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>The real reason we're in space
Space travel is a social activity.
The Canadian Space Agency should publicize the fact

(Note added by Tom Harris after publication: "To see the original letter in which John Manley stated what is quoted in the third to last paragraph below, please click on Mr. Manley's name when it first appears in that para.")

Monday, May 31, 1999

Ottawa -- Imagine trying to justify a Mexican vacation by citing the money you saved buying a sombrero there. Or by saying your trip contributed in some small way to helping Mexico solve its debt crisis and keeping Canadians employed in the airline and tourism industries.

Silly arguments. Yet even now, while one of our astronauts, Julie Payette, orbits overhead, the Canadian Space Agency is marketing our manned space program that way. Instead of presenting the "real" reasons for the endeavour, it focuses on questionable secondary benefits such as technological spinoffs, job and wealth creation, scientific discoveries, advances in education and enhancement of national prestige.

As Carleton University anthropologist Charles Laughlin said in a recent conversation, these are simply rationalizations; we would be expanding into space even if these factors didn't exist. The real reasons for space flight have more to do with human nature and the way humanity will continue to change as we move into this new frontier.

Prominent anthropologists, historians, political scientists, psychologists and futurists have thoroughly studied the implications of the human movement into space, and present compelling arguments for the program that could easily be integrated into the Canadian Space Agency's communications strategy, if the CSA wanted to do so. However, like the vacationer who downplays his need for a holiday, the agency seems allergic to seriously discussing the human-centred reasons for, and long-term ramifications of, space exploration. This crucial mistake has prevented space programs from advancing at anywhere near the pace anticipated three decades ago when humans first set foot on the moon.

At first glance, social science might not seem very relevant to space flight. The space community has always been reluctant to associate with those in the "soft" sciences. Partly for that reason, with the obvious exception of science fiction, the liberal-arts community has had a deep hostility toward space expansion.

However, things are changing, and anthropologists are leading the way. Their discipline, embracing both the biological and cultural evolution of humankind, helps us understand the human implications of leaving our natal planet. Ben Finney, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, writes that the space revolution "is leading humanity into an entirely new and uncharted social realm" and the act of settling space "will change humankind utterly and irreversibly."

Dr. Laughlin agrees. He and space psychologist Philip Harris say that even in the short term our expansion into space is changing the way we view humanity and our world. We have already seen the awakening of a new environmental ethos largely as a result of seeing our small planet hanging in the lifeless vacuum of space.

Dr. Finney compares this sort of transformation to the one experienced by successive generations of Polynesians as a result of exploring and settling islands across the Pacific Ocean. Withdrawing from the exploration and development of space would, he concludes, put the brakes on our civilization's cultural and intellectual advancement.

Space-agency officials occasionally mention satisfaction of the urge to explore as an inherent reason for manned space flight, but they don't seem to fully grasp the cultural significance of geographic exploration. Historian Stephen Pyne of the University of Arizona describes important similarities between what space exploration offers our civilization and what the exploration of the world contributed to Europe after the Middle Ages.

"It has a cultural context," he has written. "Exploration is not simply driven by technology. . . . Choosing to explore the solar system will not, by itself, assure us continued status as a world civilization. That requires much more, a broader cultural GNP, if you will. But choosing not to explore will ensure that we will not retain that stature. . . . The space program exists as a political, not economic, institution. But the politics must rest on a broader cultural foundation; otherwise, the program will expire."

Michael Fulda, a political-science professor at the Virginia-based Institute for the Social Science Study of Space, puts it succinctly: "Space exploration is a social activity."

Happily, there are signs of support for this view at the highest level of Canada's government. John Manley, the minister responsible for the CSA, said in 1994 that the "humans-in-space component of the program should be marketed in an approach that will focus more on social-science ramifications." In 1997, leading Canadian aerospace professionals incorporated the following statement into the recommendations of a CSA workshop on "user needs and space benefits": "There is a need to integrate the perspectives of social scientists (historians, anthropologists, etc.) into current communications strategies."

Canada's space agency has the chance to make a unique contribution to the world space effort by properly publicizing the "real" reasons for human exploration of the cosmos. In a way that would be considered suspect were it to originate with one of the major space powers, we could team academia with government science and communications to do something far more important than contributing hardware to another space station.

CSA managers need to share with Canadians what it is that inspires astronauts, scientists and engineers to risk their careers, and sometimes their lives, to work in a field as unpredictable as the space program. They then need to back up these sentiments with the well-researched conclusions of social scientists who specialize in these matters. To do less would be a betrayal of all Canadians who have worked in, or dreamed about, our country's future in space. Tom Harris is an Ottawa-based professional speaker on space exploration. He may be reached at tharris@iosphere.net