From NEWSWEEK, 1/20/04:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4008805/
Spaced-Out Invaders
The Bush administration's designs on Mars and the moon are, well, a
little spacey
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
The Earth has depleted all its natural resources.
Life has become grim and hopeless.
The only viable option for mankind is to colonize the moon, mine its
surface for minerals and provide a limitless source of clean energy
for the home planet.
That's not just the basic plotline of the disastrous 1975 television
series "Space: 1999," it also describes President Bush's latest energy
proposal.
You might not have heard this idea in Bush's "Back to the Moon" speech
last week (mostly because there was so much to ridicule that plenty of
eye-roll inspiring proposals slipped past reporters), but the White
House's latest long-term strategy for dealing with the global energy
crisis is to turn the moon into a huge mining colony.
Here is what the president said:
"The moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw
materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or
breathable air."
Here is what the president meant:
"My friends at Halliburton are very eager to strip-mine the moon and
since most of my policies seem to come from outer space anyway, I
said, 'What the hell?'"
As a fan of "Star Trek" and "Total Recall," I am, of course, in love
with the president's plan to harvest the mineral wealth of the moon.
As an American, I'm dubious.
Most important, as an entrepreneur, I'm saddened that someone
out-hustled me in setting up a crackhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, next
to the White House (seriously, if Hollywood science-fiction is now the
basis of American public policy, someone is on the pipe at 1600).
This is not to undermine American ingenuity.
We all know that, given enough resources, there are plenty of planets,
comets, asteroids, black holes and nebulae that we could strip-mine,
defile and abandon as a slag heap.
We're good at this kind of thing.
But the Bush speech is nothing more than sci-fi--low-budget sci-fi at
that.
The president's $1 billion allocation of new funds is the public
policy equivalent of most lame science fiction: big boulders made of
painted Styrofoam, spaceship crashes that are dramatized by simply
shaking the camera and having the crew members lurch from side to side
and time-travelers who routinely interact with their younger selves
(which, as anyone knows, would rupture the space-time continuum!).
But give Bush more credit:
He's not listening sci-fi writers in Hollywood; as always, he listens
to the econo-fi writers at companies like Enron, Halliburton, Boeing
and Lockheed.
As The Washington Post reported last week, the White House started
revisiting these companies' long-held fantasies once China put a man
in orbit last year.
Suddenly, a new space race was on--and we didn't want the Chinese to
get back to the moon before we did.
Thankfully, Bush campaign contributors are hot on the case!
Indeed, a key Halliburton scientist once admitted in Oil & Gas Journal
(what? You don't subscribe?) that human achievement is only a small
part of why we should explore space.
Rather, it represents "an unprecedented opportunity for both
investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our
abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth."
In other words, space exploration is really space exploitation.
In fairness to the president, I did a little research and found the
microscopic grain of truth in what he was saying.
It turns out that there is, indeed, an abundant quantity of something
called helium-3 just under the surface of the moon.
Forget for a second that we still lack the technology to use helium-3
for anything except making your voice sound really high and squeaky.
Thanks to nuclear fusion, helium-3 will someday be that
long-envisioned clean-burning, limitless energy supply.
Problem is, the Earth is actually running out of helium.
I could tell you why we're running out of helium, but you probably
already believe that it's all Bill Clinton's fault, so I won't bother
changing your mind.
The fact is, we're running out of helium...fast.
How fast?
Let's put it this way, by the year 2104, the Macy's Thanksgiving
Parade is going to suck.
But the moon has so much helium-3 that it practically floats.
Scientists estimate that the million tons of helium-3 on the moon
could provide enough energy to power the Earth for thousands of years
(or 28 Hummer-driving soccer moms for three weeks).
Of course, these estimates depend on which scientists are making the
estimates--the ones who predicted we'd all be living in a utopia of
perfectly fitting unitards or the ones who've crashed two space
shuttles in 17 years.
In either case, I don't trust these space scientists as far as I can
throw them (on Earth).
Two weeks ago, these same guys were scrambling to figure out why the
International Space Station--which is sort of the lynchpin of all
future space exploration--is leaking air, a substance that is
considered extremely important to astronauts.
And then, last week, these space guys were breaking out the champagne
just because the Mars rover, Spirit, was able to roll four feet on
Martian soil (imagine that, a solar-powered SUV! How come these rocket
scientists can't find a civilian spin-off for that?).
And what did they find on Mars in their first few days of motoring?
As Reuters reported, Spirit took pictures of "clumps of fine particles
that may be stuck together by the Martian equivalent of Epsom salts."
Epsom salts!
So, at least for now, all we're working towards is an unlimited supply
of medication for sore feet!
But someday, we'll get fuel--if we give the sun, the moon and the
stars to companies like Halliburton.
Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt (the last man to leave his
footprints on the moon) said that private companies would gladly rape
the moon if they can be assured of "a competitive rate-of-return."
(In other words, taxpayers pay for the rockets, NASA provides the
know-how and private companies skim the profits.)
Schmitt added that scratching the surface of the moon is just
scratching the surface.
There's a lot more helium-3 on Saturn and Uranus.
Watch out, my friends, these people are so desperate to make a buck
they're even looking at Uranus!
But the biggest problem as I see it is that mining the moon for U.S.
profit violates the Outer Space treaty of 1967 (not that the Bush
Administration has shown much loyalty to international treaties).
Then again, as a sci-fi fan, I hope Bush goes ahead and claims the
moon's resources for the United States.
That'll set up a truly titanic battle:
The United States vs. China.
World War III.
On the moon!
Now there's a sci-fi movie I'd pay to see!
_____________________________________________________
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Bush so-called administration.
Harry
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