Space Forum / Space Policy / July 2008

Space travel technology has already given us an extension of our writ
on this world, and saved us from premature destruction.   We will
survive only as long as we invest in space travel in the future.

The Past -ending warfare as we knew it.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky a Russian math teacher worked out the
principles of rocket travel and in 1903 published his famous equation,
showing that it was possible to leave the Earth using rockets.
Goddard after reading a translation of Tsiolkovsky's paper in 1909
began working seriously on rockets.

Tsiolkovsky and Goddard stick out in my mind as part of that
generation that brought space travel to us by the middle of the 20th
century.  Tsiolkovsky, a math teacher, who worked out the principles
of rocket travel.  Goddard the experimentalist who worked out the
technical details of making working rockets and later advancing the
art of liquid fueled rockets.   Goddard built a number of rockets for
the military during the first world war.

Goddard was famous in the 1920s - and was supported by National
Geographic Society and Lindbergh among others in his efforts to reach
beyond Earth.  He inspired rocket societies around the world, not the
least being the German Rocket Society - with its members Werner
vonBraun and other notable rocket men in later years.

In 1905 as the details of rockets were being worked out, details of
the atom were being discovered - and Einstein showed us in his famous
paper of that year "Does the Inertia of a body depend on its energy
content?" that matter and energy were the same thing.

Since that time, people were thinking that perhaps someday the
tremendous energy held stationary within each and every particle of
nature might be released and used by human industry to transform life
on Earth from one of deprivation, to one of plenty.

On September 12, 1933, the famous physicist Lord Rutherford was quoted
in The Times of London as saying that anyone that looked to the atom
as a potential source of power was "talking moonshine."

The Hungarian theoretical physicist Leo Szilard who left Germany at
the start of World War 2 to live in London, later said,
"Pronouncements of experts to the effect that something cannot be done
have always irritated me." As a consequence, as Szilard stopped on a
street corner in London’s Southampton Row after reading the article
waiting for the light to change, he was thinking of how Rutherford
might be proved wrong.

As the light changed to green and he began to walk across the street,
he realized that the solution was to find an element that would be
split when struck by neutrons and would release two neutrons for every
neutron that it absorbed.

With a large enough quantity of this element a chain reaction could be
created, with two neutrons becoming four, four becoming eight, and so
on. This simple, yet profound insight, would lead to nuclear power
plants, and their more sinister cousins, atomic bombs.

On December 2, 1942 in Chicago's Stagg field, the first self-
sustaining nuclear reactor was built that realized Szilard's vision.
On July 16, 1945 - the first atomic bomb was detonated at the
Alamagordo Gunnery and Bombing Range.

The first use of the atomic bomb in warfare quickly followed - on
August 6, 1945 against the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  On August 9,
1945 another bombing followed against the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
On August 15, 1945 Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers
and World War 2 was at an end.

Even though in the previous year 67 Japanese cities were firebombed by
the allies using conventional weapons, it was the attack and total
destruction of two cities, each by a single bomber, carrying a single
bomb, to each city that killed 140,000 people outright, and led to
cessation of hostilities.

Rocketry development paralelled the development of atomics during this
era.  The German Rocket Society disbanded under the NAZIs, later had
its most prominent members working for the German Wehmacht, which
built the V1 and V2 rockets that bombed England and Belgium.   The V1
was the first cruise missile.  The V2 the first sub-orbital rocket.

Project Amerika was to build a two-stage rocket using the V2 as an
upper stage it would be capable of reaching across the Pacific from
Germany to bomb New York City with a German atomic bomb.  The V2 was
also known as the A9 which would ride atop an A10 rocket.   An A11
would carry the V2 into space as a 3 stage rocket.  A12 would turn the
A11/A9 upper stages into a space transporter that would carry 10 tons
into LEO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_series#A9

This all by 1940s.

In 1946 Convair built the MX-774 rocket for the USA derived from
captured V2s.  In 1951 the USA began the Atlas program which resulted
in a space capable rocket in 1957.  In 1953 the Russian space engineer
Korolov built the R1 - a copy of the V2 based on captured materials.
Later Korolov evolved his own rocket design the R7 - the first of
which was launched in August 1957, and the second flight in October
1957, orbited the first satellite Sputnik, which led to the space race
between the USA and USSR.

The ability to orbit the earth implies the ability to strike at any
part of the Earth from any other part of the Earth.  The ability to
destroy a city with a single device carried aboard an orbital vehicle
means that anyone anywhere with the technical means to do so can
destroy any city anywhere on Earth.

The entire world is now the front line of a new battlefield.

