Do we need to reach the stars? It’s imperative

In the vast history of human exploration, SpaceX’s Starship emerges as a tipping point of innovation, charting a course toward the stars with unprecedented ambition. Designed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starship is not merely a spacecraft; it represents a paradigm shift in space travel, distinct from its predecessors in both form and function.

Advocaters may say that unlike traditional spacecraft, its stainless-steel silhouette conceals the potential for interplanetary travel, lunar colonization, and even rapid point-to-point travel on Earth. But what truly sets Starship apart is its commitment to reusability. Both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft are designed to be reused extensively, a revolutionary approach aiming to drive down the astronomical costs associated with space exploration.

But why reusability seems to be such a big deal with Starship? Because the long term objective of the mission is to make humanity a multiplanetary species. An endeavour that will most certainly imply a lot of try and error.

Elon Musk envisions a future where humans not only travel to Mars but establish a sustainable colony. The audacity of this objective leads to a philosophical question: Do we need to reach the stars?

While the idea of reaching the stars may seem like a sci-fi dream, Starship compels us to ponder our cosmic imperative. The Earth, our cradle, faces challenges ranging from resource depletion to environmental concerns. Starship embodies a potential solution — a pathway to ensure the resilience and continuity of humanity by extending our reach beyond our home planet.

By becoming a multiplanetary species, we hedge against existential risks, ensuring that our species persists, evolves, and explores the cosmic wonders that have inspired human curiosity for millennia. Starship, in this context, becomes a vessel not just for astronauts but for the collective dreams and aspirations of a species driven to explore the unknown.

Whether one sees it as a pragmatic solution to safeguard our future or a poetic pursuit of the infinite, SpaceX’s Starship ignites a conversation that transcends rocketry, asking us to gaze toward the cosmos and ponder: Do we need to reach the stars?

Until recently my answer to that question was no, we don’t need to. For me it was pretty much ridiculous thinking about terraformation of Mars when we have such a complex planetary crisis in our hands down here on Earth. If any, what used to make sense to me was to apply the ideas and efforts of terraformation research not to colonize Mars but to re-terraform Earth, and when saying this I’m not promoting geoengineering, as we have widely discussed on our paper on how the current planetary crisis is not well conceptualized under the Anthropocene framework (see https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2020.00214/full)

For example, in terms of Anthropocene that does not explicitly acknowledge the current key role of technology but only its human origin, a solution to Planetary Crisis may be searched into the technology itself in some sort of red queen process, as not identified as an important component of the problem. This would be similar to trying to resolve antibiotic bacteria resistance problems only by looking for better antibiotics (technological focus) without understanding that abuse in the use of antibiotics (technology) is a big part of the problem. Focusing too much on technological solutions may get us into a never-ending circle of problems made by abuse of technology that is meant to be fixed by using more technology that would lead to new problems (maybe even worst problems). In particular, there has been recent attention to the Big Solutions approach in terms of for example geoengineering, which is regarded by advocates as a creative and responsible technological option in the face of a Climate Crisis (Thiele, 2019). Nevertheless, these calls for emergency geoengineering need to be analyzed with extreme care in a full interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary manner (Blackstock and Low, 2018) because this kind of re-coupling with new unproven technologies could carry out hidden systemic risk, so Precautionary Principle (PP) should prevail (Taleb et al., 2014). On the other hand, a Technocene perspective could certainly promote technology de-coupling or at least a higher level of technology selection, promoting less invasive ones. For example, in terms of Climate Crisis society could embrace voluntary resignation to certain types of energy use to match sustainable energy budgets like the one promoted by MacKay (2008).

Planetary changes have occurred several times on Earth System, modeling not only its dynamics but also life evolution. Consider the profound impact to Earth System dynamics that came from the emergence of the 3,700-mile planetary scar we know as the East African Rift Valley some eons ago, or how about some 4 million years ago, grasslands began to replace thick forests, and a dramatic pattern emerged in which our ancestors adapted to the unstable environment by the increasingly inventive use of technology and enhanced social cooperation (Dartnell, 2019). Because normally these changes take very long periods, we tend to ignore them from the human perspective, but when talking about planetary-scale technologies these changes could take only a few years.

