vast sophistication are probably more likely to wish to learn about other civilizations than to destroy them, whether out of boredom or out of a Prime-Directive kind of respect and interest. It is sort of unimaginable, to me at least, that the explicit goal of any advanced civilization would be to sterilize its environment so completely, even if unadvanced human history does offer that as a common, blood-drenched, theme.


  • Toles on the maelstrom.
  • Noonan, defending the indefensible.
  • Do we want open borders? Not if we want a welfare state and other public goods.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Religion as Science Fiction

What if theology is regarded as SciFi?

How seriously do you take science fiction? Obviously, being called "fiction", it is neither science nor any other kind of truth. Yet it is full of "truthiness"- plausible-ish technologies, settings related to our own, typically in the future, and human dramas more or less rich. It also often offers sweeping, even eschatological-scale, plots. But how can science fiction deal in human meaning if it does not deal in theology, given that the religiously inclined naturally think that meaning is given to us, not by our own ideas or efforts, but by a theos?

Obviously, one can turn that around and claim that theologies are themselves made up, and, far from scientifically observing a meaning given from on high, are exercises in making meaning, all the more effective for denying their underlying fictionality. In any case, I think science fiction is clearly the closest genre to religion, and caters to readers/viewers who have basically religious needs and temperaments.
From Jesus and Mo.

It is the science fiction fans who expect philosophical ruminations on what it means to be human, tales of a far future when humanity will have escaped the bonds of earth, often magical events and capabilities, and unimaginably powerful alien beings. Subspace, mind-melds, apocalyptic wars ... it is just a another word for supernatural.

Likewise, our ancestors clearly had the same idea(s). How better to illustrate their dreams, both bad and good, but with inflated archetypal beings and conflicts? The Ramayana reads like a Hollywood SciFi blockbuster. Why are there two versions of the Garden of Eden? It isn't because each is scientifically accurate. It is a clear statement that both are science fictions- tales of an idyll, and of an archetype.

Rama, flying in his vimana.

Why our cultures should have harbored such humorless, spiritually dead people as to take these tales seriously is beyond me. It is probably a testament to the bureaucratic mindset- the organization-alized person who clutches at tradition and order, (and certainty/explanation), over imagination and play. And over time, the original imaginative, introspective impulse is so crusted over that even the most sensitive and insightful people have no choice but to take the truth-dogma seriously as an external or historical reality, and proceed to make nonsense of what began as a wonderful work of art.

  • Religion and big data.
  • Groups needing to own it...
  • Masons, and the convention of conventions.
  • Bill Mitchell on Brexit. "Labour was advocating continued membership of an arrangement that is now broadly seen as a vehicle of the elites to suppress wages, employment and push more people into compliant poverty."
  • More thoughts on Brexit.
  • The financial elites are not making good policy. And not providing economic growth.
  • South Korea, heading authoritarian.
  • Can atheists and chaplains interact usefully?
  • German economics: Schacht v Euken.
  • Our friends the Saudis.
  • Another theologian employed at a public university- heaven knows why.
  • Fox and Friends. Or frenemies.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Odysseus Among the Stars

Star Trek as an Odyssey retold.

Star Trek is one of the great narratives of our time, burrowing into the cultural unconscious with its optimism, classic storylines, inexhaustable fund of aliens, and dash of humor. What other story is equally classic, with a hero who commands his ship through a long series of adventures, who meets aliens of many descriptions, and gets out of one bizarre scrape after another? Why Odysseus, of course!

Realizing this clarified to me the staying power and deep resonance of this new myth. Odysseus wasn't big on preaching the benefits of a peaceful Federation, (though that may have been an implicit lesson to its original listeners, binding together a Greek world constantly at war), but on the other hand, he had heard of most of the monsters and gods he meets, getting more of a head start than Kirk has. Like Odysseus, Kirk is a winner, happy to seduce a woman if that will save his ship, using deception and every wile to get what he wants. Or to go in with guns blazing if that is needed. While Odysseus had a home to go back to, Star Trek dispenses with that bit of plot, concentrating on the voyage exclusively, the far more engaging part of the story.

One big difference is the role of Spock. Odysseus has no significantly characterized companions from what I recall, none whom one would call a number two. While a soldier and coming back from war, the military organization of his ships is hardly mentioned and seems rather lax. Odysseus keeps his own counsel and gets little help from his sailors, who die right and left in various misadventures. Nor are aliens brought along on his voyage. Time after time, he flees as fast as he can from each monster in turn.

A medical officer with a shamanic touch, like McCoy, might not have been unknown to the Greek world, but Spock is another matter. He exemplifies the classical philosophical position of Stoicism, but this hardly had much place in the original tale, outside of mundane forbearance of disasters which rain down constantly. Odysseus doesn't involve himself in much philosophical discussion, or introspection, which becomes such an important part of Greek culture only later. The Odyssey is a tale of action, not thought. Spock introduces both an element of diversity and philosophical perspective, (especially an occasional check on senseless violence), which is sorely needed in what is also, among its other themes, a pean to what was at the time a growing US federation of democratic and peaceful planets, er nations.

Modern, contemporary, retro, or classic?

  • We are on the ISIS side, in Yemen, along with Saudi Arabia.. why? Why take sides in the Sunni-Shia showdown?
  • Narratives and theories of anorexia.
  • New US jobs are heavily low-wage.
  • Hope, belief, and con games large and small.
  • Why are bitter, fundamentalist losers messing everything up?
  • Bill Mitchell on basic income.
  • Is quietist Dawa fundamentalism better than militant Wahabi and Salafi fundamentalism?
  • Trump is blowing up the code. FOX/GOP can not wash its hands of what it has wrought.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Boondoggle to Mars

Why sending humans to Mars is a bad idea.

