In defense of manifest destiny in space
Manifest destiny, a 19th-century concept that stated that the United States was ordained to spread across North America, bringing with it democracy and capitalism, has fallen out of favor in recent years. According to an article in History.com, modern historians have pointed out that manifest destiny resulted in wars with Mexico and the Native Americans and a host of other evils.
Now, in a recent article in the Daily Beast, written by Joanna Thompson, a freelance science writer, insists that any attempts to recreate the western frontier expansion in space must be stopped forthwith. The argument against settlements on the moon and Mars seems more couched in environmentalist enthusiasms than the potential for war and oppression. No one lives anywhere in the solar system who could be oppressed or made war on by rapacious settlers out to grab land and resources. Those humans need to be stopped from messing up other planets in the same way they are alleged to have done the Earth.
The author of the article directs special ire toward billionaire space entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Musk has often expressed his desire to build a city on Mars, in order to make humankind a multi-planet species. Bezos wants to build free-flying space settlements out of asteroid materials that were once envisioned by his mentor at Princeton, Gerard K. O’Neill. Bezos would like to rezone Earth as a kind of residential park, moving heavy industries and mining off the home planet.
Both visions, which are not mutually exclusive, are beautiful expressions of the same imperative that has always motivated people to leave the familiar and the comfortable for the new, dangerous, but potentially rewarding. The western frontier created new nations, including the United States. The space frontier could do the same across the solar system and hence to the stars.
Thompson and others want to stop the space frontier before it begins. At best, the moon and Mars would become science preserves, like Antarctica, where commercial development is forbidden by international law.
The problem is that the moon and Mars cannot become Antarctica. Antarctica is close enough that the supplies scientists who stay there need can be shipped from the outside. The moon and especially Mars are at the end of a long enough supply line to make even sustaining small science bases like McMurdo prohibitively expensive. Even pure-hearted scientists who would just be there in pursuit of knowledge and not profit would need to live off the land. They would have to mine the moon and Mars for resources just to survive. A lunar or Martian science base would inevitably evolve into a fully self-sustaining settlement.
Besides, even taking into account the evils of slavery and Native American dispossession, the founding of the United States has to be seen as a good thing. The United States led coalitions that put an end to Nazism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism. America is even now a bulwark against Islamist terror and Chinese Communist oppression and imperialism. One of the intractable controversies in American politics stems from the desire of millions who want to immigrate to the United States, legally or not. So many people would not care to move to a place built on evil.
The human race’s expansion beyond Earth would indeed be like the settling of the Americas, writ large. But it would be so in a good way, enhancing the wealth and the freedom of all humanity, those who remain behind, and those who venture forth to make new lives for themselves.
The spread of the human race to the space frontier is inevitable. The only question is who will lead it? If people in the West listen to the blandishments of those who do not want to sully other worlds with humans, then China will lead the way. Communist China does not care about freedom, equality, or even the environment. All the Chinese Communist Party cares about is power. A world where Communist China dominates the space frontier will be hellish beyond imagination.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
