The Zubrin/Spudis debate, over the choice of "Humanity's Next Destination in Space," is a textbook example of the failure of segments of the space community to recognize that the Industrial Era's Space Age is deader than Treasury surpluses. The debate forces a zero-sum context from the assumptions that our spacefaring future will be determined by central planning fiat, that a bureaucracy or legislature will choose among master plans and command - successfully! - a single-point public-works project for the Solar System. Any time after the demonstrated failure of the Space Shuttle as a "transportation system," and really after the beginning of NASA budget cutbacks in 1966, basing programs on those assumptions smacks of a faith-based initiative more than rational planning. The invocation of a Kennedyesque savior for Space Age dreams verges on a technocratic theology, a cargo cult of heavy-lift launch vehicles.

In the world beyond government planning, no investment decisions are zero-sum. We didn't have to choose between airplanes or better steamships. We got both. Dollars for the development of television weren't sucked out of the radio industry. Command decisions are inevitably zero-sum: one's gain is another's loss, the order to do B means the countermanding of the order to do A. Market decisions are by nature win/win: if I trade my knife for your goat, each of us gives up something of lesser value (to us) for something of greater value. Only when coercion enters into the market is this not the case: monopoly pricing, take-it-or-leave it "contracts" like software licenses or company-town employment.

Given the failure of government planning, in the general economy as well as with respect to space, investment decisions are being made more freely. One of the few bright spots in space is the steady development of a market and an infrastructure for space tourism, as people freely choose to pursue a path that the central planners at NASA bitterly fought.

Here's the reality of current efforts towards both the Moon and Mars. In a climate where space really doesn't figure in the culture at large, those with a passion for each destination are organizing, doing science, even "bending tin" on real hardware. Companies, university consortia, amateurs and professionals alike, are investing cash and sweat equity in incremental progress towards their own chosen goals by the means they have determined best. The technocratic theology of the Moon/Mars debate slights their real accomplishments.

It also creates unnecessary disunity. Rank-and-file members of diverse space organizations cooperate regularly and tend to see each other as members of a common space community. The "debate" demands that they choose sides, not against opponents of space activity, but in opposition to each other. Once this premise of factional enmity is accepted, it can only deepen. The best example comes from that classic text of religious and political analysis, "Monty Python's Life of Brian" - the anti-Roman movement in Palestine suffers from split after split, until an entire arena is filled with political parties of one person who regard everyone else in the movement as worse enemies than the Romans. Finally the "People's Front of Judea" stonily glares at the "Judean People's Front" - obviously they could only be enemies!

Mars advocacy in particular has fissioned down to "Judean" levels In 1998, The Mars Society's inaugural conference marked the pulling together of a real community from divergent groups of scientists, engineers, activists, students and laypeople. Powerful internal conflicts arose quickly (and I was no small contributor to the problem), fracturing that unity. Those with stature across factions failed to re-forge a community. Personal enmities and policy disagreements metastasized in subsequent years, such that the amount of effort actually applied towards common goals is but a fraction of what it was. Those most averse to conflict have left the field to those happily comfortable with internecine strife.

One can readily imagine a similar scenario playing out in a space settlement. Indeed, the likelihood of a descent into factional conflict is the supreme challenge for any system of governance, from the constitutions of the United States and the former republic of Yugoslavia, to normative rules of behavior for the space community, to space governance systems. Those of us grappling with these issues in the present and future with respect to space have done a pretty poor job. Most attempts to create structures for space governance are blind to both the creative role of discord (as discussed in the previous issue of this column) and the power of destructive irrationality. But tolerance of the descent from passionate disagreement into polarizing conflict is no answer. Determining and enforcing the boundaries between creative and destructive conflict is the central challenge of politics and the proper focus for the political sciences in the space community, now and with respect to the future.

Rules of conduct can be enforced only by consensus or by fiat. Consensus works if most everyone believes that they will benefit more from cooperation than from conflict. Fiat works if someone's got the demonstrated willingness and power to bust miscreants' heads. Space has and likely will have neither.

An atmosphere of internal conflict, of which the Moon/Mars debate is a symptom, is one in which conflict is rewarded and cooperation punished. The players have chosen to eject the referee, seeing personal advantage in unnecessary roughness. In such an environment one has to be willing to undergo trial by combat for their views - that's exactly how such customs arose. Power accrues only to the leaders of factions, particularly to those who're most successful in beating down their neighbors. At the same time, the constant fissioning ensures that no one will have the power or authority to command obedience beyond their small cadre of loyalists.

None of this is unique: the analysis is pretty much that of Thomas Hobbes when he was looking at the global political system in the 18th Century. The "war of all against all" that he described can be pushed towards either of the solutions, consensus or fiat.

Smart factions will absorb their weaker neighbors, growing in size and power. The Europe of Hobbes's time had already transitioned from a myriad principalities into a handful of nations. Then, with a small number of relatively equivalent players, their mutual interest lay in maintaining the status quo, beating down any power making a play for the supreme domination of empire, and crushing dissident elements. Out of such rough parity came international law, as a tool for maintaining that rough balance. Its failure came when one of the players, Germany, chose to abandon parity for the gamble of empire or destruction. The Second World War taught even the victors that the cost of abandoning consensus power for fiat power was prohibitive, and a re-created consensus enforced behavioral norms for half a century thereafter.

Consensus and fiat both work as the basis for enforcement. Fiat power is risky and expensive to establish and maintain, but can be effective, as empires throughout history have shown. Whichever basis of power is chosen, it can only be maintained in the face of opposition by swift, decisive action. Behavior that undermines the integrity of the larger community must be identified, declared unacceptable, and, if the power to do so is available, stopped.

In the present case, the Space Frontier Foundation (of which I am a member) has submitted an op-ed to Space News condemning the Moon/Mars debate - in more moderate language than that of this column. Coming from an organization which historically had relished internecine strife, the call for consensus action against destructive factionalizing marks a positive sign for a troubled community.

For space settlement, any political schema must recognize the dynamic of faction. Technocratic approaches ignore it, assuming rationality and a desire for consensus solutions. Systems like that designed by the United Societies in Space assume a willingness to conjure an entity capable of imposing fiat in a frontier environment likely to be marked by the greatest extremes of political passion and militant seeking of autonomy. My own schema, the "Martian Meta-Utopia," (see issue 1.8, Red Tarzana, in the archives) based on the works of anarcho-capitalist philosopher Robert Nozick, has assumed a willingness to embrace consensus in an environment likely to create pressures to shoot the referees.

So, what is to be done? Encourage unification efforts, to make the transition from ever-smaller principalities or factions up to nations and parties. Encourage cooperation, both to create alliances that may in time unify, and to police basic norms of conduct. Strike hard and fast against those seeking to bring more conflict and more fission to the system. Never assume that people on a frontier or within a non-mainstream movement are placid and reasonable. Remember that civilized behavior is the product of norms; and norms are the product of the will and ability to enforce them, both of which must be earned by acting consistently and effectively, not called into being by plans and documents. These things are true within our community of space advocates, and they will be true out in the black as well.

The Spacefaring Web is a biweekly column � 2002 by John Carter McKnight, an Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation. Views expressed herein are strictly the author's and do not necessarily represent Foundation policy. Archives are available.

Related Links
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only