So, should we be concerned about, for example, the results by Lei et al. (2019) who have shown a suggesting chain of evidence that both ML5.7 and ML5.3 earthquakes from 2018 in Sichuan Province China were induced by nearby Hydraulic Fracking activities? Nevertheless, although these new technologies as fracking should be considered under very high scrutiny, some “old” technologies such as hydraulic engineering, has already proved to have the potential of drive mayor ecosystemic changes. In fact, Williams et al. (2014) identify “Humans as the third evolutionary stage of biosphere engineering of rivers.” For the authors, the first two bio-engineering forces are oxygenic photosynthesis and the development of vascular plants with root systems. Then in third place comes human activities such as drainage, agriculture, the construction of artificial water bodies, the development of artificial water storage and flow regulation structures, and some second-order effects as changes in global-scale chemical and biogeochemical modification of terrestrial water bodies (Meybeck, 2003).

Sometimes even small and apparently innocuous technology can add up to produce huge effects, which is the case of human use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) often used in aerosol cans and cooling devices such as fridges, that was demonstrated was the driver of Ozone layer depletion. Discovered using 20 years of ozone levels measurements over the Antarctic stations of Halley and Faraday by Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin, it was published in a foundational paper of 1985 that transformed the fields of atmospheric science and chemical kinetics and led to global changes in environmental policy (Farman et al., 1985; Solomon, 2019). Even “green” technologies could lead to important planetary changes if implemented massively (Kleidon, 2016) as could happen with Eolic energy production that at the end of the day extract kinetic energy out of climatic systems, “Large-scale exploitation of wind energy will inevitably leave an imprint in the atmosphere” (Buchanan, 2011, p. 9).

In the same way I used to think that instead of invest in space we should put our money in ocean exploration or biodiversity monitoring systems developing, which is in fact part of what I’ve being helping to do in México (see https://monitoreo.conabio.gob.mx/)

But then we had our first Spring School on Applied Physics and Math to Ecology (FisMatEcol) in which we had among others, two world leaders in thermodynamics applied to ecology and earth systems dynamics such as Karo Michaelian (2:18:20)

or Axel Kleidon (at the beginning).

Through their insights it became clear to me that life is a unavoidable emerging phenomena in a universe that evolves following a maximum entropy production arrow. In that sense also life on earth follow the same arroy that translate in solar photon dissipation arrow, that lead to the existence of plants and afterwords other life forms whose (oversimplifying) main thermodynamics function is to facilitate the expansion and survival of plants (the ultimate solar photon dissipation “machines”)

Let consider these thesis is roughly correct, what will happen when earth comes to an end by the expansion of the son in its stelar evolution to a red giant?

As far as we can prove Earth is the only place with life in the universe (even if possible to not be the only one). So if Earth comes to and end it could be the case that also life in the universe comes to an end. But if expanding the possibility of life is the thermodynamic purpose of all animals (including Homo Sapiens) then wouldn’t be our duty, an imperative, to explore the space in order to take life beyond Earth and allow it to survive?

Around min 21, Elon Musk comment on this in a way it echoes to some persisitent idea I have had lately: intergenerationality (see https://lopezoliverx.medium.com/science-as-an-intergenerational-endeavour-bcd144ca16d5).

So maybe we need to reach the stars is some sort of life insurance for hmo sapiens, but also for life itself. Nevertheless as with geoengineering we should also be caution about not destroying life on earth or stop being humans.

Trying to understand this point we developed a new ecological and evolutionary ontology the ecobionts (see https://researchers.one/articles/19.01.00001) to consider otherwise under represented role of social inheritance and niche construction.

Modern urban Homo Sapiens has become a Planetary force with mostly negative impact among others Climate Change and loss of Biodiversity which seems to be accelerated or magnified by socio-cultural process especially technology and economy. According to Young and co-workers in (50), mayor environmental impacts may be started as early as 10,000 years ago with the emergence of the agriculture which was a major turning point in the development of the human enterprise, with significantly more extensive modifications of the environment at larger scales. The two most important in terms of biophysical impacts were the clearing of forests and the tilling of grasslands for agricultural crops and the irrigation of rice. In some cases, these practices dramatically altered landscapes at a regional level. However, the rate and geographical scale of the spread of agriculture were still modest enough to produce no significant impacts on the dynamics of the Earth System. There is no strong evidence from global environmental records of human impacts associated with early agriculture. Social-ecological systems operated at the local and regional scales…. We coin the term Technobiont to refer to Homo Sapiens under modern urban organization far away from natural scaling. In this way, we consider that we are more than in a Technocene instead of Anthropocene because for several tens of thousands of years, Homo Sapiens remains under the natural restrictions in terms of scaling for example or extension of its impacts.

Then maybe this Technocene is the equivalent of what Dr. Arroway character pose in Sagan’s Contact:

• Panel member: If you were to meet these Vegans, and were permitted only one question to ask of them, what would it be?
• Ellie Arroway: Well, I suppose it would be, how did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?