In an ironic continuation of its general war on science, the Bush administration proclaimed the goal of sending humans to Mars. A speech, a press release, and then nothing more was heard, doubtless because no one took the president seriously as a second coming of JFK, and also because the novelty of space adventure has, to some degree, worn off. Nothing more was heard, yet NASA has been squirrelling away on the plan anyhow, chopping budgets to real science missions in order to plan human missions to the Moon and Mars.

As a Star Trek fan and generally pro-science person who still draws inspiration from the Apollo Moon landings, I might be expected to support these goals. But the devil is truly in the details. The fact is that going to Mars turns out to be incredibly dangerous to the point of being essentially impossible, and thus also bound to be astronomically expensive even to attempt. And all this is to accomplish goals that we are already meeting via robotic exploration on Mars.

The dangers of sending humans to Mars are legion. First is the distance. The moon takes a few days to get to, but Mars takes over eight months. These are months the crew would have to exist in highly cramped conditions, taking care to not damage their tenuous vessel and losing bone and muscle strength all the time. After the same time coming back, humans would be in pretty rough shape on returning to Earth. The probability of accidents and catastrophe will mount to very high levels. More important is the fuel needed. The truly stupendous Saturn V was needed to loft the moon crafts, and far more will be needed just to get to Mars. Mars has 2.3 times the gravity of the Moon, so far more fuel would be needed both to arrest descent to, and to lift off from Mars. Mars has negligible atmosphere, especially oxygen, so huge amounts of supplies, including oxygen, would need to be brought along as well.

All these issues are probably surmountable. What may not be surmountable are radiation exposure issues. On earth we live in the cocoon of Earth's magnetosphere and under a heavy blanket of atmosphere, both of which protect us from intense cosmic and solar high-energy radiation. The Apollo astronauts, specially scheduled to avoid solar flares, were exposed to doses from 1X to 10X the yearly occupational allowed exposure (0.1 rads) in a matter of days. Extending that to the year plus involved in going to and existing on Mars yields exposures that are not only damaging, but possibly fatal (hundreds of rads). And shielding them with water, lead, or similar materials, is essentially impossible, due to obvious weight constraints.

To back up, one might ask.. what is the point of this exercise anyway? We are already mounting quite successful missions to Mars, thank you very much, with robots that have spent years trolling around the Martian landscape, sampling materials, snapping photos, and doing spectroscopic analysis. After a few more generations of rovers, it will be literally impossible to imagine anything they can't do that humans on the spot could.

Clearly scientific discovery and analysis is not the reason. What is the real reason? It is psychological- the adventure of it, to voyage far and wide, to spread our seed, plant our flag, and embody the archetype of the star-man, heavens-transcending, god-touching hero (e.g. Dave Bowman). The spiritual power of this adventure was greatest the first time at the climax of Apollo 11, and met with diminishing returns since then, petering out even by the end of the Apollo program. Turning back to Mars, a popular science fiction series paints our colonization of Mars in gritty but glowing terms, progressing from Red Mars to Green, and lastly to Blue. Adventure, derring-do, and spirituality were revolutionary reasons to go to the Moon, but less compelling reasons to go to Mars, now that we have seen the beauties and incredible harshness of all the planets, including Mars, up close.

Another reason may be the continuation of NASA's manned flight program. The excitement of space flight has been ebbing for years, coming to a sad end in the virtually pointless International Space Station, which might soon be held hostage by Russia- the only country with the wherewithal to get there. The station has no scientific rationale other than the study of the effects of space on humans- its other rationales of materials science, quirky biology, etc. are clearly not enough to interest any serious companies or academics, and thus the station has always been a solution in search of a question. The NASA manned program appears to spend more time inspiring elementary school students to do science and become astronauts than in actually doing serious or useful science. Recently, it has taken to hosting tourists on the space station. Its missions have become a circus of happy talk and kumbaya in space, at least when shuttles are not blowing up. The manned program is frankly a mess, and its only productive use has been to service the Hubble telescope, which, as another robot in space, has been a scientific as well as cultural gem.

The recent shuttle disasters were both ascribed in large part to a problematic culture at NASA, one which valued cheerleading over science, and public relations over truth. The manned program was always a PR program first and foremost, but has by this point become a inertial bureaucracy in symbiosis with its contractors that feeds on (and feeds) the public's faded romance with space dating from the Apollo program, without having a larger purpose, whether scientific, geostrategic, or even aesthetic.

We already go far beyond Earth by way of robots, which need no air, food, or other life support. And robots are critical to our future here on earth as well. Robotics and virtual reality are the technologies of the future, enabling us to learn, work, and play in remote locations, to telecommute, raise productivity, energy efficiency, and living standards. That is where money should be invested, and how we should be voyaging to phenomenally hazardous locations (or even across town). NASA should embrace this future of robotics and human extension with vigor, and not keep flogging past glories of top-gun derring-do.

The fact is that space is never going to be a good place for humans. Our fantasies of living on the moon and other planets, let alone colonizing them, are pure fiction. If we are already having problems living within our means on the Earth which is such a rich source of life-giving energy, food, and air, imagine how difficult it would be to live elsewhere with infinitely thinner means.

The Apollo program taught us one thing in the end, which is the Earth is unbelievably precious and life-giving. But it will not be for long if we continue to treat it as a way-station to the stars- as a home to be transcended and left behind rather than one to be nurtured and loved forever.