Before the development of this capability, humanity fought two global
wars - calling into question our ability to usefully manage what
science and technology have given industrial humanity - not only do
humans grow and can beans with tremendous efficiency using modern
industrial techniques, but humans also are able to dispense death with
amazing efficiency as well, using the same industrial techniques;

World War 2 -   72,000,000 died - 1939-1945
World War 1 -   59,000,000 died - 1914-1918

For comparison

Vietnam War -     5,000,000 dies - 1945-1975

Atomics and rockets magnified our capacity for destruction many times
- leading to the real possibility that humans could nearly extinguish
themselves from the face of the Earth by fighting a global
thermonuclear war

World War 3 -  6,600,000,000 died - present day

The prospect of nuclear annihilation had led to a situation where all
out global war is unthinkable.  This led to the Cold War and the
posturing of the world's super powers throughout the latter half of
the 20th century.  Despite increasingly difficult regional and civil
wars - no all out war has been fought following the development of
rockets and atomics that gave us the capacity for nuclear
annihlation.   In this sense, the development of these technologies,
the technologies that have the capacity to take us to the stars, gave
us first the impetus toward global peace.

Control of terror, and the propensity toward terror acts, along with
the exitence of loose nukes, in the modern era, will lead toward a
more inclusive, and practical system of instituting world peace.  This
too will use the results of space faring technology, space
communications, space sensing, space navigation.

The Present - tying the world together

Sputnik 1 carries a radio relay that operated at 20 and 40 MHz.   AT&T
and British General Post Office orbited Telstar 1 in 1962 to provide
radio relay across the Atlantic between Britain and the USA.   Syncom
3 was the first satellite launched to GEO in 1964 - to televise the
Japanese 1964 summer Olympics.

Since that time hundreds of satellites have been orbited, to provide a
wide range of information services - tying our world tightly
together.   We have moved from early satellites which communicated
from one point to another point - so called point to point
transmissions -to more direct broadcast satellites - that communicate
one to many receivers.   Today the frontier of communications is many
to many - with systems like Teledesic and Iridium.  Ultimately, the
entire Earth will be a wireless hot spot with a seamless digital
information resource available everywhere.   This provides the basis
of a global economy and cooperation among all governments of the world
to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

This is the second great benefit of space travel

The Future - meaning in the modern world

Werner vonBraun began research on a 1 million lb thrust engine in 1953
- and established the feasability of such an engine by 1955.    A
400,000 lb thrust engine was built and test fired by 1956 in Santa
Susana California.  The largest in history up to that time.   A
1,000,000 lb thrust test stand was activated in 1956.   In 1957 a 1.5
million lb thrust engine - the F1 - was designed.  In 1958 a contract
to build these engines was let.   In  January 1959 a 1 million lb
thrust engine was demonstrated.  Later that year, in March, the first
F1 - a 1.5 million lb thrust engine was test fired.  In June, the
first serious study of flight to the moon was begun using the results
of these tests.

In 1965 the first test firing of a fully configured S-1C first stage
was completed, also the S-II was test fired, the same month.  A month
later the SIVB was test fired.   A month later, all 3 stages fired -
simulating a lunar mission - was completed.

May 1966 - the first full scale Saturn V Apollo spacecraft combination
rolled out at the Cape - AS-500F pathfinder test.

Following a series of explosions with the SIVB, a fire during a ground
test in the Apollo capsule, and budgetary cutbacks due to the
escalating costs of Vietnam and entitlement programs - the moon
program was delayed and costs escalated.

Nov 1967 - SA-501 - test launch of an unpiloted Saturn V rocket
Apr 1968 - SA-502 - test launch of an unpiloted Saturn V rocket
Dec 1968 - Apollo 8 - first manned circumlunar flight

In December 1968 three astronauts orbited the Moon and broadcast
images of the Earth back to Earth in the vicinity of the moon.  The
high quality photos they returned to Earth released a revolutionary
idea - of the Earth as a single place in the cosmos.  With that idea,
related ideas began to surface.  That the Earth - as a planet - had
common problems, that humanity - as a single people -have common
issues.   With these ideas, radical concepts, that previously seemed
irrelevant to many became central - and meaningful and gave rise to a
plethora of movements and issues - not the least of which was a outre
concept called the Environmental Movement.  The image of Earth from
the moon, the blue marble taken that December still emblazons the
Earth Flag - which embodies the hopes and dreams of many

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_flag

Later, some of the astronauts that went to the moon, and returned to
Earth, were transformed by their experience.  Some of these were
motivated to create institutes to further the insights they gathered
from their experience

http://www.noetic.org/

So, space travel as it has been practiced has changed the world for
the better.  It has ended modern industrial warfare as practiced in
the first half of the 20th century.  It has tied the world together
creating a common vehicle for commerce and politics.  It has given us
insight to our place in the cosmos, and informed us and organized us
going forward.

Next, I will discuss what we can expect today of this capacity, and
where it might lead us in the future.