[tt] [wta-talk] LA Times on "Transhumans in Space"

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu> -----

From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:56:50 -0400
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: [wta-talk] LA Times on "Transhumans in Space"
Reply-To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup5oct05,0,6014472.story

Transhumans in space

What role will genetic engineering and modification of human beings play
in long-term space exploration? Is there any way humans in their present
form can survive long trips into deep space? All this week, Rand Simberg
and Homer Hickam debate the space program at 50.
October 5, 2007

Today, Hickam and Simberg debate genetic solutions to the challenges of
long-term space travel. Previously they discussed the grudge match
between private space entrepreneurs and the federal space agency,
examined the moon and Mars for signs of human life and assessed national
space ambitions and NASA's role in achieving them.



Get there faster

By Homer Hickam

So here we are at the end of our Dust-Up, Rand. I've enjoyed our civil
and cordial discussion, recognizing that we both want what is best for
our country and for the exploration of space.

I'm going to get to today's provocative questions, but first I'd like to
reflect a little on some of the commentary we've received during the
week. Some of the folks who have written come across to me as
essentially pessimistic and reflexively negative, not only about the
space program but about life in general. This bothers me, especially
because I believe that Americans should always be optimistic,
considering who and what we are and the freedoms we have. I have always
found the best way to live is to be optimistic and energetic and willing
to work hard for my dreams as well as the dreams of others.

Negative attitudes, in contrast, are terribly self-destructive. I wrote
a book called "We Are Not Afraid" that maybe could help some of these
folks, who I'm sure really don't like being so miserable. I'm not trying
to sell a book here - it came out in 2002 and already had a great run -
But I do urge folks who think life is a little slice of hell, and nobody
is good, and nothing wonderful is ever going to happen to them to maybe
go to their local library and take a peek at it. I want all those sour,
gloomy folks out there who seem to have trouble grabbing the spark of a
good life to rethink the way they think. Remember, it isn't the dreamers
who have good lives, it's the doers. Remember also what I call the three
Ps of success: passion, planning and perseverance. First, look inward
and figure out what your passion in life is. Then, get yourself a plan
to attain it, which almost always means more education. Of course, the
most important of the Ps is perseverance. Persevere with a plan to reach
your passion and life will be good. This I promise. Of course, Rand, you
know all this. You have a good productive life because you knew
instinctively the three Ps.

Now, to the question of the day. Rand, I doubt seriously that genetic
engineering and modifying human beings is ever going to play a role in
space exploration. The moral and philosophical ramifications of such an
idea are breathtaking to the extreme. And from a practical viewpoint,
why bother? We already have robots to explore space, and we can design
them even better in the future. Even genetically tweaked flesh and blood
is never going to be as strong and durable as steel titanium, and
aluminum. Of course, if the world got taken over by some neo-Nazi outfit
in the future, I guess anything is possible, but otherwise, it isn't
likely to happen.

The second question on whether humans in their present form can survive
long trips into deep space is a really good one. The answer is, it
depends on the ship, how fast it can go, the destination and the humans
going. Because we don't have any starships, nor will we for some time,
I'm going to focus on a tangible mission, humans to Mars. This much we
know for certain. The space between Earth and Mars is a very harsh
place. It has temperature extremes from super-hot to super-cold, and it
is filled with deadly radiation.

Mars is also a very, very long way and, using our present technology,
i.e. chemical rockets, it would take many months to get there. One thing
we've learned about space is that the human body starts to fall apart
after relatively short exposures to microgravity (weightlessness). Our
bones atrophy, our muscles go soft and our hearts get weaker. Of course,
artificial gravity would help that situation, but so far the only idea
anyone has come up with is to put space humans in a big centrifuge. The
problem with that is no one has ever tried it and we're not sure how the
human inner ear will take it. It just may be that if we landed a human
on Mars after being spun for some months, he would stagger around like a
drunk congressman. Even when his head stopped spinning, likely our poor
human would glow in the dark from all the radiation received on the way.

So all this is my way of saying that I sincerely doubt humans are ever
going to Mars on chemical rockets. It's just too long a trip for mere
mortals, even ones who love to be cooped up for months and don't mind
getting cancer, damaged hearts or early osteoporosis.

So what's a Mars ship designer to do? The answer is he must design a
ship that gets through space just as fast as possible, one that can zip
through all that radiation and maybe provide a little gravity along the
way. In other words, what is needed to go to Mars are nuclear ships, big
boomers that once lighted, stay lighted to accelerate halfway to Mars,
then turn around to decelerate, thus providing a form of straightforward
gravity. Nukes could get humans to Mars in a matter of weeks, not
months, meaning their human cargo would be in pretty good shape to land
and go to work. So you "Let's go to Mars" folks, start pressing for big,
bad nuclear rockets if you're really serious. To consider this idea
further, you might want to take a look at an interview on big space
boomers I gave to Nuclear News a couple of years ago.

