Beyond: Our Future in Space (40 page)

  
9
. Feynman reprised his idea after nanotechnology began to take off. “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” by R. P. Feynman 1992.
Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems
, vol. 1, pp. 60–66; and “Infinitesimal Machinery” by R. P. Feynman 1993.
Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems
, vol. 2, pp. 4–14.

10
. “Prokaryotic Motility Structures” by S. L. Bardy, S. Y. Ng, and K. F. Jarrell 2003.
Microbiology
, vol. 149, part 2, pp. 295–304.

11
.
Synergetic Agents: From Multi-Robot Systems to Molecular Robotics
by H. Haken and P. Levi 2012. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH. The book that started off the entire field was
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
by E. Drexler 1986. New York: Doubleday.

12
. “The Next Generation of Mars Rovers Could Be Smaller Than Grains of Sand” by B. Ferreira 2012, in
Popular Science
, online at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/why-next-gen-rovers-could-be-smaller-grain-sand.

13
. Research at Goddard Space Flight Center: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/ants.html.

14
.
Nanorobotics: Current Approaches and Techniques
, ed. by C. Mavroidis and A. Ferreira 2013. New York: Springer.

15
.
From the Earth to the Moon
by J. Verne 1865. Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel.

16
.
Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Flight
by G. Vulpetti, L. Johnson, and L. Matloff 2008. New York: Springer.

17
. The Cosmos 1 concept is described in “LightSail: A New Way and a New Chance to Fly on Light” by L. Friedman 2009.
The Planetary Report
(The Planetary Society, Pasadena), vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 4–9. After its initial failure, the project is transitioning to the use of CubeSats, described in
Small Satellites: Past, Present, and Future
, ed. by H. Helvajian and S. W. Janson 2008. El Segundo, CA: Aerospace Press.

18
. Sunjammer was canceled after $21 million had been spent, due to problems encountered by the contractor L’Garde Inc. Congressional representative Dana Rohrabacher made the ironic comment: “We never seem to be able to afford these small technology development projects that can have potentially huge impacts . . . but we can find billions and billions of dollars to build a massive launch vehicle with no payloads, and no missions.” He was referring to NASA’s SLS heavy lift rocket.

19
. “Nanosats Are Go!” in
The Economist
magazine, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603240-small-satellites-taking-advantage-smartphones-and-other-consumer-technologies.

20
. “NAIC Study of the Magnetic Sail” by R. Zubrin and A. Martin 1999 (slide presentation), online at http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/nov99/320Zubrin.pdf.

21
. “Searching for Interstellar Communications” by G. Cocconi and P. Morrison 1959.
Nature
, vol. 184, pp. 844–46.

22
. “The Drake Equation Revisited. Part 1,” a retrospective by Frank Drake in
Astrobiology Magazine
, online at http://www.astrobio.net/index.php?option=com_retrospection&task=detail&id=610.

23
.
SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
, ed. by R. D. Ekers, D. Culler, J. Billingham, and L. Scheffer 2003. Mountain View, CA: SETI Press.

24
. “Neuroanatomy of the Killer Whale (
Orcinus orca
) from Magnetic Resonance Images” by L. Marino et al. 2004.
The Anatomical Record Part A
, vol. 281A, no. 2, pp. 1256–63.

11: Living Off-Earth

  
1
. “Biospherics and Biosphere 2, Mission One” by J. Allen and M. Nelson 1999.
Ecological Engineering
, vol. 13, pp. 15–29.

  
2
. “Life Under the Bubble” by J. F. Smith 2010, from
Discover
magazine, online at http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/20-life-under-the-bubble#.UkvfALNsdOA.

  
3
. Several Biospherians have written about their experience. See
Life Under Glass: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2
by A. Alling and M. Nelson 1993. Santa Fe: Synergetic Press; and
The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2
by J. Poynter 2006. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press. After the second failed experiment, the facility was taken over by Columbia University, which hoped to use it as a research station and “west campus.” But urban students didn’t flock to take classes there, so it passed from Columbia University to the University of Arizona in 2011. As a lab for studying the complex interplay of climate, soil chemistry, and flora and fauna, Biosphere is unrivaled, even if it can never be operated as a sealed and self-contained ecosystem. The project’s deep-pocketed investor, Ed Bass, once intended to sell small-scale biospheres as a commercial proposition.

