Writer in Good Company With Aristotle Mistake

Lee Dye’s “Colonization of Universe Is Just Not in Our Stars” (March 1), is exactly what business in Southern California doesn’t need to hear. At a time when high-minded innovators should be exploring ways to make a profit in space, Dye says mankind has no real future whatsoever beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

“If humans ever reach Mars,” he says, “it will not be for decades . . . (or even) centuries, and that quite likely will be the end of the road.” Regarding any possibility of man ever bridging the gap between stars: “It isn’t going to happen.” And how far will humans ever reach into space? “Mars, if we are lucky,” he says.

Yes. And there are dragons beyond the horizon of our flat Earth, and heavier-than-air flight is the abstraction of a deranged mind. Narrow-minded cynics like Dye have been with us for centuries.

Obviously, 12th-century alchemists couldn’t harness fissioning atoms or conceptualize a cell-phone--as we are not likely to grasp technologies that may be commonplace a century from now. Civil aviation and space travel will surely evolve in unexpected ways in the next 100 years. Dye’s medieval lack of imagination seems not only to deny all possibilities, but in telling us to “get real,” makes us feel foolish for even bringing up the subject.

Rational people sense that as surely as Australopithecus lurched out of . . . Africa a million years ago, humanity will--one day--venture out of the solar system. For now, we can dream, and lay the foundation. Aside from romantic notions of destiny, we should recognize that there’s money to be made in space. Innovative new technologies (developed in Southern California) will make it profitable to extract metals, crystals and energy from low Earth orbit and the surrounding neighborhood.

Space exploration is an imperative for our species, and it feeds the soul of our nation. In Mr. Dye’s defense, however, I must add that he’s in good company. Aristotle was certain that the heart, not the brain, was the seat of intelligence in the body. Unfortunately, when it comes to our future in space, Mr. Dye makes little use of either organ.

DAREN NIGSARIAN

La Habra

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Dye quotes Dr. Frank Drake, the radio astronomer, as saying that interstellar colonization is impossible.

That would be disastrous. If humanity cannot find a way to colonize some place far from our sun, it will expire when the sun runs out of nuclear fuel and expands to engulf the Earth and burn it to a cinder before collapsing into itself.

Of course, this will be about 6 billion years from now. And who is to say that in 6 billion years--or 6 million or even 6,000 years--the human race will not have found a way to discover and settle other hospitable places in the galaxy?

Dr. Robert Jastrow is less pessimistic about interstellar travel. He says that if we ever figure out how to manufacture and harness antimatter, 140,000 tons of it would power a 10,000-ton ship at nearly the speed of light, and make possible a 10-year round trip to the closest star, Alpha Centauri.

Far-fetched? It depends on your time frame. Whatever, never say never.

JAMES W. McCULLA

Director of Media Services, NASA

Washington