Direct Action: Economic and political acts in which the actors use their power to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to others (e.g. authorities and governments).
On Saturday 30th May 2020 at 15.22 EST, two American citizens, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, left Earth and headed for Space. They did so on board an American-made rocket, launching from American soil, the first time in 9 years that the USA has had this sort of capability. The launch has been heralded as “a new era” the first step towards re-discovering the spirit of Apollo and getting humanity out among the stars.
Naturally, this has been met with a lot of patriotic pride in the USA. “America’s back!” and other nationalistic cries have surrounded every part of this launch. Even President Trump, sensing an opportunity to bathe in the glory of an achievement he had very little to do with, appeared on the NASA feed, praising the “American ethos of big thinking and risk taking” that made this possible.
But the USA no longer needing to lease Russian spacecraft for their manned missions to the International Space Station is not what makes Saturday’s launch so significant. This is so much bigger than just the pride of nationalities and governments. In fact, it’s the very opposite that makes this such a historic moment.
Last month’s launch is unique because it is the first time astronauts have been sent into space on a rocket and capsule built not by a government, but by a private company. For the first time in history, commercial industry has achieved something that has always been the sole sphere of governments and nations. This has potentially revolutionary ramifications in sectors far beyond just space exploration. It is a unique achievement, one that should inspire us on our quest to solve a whole range of the greatest challenges this generation faces.
Challenges
The biggest challenges our generation faces, whether that’s climate change, curing diseases or getting to Mars, all require the qualities that were on show in this launch and which are woefully lacking in our governments, American or otherwise: A clear vision, long term commitment, risk taking and perseverance.
If the last 50 years of space exploration, a period that can be summed up in one word – stagnation – demonstrates one thing, its that our current governments in their current role are incapable of delivering the sort of revolutionary change our society needs to save our planet, end human suffering and continue progress.
Politics has become a game played out by political elites, where the greatest focus is on acquiring votes, not on delivering change. Superficial slogans like “Make America Great Again” trump genuine substance, the people reduced to a captive audience harvested for their votes. We are repeatedly lied to, repeatedly over-sold great promises and repeatedly let down. Whether we’re talking about Space exploration, combatting global warming, pandemic-readiness or social change… the pattern is always the same, “over-promise – under achieve – make excuses – repeat,” the cycle repeating itself ad nauseam in every area of our lives.
Democratic societies across the world have entered a malaise where we’re so used to politicians being incompetent, we just accept it. It’s gotten to the stage where a lying, racist buffoon like Boris can legitimately hold the highest office in this country, bumble his way from one mess to another and never be at any real risk of losing his job, even when his actions (or lack of) lead to real life disaster, including Britain now having the highest excess death toll in Europe from the COVID-19 pandemic. The “acceptable level of incompetence” we expect in our leaders has steadily increased to a point where the lines between parody and reality have become almost impossible to decipher.
This has coincided with decades of social and technological stagnation.
Socially, we are still facing issues that a so-called enlightened civilization should have eradicated by now. Its 2020 and yet white supremacy and male patriarchy still dominate our society through the power structures that sustain them. African Americans are still getting killed with impunity, schools are still getting shot up, LGBTQ+ folk are still being harassed and POC are still suffering from oppression and neglect. Every time a new disgrace happens, like the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the same cycle happens. People get angry, demand change but very little changes. Politicians hide behind a few platitudes, twiddle their thumbs and do nothing. Instead of using their power to create lasting, structural change, they instead do everything to escape responsibility. The rate of progress is far too slow and the blame for that lies at the hands of those we trust to deliver that progress.
Nor has this stagnation been limited to social change. Technologically, we’ve failed to see the progress we could and should have had by now. If you don’t believe this, ask yourself, what are this generation’s truly transformational technologies, breakthroughs that have the ability to revolutionise our society and way of life? Previous generations have had inventions like the combustion engine, air travel, electronics, personal computers, the internet… What does the last 30 years have to show for itself? Twitter. Facebook. Netflix. The greatest advancements have been in social media and entertainment, hardly things that have the potential to revolutionise our lives (unless you call watching Netflix, scrolling through Facebook and having your data secretly stolen revolutionary progress).
A major reason behind this slowing progress is the nature of the technologies we now require. The days of an inventor designing a truly transformational technology in their garage are over. The technologies we will need in the future, from reliable and affordable renewable energy to end our reliance on fossil fuels, new rocket propulsion methods that can take us further and faster into the solar system, breakthroughs in medicine that can cure previously incurable diseases, new farming techniques that can end world famine, technologies like nanotechnology that have a whole number of applications, and more, will all require massive investment and long term commitment. These breakthroughs will be made by huge teams, not individuals, and will require sustained political and economic support, potentially even spanning the course of decades, something our politicians have routinely shown they are incapable of providing.
