Saving Civilization

‘If we dare not – or cannot – change society we will become victim of our own success.’

Victim of Success: Civilization at Risk ISBN 9780955736919

The Space Shuttle Atlantis will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, but first it will take off on Friday 8th July for one last mission. If the Economist is right in its recent editorial, this will be ‘the end of the Space Age.’

The history of manned space flight began in 1961 when Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit of the Earth in the Vostok spacecraft and reached a pinnacle in 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. The vision was that this was to be the start of humankind’s expansion to other worlds and other solar systems. The aim of the Space Shuttle programme was to make space travel routine, reliable, safe and cheap, with one shuttle flight a week at a cost of less than $2,000 dollars per Kg. In the end, the Shuttle flew once every three months at a cost of over $50,000 per kilogram and two out of six shuttles crashed killing the entire crew.

I hope Atlantis comes safely home to take up its place as a museum exhibit but I hope also that this does not signal the end of human aspirations to expand beyond the confines of Earth and establish colonies on other planets.

The attraction of continuing to explore space has lessened, but the imperative to do so has increased dramatically. Robot missions have explored the planets in our solar system and found inhospitable worlds where we could only eke out an existence in sealed domes. We now understand that our beautiful world is unique and although in the long future we may find another planet in orbit around a different star it will not have the abundant natural provisions of planet Earth. The prospect of building a new life far away has lost its appeal but the imperative to find another planet is strong because of our Lemming-like dash to exploit the Earth’s resources without regard to the state of the world for future generations.

It is time for real change.