  
4
. “Two Former Biosphere Workers Are Accused of Sabotaging the Dome,” April 5, 1994, from the archives of the
New York Times
, online at http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/05/us/two-former-biosphere-workers-are-accused-of-sabotaging-dome.html.

  
5
.
Dreaming the Biosphere
by R. Reider 2010. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

  
6
. “Calorie Restriction in Biosphere 2: Alterations in Physiologic, Hematologic, Hormonal, and Biochemical Parameters in Humans Restricted for a Two-Year Period” by R. Walford, D. Mock, R. Verdery, and T. MacCallum 2002.
The Journals of Gerontology, Series A
, vol. 57, no. 6, pp. B211–24.

  
7
. “Coral Reefs and Ocean Acidification” by J. A. Kleypas and K. K. Yates 2009.
Oceanography
, December, pp. 108–17.

  
8
. “Lessons Learned from Biosphere 2: When Viewed as a Ground Simulation/Analog for Long Duration Human Space Exploration and Settlement” by T. MacCallum, J. Poynter, and D. Bearden 2004. SAE Technical Paper, online at http://www.janepoynter.com/documents/LessonsfromBio2.pdf.

  
9
.
Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection
by A. Young 2009. Brooklyn: Power House Books.

10
. “The Retro Rocket Look” from
The Economist
, online at http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603234-spacesuits-new-generation-outfits-astronauts-being-developed-although.

11
. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California commissioned the space-colony studies, and they hold the drawings and design studies. To show that the vision hasn’t been abandoned, the website quotes Michael Griffin, former administrator of NASA, as saying, “I know that humans will colonize the Solar System and one day go beyond.” The project continues with an annual design study open to middle and high school students from anywhere in the world. The 2014 competition had 562 entries from 1,567 students in eighteen countries. Online at http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/.

12
. The grim fate of the Biosphere is a reminder that habitable zones evolve on long timescales. A planet is kept habitable by a symbiotic relationship between living organisms and the rocks and oceans, an insight first noted by James Lovelock, who originated the Gaia hypothesis. The fundamental drive of habitability is energy from the parent star. The Sun was 25 percent dimmer 3 to 3.5 billion years ago, when life on Earth was microbial and oxygenic photosynthesis had not yet evolved. In the future, as the Sun uses its nuclear fuel and settles into a more compact configuration, it will “burn hotter,” so the Earth will not remain habitable for the full span that the Sun has nuclear fuel, another 4 to 4.5 billion years. Microbes that live inside rock or far below the surface of the ocean are immune to moderate changes in solar radiation since they live off geological energy. As the Earth becomes intolerably hot, we’ll have to develop Biospheres for the whole population—assuming humans persist that long.

13
. Since 2012, the Doomsday Clock has stood at five minutes to midnight, uncomfortably close to disaster. The explanation associated with that judgment is worth quoting in full: “The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges. The political processes in place seem wholly inadequate to meet the challenges to human existence that we confront. . . . The potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and particularly South Asia is also alarming. . . . Safer nuclear reactor designs need to be developed and built, and more stringent oversight, training, and attention are needed to prevent future disasters. . . . [T] he pace of change may not be adequate . . . to meet the hardships that large-scale disruption of the climate portends.” See: http://thebulletin.org/press-release/it-5-minutes-midnight. The Doomsday Clock and its timeline can be seen online at http://thebulletin.org/timeline.

14
. Tsiolkovsky quote from a letter written in 1911, online in Russian at http://www.rf.com.ua/article/388. Sagan quote from
Pale Blue Dot
, p. 371. Niven is quoted by Arthur C. Clarke in “Meeting of the Minds: Buzz Aldrin Visits Arthur C. Clarke,” reported by A. Chaikin on February 27, 2001, on Space.com. Hawking quote from a transcript of a video interview for
BigThink
, online at http://bigthink.com/videos/abandon-earth-or-face-extinction.