Nowhere has this technological stagnation been more prevalent than in space exploration.
From Progress to Stagnation
In 1969, two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, flying as part of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first humans to walk on an extra-terrestrial body when they set foot on the Moon, in what is one of the greatest achievements in the history of humankind. That was supposed to be the beginning of man’s quest to explore and even live among the stars. Next, we’d go to Mars, the asteroids, perhaps even Titan… there was a whole solar system to discover and this was only the beginning.
Fast forward to 2020, over half a century later, and we’ve achieved none of that great promise. There have been Mars rovers and probes galore. Inspirational endeavors like the Hubble space telescope have been built, as well as 11 different space stations, including Bob and Doug’s destination, the International Space Station. But there have been no real landmarks. No manned mission to Mars, no permanent base on the Moon, no mission to an asteroid, let alone to Titan. NASA’s most ambitious present plan, the Artemis Program, aims to achieve none of this, instead just aiming to return to the Moon by 2024. Talk about stagnation.
What about the transformational technologies we expected to have by now?
Surely we’ve made big gains here at least? Rocket re-usability, nuclear thermal rockets, solar sails, artificial gravity just to name a few… with the exception of the former (more on this later), they remain just science fiction.
You may be forgiven for thinking these are all highly theoretical, futuristic inventions far beyond our current capabilities. You’d be wrong.
Take Nuclear thermal rockets for one, a transformational technology which could halve the travel time to Mars. Pure sci-fi, impossible to develop, right?
Not quite. In fact, a now terminated government program, NERVA, has already demonstrated that nuclear thermal engines are not only possible but reliable for manned missions to space. As early as 1968, 1 year BEFORE Armstrong walked on the Moon, the SNPO certified NERVA’s XE nuclear thermal engine, as ready for human missions to Mars.
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Science fiction? Hardly.
In fact, the Saturn V rocket itself, which powered the Apollo missions to the Moon, though not a nuclear thermal rocket, could generate enough ∆V (propulsion) back in 1969 to get to Mars. And yet fast forward 50 years, and the US government’s largest, most expensive rocket-development program, the Space Launch System (SLS), for all its marketing, is still just a standard Heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLV) in the same class as the Saturn V, a technology we’ve had for over half a century.
Such has been the stagnation that its fueled conspiracy theories that the Moon landings were faked. How else to explain the veritable snails pace at which progress has moved since than we never had those capabilities to begin with? Of course this is nonsense. The truth is much more disappointing.
So why haven’t we gone to Mars yet? Why haven’t we developed new technologies and why haven’t we used existing technologies to achieve new landmarks? Why, in 2020, is the launch of humans to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), something we’ve done repeatedly since the 60s, the biggest recent achievement of our space exploration efforts?
The answer to these questions provides a microcosm of all the ills of our current predicament, technological, social or otherwise.
Governments. What are they good for? Letting you down.
The excitement of Neil Armstrong’s historic one small step has faded into a sorry whisper from its initial promise, the spirit of Apollo betrayed, and the blame lies at the feet of one group of people: self-serving, short-sighted politicians.
Governments are either unwilling or incapable of demonstrating the crucial values our generation’s challenges demand. Politicians only care about their few years in power. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Space where President after President has come up with their own ambitious space program only to overpromise and underachieve. Every time there’s a new President, he promptly cancels the space program of his predecessor and launches his own. Over the years, there has been pretty much everything, from the downright ludicrous Space Exploration Initiative, a $450 billion unrealistic fantasy project dreamt up by Bush Snr, to more conservative initiatives such as the Ares program pushed by the younger Bush. Each new initiative or program is doomed to failure from the onset, thought up merely to inspire vote-getting rhetoric of generating jobs and re-storing American pride, yet from its moment of inception, marching towards an almost inevitable future cancellation. Nor is this pattern limited to just space exploration, it repeats itself in all areas of a government’s manifesto.
But the government got us to the Moon I hear you cry? Many historians believe NASA would never have been granted the political support (and necessary funds) to achieve the mission without the unique circumstances provided by the Cold War and Russia’s achievements in Space. Even then, the fact JFK challenged the USA to get a man onto the moon “before the decade is out” is no coincidence, as it would have fallen within his second term had his administration not been prematurely ended by his tragic assassination.
In the absence of a truly visionary leader to provide the inspiration and a rival super power to provide the incentive, a government achieving something truly extraordinary in the modern era is the exception, not the rule. And unfortunately, “truly visionary” is not how I’d describe the current buffoons in power, or the ones that have come before them for a long, long time.