So as Forrest Gump said, that's all I've got to say about that. Thank
you, dear readers, for sticking with us. I hope we've said some things
you haven't considered and will now give some thought. And thank you,
Rand, for a most interesting discussion. I hope you've enjoyed it as
much as I have!

Homer Hickam is an engineer, former NASA designer and astronaut trainer,
a veteran of the 4th Infantry Division in the Vietnam War and the author
of nine bestselling books, including the acclaimed memoir "Rocket Boys,"
which was made into the film "October Sky."



Don't count the mutants out just yet

By Rand Simberg

Well, Homer, I agree with you about the pessimists. I'm fundamentally
optimistic about our future, here on Earth and in space, though it
sometimes seems as though the folks in Washington are doing everything
they can to peg my gloom meter. But I think that you yourself are too
pessimistic about what advances we'll be making in biotechnology and
other related areas in the future, perhaps even the near future.

I have nothing against nuclear rockets, and am in fact all in favor of
them. But I don't think that they're a panacea for the challenges of the
extraterrestrial environment to human physiology. Fortunately, people
are already working on techniques - some of which derive from existing
natural ones that we're born with but which our bodies forget how to do
as we age, and some artificial ones that use molecular-level devices for
doing body repair at a cellular level. The even better news is that they
are doing so for reasons having nothing to do with spaceflight, which
means that their continued funding will be more secure.

Radiation damage is simply cellular damage. If we can learn how to
repair such damage - something that our bodies do well when young - and
do it fast enough, one can sustain an almost arbitrarily large amount of
it while staying in good health. (Note that if you want to ride a
nuclear rocket, radiation repair would be a handy trick as well.)

Cardiovascular deconditioning in free-fall is simply a matter of
vascular muscles atrophying from lack of use because they don't have to
work as hard to pump blood against gravity. There may be techniques
developed to mitigate this as well (again, for strengthening
cardiovascular systems even in one gravity, which would reduce the
incidence of earthly coronaries, strokes and aneurysms). Bone
de-densification is (partially) a consequence of lack of exercise and
the shock of walking, which could be mitigated by molecular osteopathic
repair, something that many aging women could use right now.

Even without such advanced technologies, of course, humans in new
environments will evolve to them, as they have to new environments on
Earth (e.g., squat body types among the Inuit to reduce the
heat-radiation area of the body to maintain body temperature in the
cold, or less melanin content in the skin at high latitudes to allow the
absorption of more vitamin D from less available sunlight). Will someone
raised in a zero-gravity environment, who after generations has only
vestigial legs from lack of need, or perhaps more prehensile toes or
even a tail as an extra appendage with which to grab on to holds, still
be a human?

Coming from the other direction, what if we take the titanium and
aluminum and silicon emissaries that we've been sending out to other
worlds and upload our minds into them, if such a thing is possible?
Would they be human?

All of this discussion, of course, raises the question - what is human
and what is a transhuman? And who will settle space?

Joel Garreau wrote a very good book on the coming age of machine
intelligence and enhanced humans, called "Radical Evolution," in which
he asks just such questions. If we can imbue machines with our own
consciousness, are they human? Or do we need the hormones that
continually wash through our bodies and brains and seem to mediate our
emotions and feelings? Are people suffering diseases that may be caused
when such processes get out of control, including schizophrenia and
clinical depression, still human? And if so, if we come up with a cure
and can calm the chemical storms roiling the synapses, have they become
less so? And note, Homer, it doesn't require some monstrous return of
the Nazis for this to happen - just free individuals, making individual
decisions to enhance their bodies, and (hopefully, anyway) their lives.

Garreau came up with something he called the Bard Test (analogous to the
famous Turing Test to determine if an entity was intelligent and
conscious). If you could take the person (or persons) who wrote
Shakespeare's works, and show him the interactions of such creatures,
would he recognize them as human? Think of it as kind of like the old
saying about art, or pornography, "I can't define human, but I know it
when I see it." He uses "Star Trek" as an example. Picard and Riker?
Sure. Troi? Despite the empathic stuff, yup. Worf? Well, once you get
past the bizarre ridges and facial features, pretty much, yeah. How
about Data? Could be. Sure have to give him points for a good effort.

Life has been evolving on this planet for hundreds of millions of years.
So far, the highest product of that evolutionary process (at least in
terms of enabling life to expand beyond the planet on which it was born)
is the human species. Humans put a little beeping sphere into orbit 50
years ago to get things rolling, and humans will lead the charge of life
out into the cosmos. In the future, they may not be the fragile bags of
meat and bone we know today, but I suspect that they will be creatures
who fill the universe with life and love and laughter (and yes, all of
the other, less desirable traits that go with being human), and they
will be our children.

I've enjoyed this discussion too, Homer. I hope that we can do it again,
perhaps on the 100th anniversary, in a bar in the shadow of the walls of
Tycho, or with a long view of a lunar mare, perhaps overlooking the
historic Apollo 11 site. And I hope (and am optimistic) that we'll still
be young enough to enjoy it.

Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and manager, and
commenter on space policy. He is also the blogger behind the website
Transterrestrial Musings. 

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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