15
. Lansdorp is quoted in the article “Is Mars for Sale?” by A. Wills, for Mashable.com, online at http://mashable.com/2013/04/09/mars-land-ownership-colonization/.

16
. “Space Settlement Basics” by A. Globus, NASA Ames Research Center website, at http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Basics/wwwwh.html.

17
. From the collection
Tales of Ten Worlds
by A. C. Clarke 1962. New York: Harcourt Brace.

18
. “What Do Real Population Dynamics Tell Us About Minimum Viable Population Sizes?” by C. D. Thomas 1990.
Population Biology
, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 324–27.

19
.
Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse
by W. R. Catton 2009. Xlibris.

20
. “Biodiversity and Intraspecific Genetic Variation” by C. Ramel 1998.
Pure and Applied Chemistry
, vol. 70, no. 11, pp. 2079–84.

21
. “The Grasshopper’s Tale” by R. Dawkins, in
The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life
2004. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

22
. “Genetics and Recent Human Evolution” by A. R. Templeton 2007.
International Journal of Organic Evolution
, vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 1507–19. Other researchers think the bottleneck may have been more drawn out and not due to sudden environmental change, with numbers dropping as low as 2,000 for tens of thousands of years until the Late Stone Age. (See also note 23.)

23
. “Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution” by J. Hawks, K. Hunley, S. H. Lee, and M. Wolpoff 2000.
Molecular Biology and Evolution
, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 2–22. The complete story of our evolution from Africa is in “Explaining Worldwide Patterns of Human Variation Using a Coalescent-Based Serial Founder Model of Migration Outward from Africa” by M. DeGiorgio, M. Jakobsson, and N. A. Rosenberg 2009.
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science
, vol. 106, no. 38, pp. 16057–62.

24
. “Legacy of Mutiny on the Bounty: Founder Effect and Admixture on Norfolk Island” by S. Macgregor et al. 2010.
European Journal of Human Genetics
, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 67–72. The Tristan da Cunha case study is reported in
Population Genetics and Microevolutionary Theory
by A. R. Templeton 2006. New York: John Wiley, p. 93. “Amish Microcephaly: Long-Term Survival and Biochemical Characterization” by V. M. Siu et al. 2010.
American Journal of Medical Genetics A
, vol. 7, pp. 1747–51.

25
. “ ‘Magic Number’ for Space Pioneers Calculated,” a report on the work of John Moore by D. Carrington, reported in
New Scientist
, online at http://archive.is/Xa8I.

26
.
Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
, ed. by B. R. Finney and E. M. Jones 1985. Berkeley: University of California Press.

27
.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by P. K. Dick 1968. New York: Doubleday. The novel served as the primary source for the 1992 film
Blade Runner
, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford. Released to mixed reviews, it has since become a cult classic. The Roy Batty quote is in the penultimate scene in the director’s cut of the film.

28
. “Cyborgs and Space” by M. E. Clynes and N. S. Kline 1960.
Astronautics
, September, p. 27.

29
. Harbisson founded the Cyborg Foundation in 2010 to help humans become cyborgs. His eyeborg has been enhanced such that he can perceive color saturation as well as 360 different hues. He has a flair for publicity, and a short documentary about him won a Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He has done performance art converting colors into music, and his art focuses on the relationship between color and sound; he’s also had experimental theater and dance performances. Using his eyeborg, he has created live sonic “portraits” of celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee, James Cameron, Woody Allen, and Prince Charles. A 2013
Huffington Post
article, “Hacking Our Senses,” features his 2012 TED Global Talk, “I Listen to Color,” and quotes him saying, “I don’t feel that I’m using technology, I don’t feel that I’m wearing technology, I feel that I am technology.” The article is online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-harbisson/hearing-color-cyborg-tedtalk_b_3654445.html.