Compare this to the achievements of SpaceX and the significance of this launch becomes clear. When SpaceX succeeded in sending Doug and Bob to the ISS upon their Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, it was the culmination of 18 years of work, a period spanning 3 different US Presidents. In that time, the government has launched and cancelled several programs, including the Vision for Space Exploration (cancelled by Obama), SLS (launched by Obama) and Artemis (launched by Trump). While the government has gone in circles, in the process wasting huge resources, often on frankly ludicrous programs (see Obama’s program of refurbishing the space shuttle launch pads AFTER the space shuttle had been de-commissioned… seriously wtf), SpaceX has had a clear vision and stuck with it to completion. Their perseverance has already given us one transformational technology – reusable rockets – and is likely to achieve far more in the next 10 years towards the goal of having a permanent Mars base than our governments have in 50 years of false starts and directionless leadership.
An Alternative Model
SpaceX’s achievements should be an example for combatting a whole range of problems that governments have so far failed to address.
Lets take solving climate change for example, arguably the greatest threat our civilization faces, but also one of the greatest opportunities for innovation and the creation of transformational technologies. They say necessity is the mother of invention. You don’t get too much more necessary than saving the planet we live on.
As knowledge of the risks of climate change and our role in driving it has grown, there has been a growing urgency to move away from fossil fuels, to find alternatives to halocarbons and to revolutionise our relationship with our home planet to a more sustainable one.
How have politicians responded to this growing threat? With big promises. But where is the progress? Just like governments have launched a few rovers here and there but haven’t taken the step to actually get humans to Mars, politicians have attended climate conferences, signed accords and made agreements over the years, without taking the more difficult steps to truly achieve the sort of progress we need.
Why? Because solving climate change, just like getting humans to Mars, requires a long-term commitment. It requires sacrifice, risk-taking, perseverance and vision. The innovation needed will likely take years if not decades to achieve and implement and will be fraught with obstacles and set-backs. So its not difficult to see why, over the last 30 years in which climate change has been front-page news, our leaders, who routinely lack all of the above, have continually failed us.
It is easy to sign an accord, look like you care about the climate, get the votes and then do nothing of any real substance. It’s a completely different thing investing in creating transformational technologies and persevering through the setbacks, with the very real possibility that it will be your successor and not you who benefits from the achievement.
In the meantime, carbon emissions remain high, ice caps continue to melt, ecosystems die, entire species go extinct and our own eventual demise inches ever closer.
The launch of Crew Dragon represents an alternative to this inevitable march to our doom, one where we can be the drivers of our future and not just hopeless spectators. SpaceX might be a multi billion dollar company now but it was started by an individual with a vision. Through that individual’s vision, long term commitment, risk-taking and perseverance, Space is now one sector that is no longer captive to the self-serving nature and short termism of governments. For the first time in decades, the development of transformational technologies are a real possibility and not just empty rhetoric. For the first time, a manned mission to Mars before the decade is out is a real possibility.
At a time when it’s becoming exceedingly difficult to have any faith in governments whatsoever, we need to seize that spirit and transfer it to all the problems we face as a society.
Conclusion: A New Era
Governments have proved time and time again that they are incapable of solving many of the biggest challenges we face as a generation. Whether it’s pandemic-readiness, climate change, space exploration or something entirely different, every time they come across a big challenge, they let us down.
But we don’t need to sit around hopelessly as they allow our world to burn, our society to stagnate and our most vulnerable citizens to die. We can take matters into our own hands. For the first time in recent history, we have an alternative model for transformational change and progress.
When Greta Thunberg protested for the climate and inspired a generation to follow, she channeled this spirit of direct action. Of taking matters into your own hands. Perhaps she will inspire the next Elon Musk, someone who can bring the same qualities that culminated in Bob and Doug’s flight and apply them to saving our planet.
If we don’t seize this spirit, but instead continue to rely on those in power, we are at very real risk of annihilation. Technological and social stagnation can and will lead to our extinction, whether its climate change or some other challenge we fail to rise to that eventually brings our end. Unlike in the movies, where the challenge emerges and countries and heroes quickly mobilise to combat it, the challenges we face today will require long-term action. Waiting till its too late is not an option.
But we don’t have to keep waiting.
As a once hopeful but ultimately disappointing politician once said:
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Acknowledgements
Above all, two books have inspired this blog:
Peter Thiel and Blake Masters’ Zero to One, which makes a convincing case of the technological stagnation that has accompanied our generation.
Robert Zubrin’s masterful The Case for Mars, which opened my eyes to the degree to which political gamesmanship has prevented progress in space exploration.
I would strongly recommend both books.
rafialsaed 