Please also see this post as published on Medium.
Imagine you could send a single short message through time to anyone who has ever lived, telling them one modern fact that would give them hope for the future of humanity. What message would you send? I don’t think you could find anything more powerful than this: Human beings have walked on the Moon, and upon first arrival left a plaque that read “We came in peace for all mankind.”
No other event in human history would be both so understandable (everyone can see the Moon) and so amazing (a seemingly impossible feat) at the same time. But not only did we do it, we did it in a way that made it belong to all of humanity, not just to the astronauts who made the trip, to the people who built the program, or to the nation that paid for it.
We have now reached the 50thanniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on July 20, 1969. Those of us old enough to remember that day will recall how it riveted attention around the world, even from our enemies at the time. As Neil Armstrong took “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” we all shared a brief moment when humanity seemed poised on the brink of a transcendent future. The space colonies of Stanley Kubrick’s (and Arthur C. Clarke’s) 2001: A Space Odysseyseemed surely achievable by 2001.
It has not quite turned out that way. The last Moon voyage ended in 1972, and no one since has gone beyond low-Earth orbit, a distance barely 1/1000 of the distance to the Moon. The startling truth is that, to scale, the difference between our current human space voyages and the voyages of Apollo is as great as the difference between a walk the length of New York’s Central Park and a walk across the United States.
More consequentially, the optimism of the Apollo era has faded away. Where popular science fiction once focused on the harmonious future of Star Trek, we now more commonly see dystopian worlds ahead. This is in many ways ironic, because while we have a long way to go, research shows that the world overall has seen great progress in reducing poverty and improving health and human rights. Yet most people fail to recognize this progress, and this in turn makes the public overly pessimistic about our ability to solve current problems and likely also contributes to the divisiveness of our political discourse.
All this raises an obvious question: Is there a link between the human space program and the national and global mood? I believe the answer is a clear yes, and that we’ll be far better able to solve our problems here on Earth if we have the inspiration that human exploration can provide. That is why I think it is critical to our future that we return to the Moon and set the stage for voyages beyond. But we must do so in the way promised by Apollo, not as private companies or as individual nations, but as a global community.
Picture an international research outpost on the Moon, where people of every nation, every race, and every religion can work together to advance our common good. Every child, in every nation, will then be able to look up at the Moon in the sky and say, “We are working together up there, so surely we can work together down here.” This may not by itself solve problems like climate change or global terrorism, but by providing a constant reminder of the great potential of the human race, it will surely help.
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Postscript 1: Do’s and Don’ts for Return to the Moon
How do we ensure that a return to the Moon is done in a way that meets an Apollo-like vision of an international research outpost that can inspire kids around the world? Here are a few suggested do’s and don’ts:
- Do make sure that we have the necessary international collaboration.
- Do create new educational programs to capitalize on this new exploration.
- Do design lunar research programs that will contribute to solving Earthly problems, which might include maximizing efforts to identify technology spinoffs, mining lunar resources that can thereby prevent mining in environmentally sensitive regions on Earth (and perhaps help lead to energy from nuclear fusion, using the helium-3 that can be found on the Moon but not on Earth), and building lunar observatories to help all of us better understand our place in the universe.
- Don’t do any of this in search of military advantage.
- Don’t allow anyone to try to “own” the Moon (it belongs to everyone).
- Don’t fund it by taking money from other important programs, particularly in education or science.
If we follow this prescription, then much as occurred with Apollo, we’ll surely find that any dollars we invest in this new program will be returned to our economy many times over.
Postscript 2: The Economic Value of Inspiration
Economists are virtually unanimous in the opinion that the dollars invested in Apollo — and, more generally, in space exploration of all types (both human and robotic) — generate a huge return to the national and global economy even when you count just the quantifiable return from technological spinoffs.
But I believe that there’s an even greater return to be had from the inspiration that space exploration can provide to kids. Inspiration is obviously not easy to quantify, but for the sake of argument, consider the following:
- Suppose that building an international Moon base provides only enough inspiration to cause an additional 1% of the U.S. population — which represents about 3.3 million people — to get a 4-year college degree. This is a pretty conservative assumption, especially when you consider that the percentage of the U.S. adult population (over age 25) with a 4-year college degree has already risen from under 8% in 1960 to about 34% today. (Yes, I do think much of that can be traced to Apollo and other space efforts, but that’s a different argument.)
- Statistical studies of income show that, over a 40-year career, the average college graduate earns over $1.2 million more than a high school graduate.
- So the 40-year economic impact of having an additional 1% of the population with a 4-year college degree is 3.3 million people x $1.2 million/person ≈ $4 trillion.
In other words, if we were to spend, say, $200 billion to create the Moon base, the inspirational return would be 20 times the initial investment, even with the very conservative 1% assumption.
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Reminders from past Space News E-mails:
- Please read this post I wrote on Medium about my recent debate on global warming in New York City.
- See this article to learn about current efforts to upgrade the Colorado Scale Model Solar System and help advance the Voyage National Program.
- There is still some space on Doug Duncan’s 2020 eclipse trip, which I’ll be a part of. If you decide to join us, please put my name (Jeff Bennett) in the box “How did you hear of the trip?” which will lead to a donation going toward our update of the Colorado Scale Model Solar System.
- Don’t forget to download the FREE Totality app.
- I still have a couple potential openings for the 2019/2020 academic year in my Free Visit Program, in which I will come speak to the public, universities, and K-12 schools at my own expense. Click here for details and the application process.