Open Writing

If you were old enough at the time of the American moon-landing program, you’ll perhaps remember that the Cold War was at its height, and that there was considerable rivalry in Space between the US and the then Soviet Republic. In typical Cold War style, once the Russians realized they were being overtaken, they started to discredit the US program. For a time they actually went to the lengths of declaring that the US was faking the pictures from the moon by staging the action in a movie studio!

After moon shots Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17, the Russians reluctantly had to agree that there might actually be some truth in the US’ claims, and grudgingly got on with their own Space program, which included the design and construction of their version of a Space shuttle. The US was also embarking the development of an earth-orbiting vehicle that could be re-used, and that would be instrumental in building a Space Station. So for quite a while, the two countries had parallel programs, but with the collapse of communist rule, the Russians concluded it would be easier to join’em than beat’em.

Since then, everyone has joined the act in some way or other. To name just a few: Russian Space craft are running supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the Europeans and Japanese are contributing laboratory modules, and the Canadians, all kinds of manipulating devices. Astronauts are being drawn from almost any country with a PhD program, and one has to wonder whether the whole undertaking isn’t assuming the characteristics of the horse that was designed by a committee that ended up looking like a camel.

Ironically, the ISS construction is drawing towards completion just as the workhorse of the program, the Space Shuttle, is approaching its final days – a fine piece of coordinated planning, you might say.

When Space exploration was still a romantic notion, an often-repeated phrase was an Oscar Wilde aphorism, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of the first writers of extra-terrestrial themes, producing a series of novels in the 1900’s that were set on Mars. But probably the most prophetic fiction was that portrayed in the newspaper cartoon series “Buck Rogers,”whose title character first came into being in 1928, as Anthony Rogers.

Since 1966, the TV and movie sagas, “Star Treck” and “Star Wars” have carried the banner, but it’s clear that “Life” is having a hard time imitating art, or even coming close to approximating the elegance of the technology portrayed in Buck Rogers or Star Treck. Though Captain Kirk had his share of technical problems, they were nothing like as mundane as tiles falling off the outside of his Space ship Enterprise, or ammonia leaking from pipe joints, or a seized solar panel hinge.

And what a visual disappointment the space walks are. What happened to the fictional promise of astronauts flying free, under their own power? What we are treated to in reality is the image of robot-like figures, barely recognizable as space walkers, encased in what is almost a space craft its self, fastened to a manupulating arm or a tether, gasping like old men as they perform the simplest task.

As I write, Space Shuttle Endeavour has just hauled a huge Canadian robot, Dextre by name, up to the ISS. Taking away nothing from Canada’s wonderful technology, this monster is the most inelegant, un-robotic gizmo you ever saw – and it cost just $200 million! C-3PO from the original Star Wars movie it ain’t, not even R2-D2, and it doesn’t look as if it has much of a sense of humor either. The declared purpose of this 12 foot tall, 3,400-pound behemoth is to “Roam the outside of the Space Station doing odd jobs that previously required a Space walk.” Hey, like “Where does your pet gorilla sleep?” For my money, Dextre can do just whatever it pleases.

There are no clear estimates of what the ISS has cost to date; one estimate is 100 billion dollars. But this doesn’t incorporate the cost of other nation’s contributions, or projects such as the moon landing program that had to be undertaken before the ISS could be designed or built. So the real figure is more likely to be in the thousands of billions of dollars. If cost effectiveness was ever a consideration, the return on investment is not impressive.

While the general public is not privy to everything that happens on the ISS, you can bet your life that if some earth-shaking, scientific breakthrough was made there, it would be trumpeted loud and long. As it is, the Space programs have so far revealed that human beings lose body mass in microgravity conditions; spiders are still able to spin webs just like the ones they spin on earth; extra vehicular activities are exhausting and dangerous, and the most costly lubricants in the world don’t work all that well.

We have also learned from Space exploration that the other side of the moon is pretty much like the side we see all the time, and is made of the same stuff as our earth. Also that there may have been, could have been, probably was water on Mars several million years ago, and that somewhere on the Red Planet there is a fossilized microbe. We also now know that our solar system neighbors are just as inhospitable and terrifying as had been predicted. Oh, I almost forgot the NASA invention of that “Space blanket material” so beloved of hikers and mountaineers.

One argument that is made to justify continuing this obscene expenditure on Space exploration, is that we will eventually be able to set up a colony on the moon, and later on Mars. And why would we want to do that you may ask? Well, so that when we run out of natural resources on earth, we’ll be able to extract them from the moon and Mars and ship them back to earth. Come on guys, get real. By the time we’re theoretically able to do that, every last cent on earth will have been spent.

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