The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Readers Keep Faith on Space Travel

Facing dangerous unknowns, Christopher Columbus crossed the ocean blue to discover a world unknown to Europeans. A number of readers have suggested that if old Chris had agreed with my column of March 1, he would never have tried.

Despite the fact that exploration of the universe is considered part of our “human destiny,” I doubt that humans will ever travel beyond our solar system, and I so stated in the column. Star Trekkies were outraged, some old friends “disappointed” by my lack of foresight, and a few thoughtful readers rightly pointed out that I can’t possibly know what the future holds.

“Do the human race a favor and never run for public office because your lack of vision is what we need to get rid of in our governments so that real exploration and science can begin,” says reader David P. McKinley. “In short, Sir, your shortsighted view of space exploration and the possibilities of what we as a human race can accomplish are the real cause of our space exploration problems.”

If it makes you feel any better, David, my wife agrees with you.

What troubles me about the whole concept of space travel is our difficulty in comprehending the size of the universe and the distance between stars. It seems to me that comparing interstellar travel to crossing an uncharted ocean, even in a dinky little boat, does a grave disservice to future explorers who might--just might--someday move beyond our solar system.

If Columbus had been a space traveler, he never would have reached the “new world.” His great, great, great grandchildren, born at sea in a world that consisted entirely of three small boats, might have.

That, I suggest, is an unreasonable demand.

“The problem with your argument is that you measure a ‘reasonable’ period of time as something less than a person’s lifetime,” writes Ted Clarke, team chief of the Galileo science data team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “That’s a political argument, not a reasonable argument. You give no credit to humankind’s insatiable appetite to understand its own origins. Your argument dismisses humankind’s imperative to expand into every nook and cranny of creation, including infinite space.”

Clarke has developed what he calls a “scenario” for interstellar expeditions, but it seems to me that it illustrates the scale of the problem more than it offers a solution.

Clarke believes we should build a series of “space cities” out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Each city, large enough to house 1,000 humans, would take about 100 years to build. When the first one is completed, it could loop past Jupiter, using that planet’s gravity to whip it out toward Barnard’s star.

“If such a city were begun every 20 years, taking 100 years for completion, then 100 such cities could be inserted into an interstellar trajectory to Barnard’s star in 2,000 years,” Clarke maintains. The first city could reach Barnard’s star in about 30,000 years, he estimates, and go into orbit around a Jupiter-sized planet that scientists believe orbits the star.

Over the next 2,000 years, the 100 cities could “rendezvous and compare their evolution,” he says. “The space civilizations would have evolved differently, some snuffed out by Earth-born problems, others surviving because of decisions made on the space city itself.”

To join Clarke’s expedition means not just committing yourself to spending the rest of your life in an artificial world with no prospects of ever returning to Earth. It also means committing your unborn children, their children and many generations thereafter--all of whom had no part in the decision to leave Earth in the first place.

“I would bet anything that if such a scheme were proposed, and volunteers sought to populate such cities, there would be huge lines of people waiting to sign up,” Clarke says. “Crazies you say? So were the Pilgrims then.”

I wonder. It could be exhilarating for awhile, but I would hate to think that my grandchildren could never walk across Yosemite Valley in the springtime.

Others who are not as short-sighted can have this trip for themselves. Line up right behind Ted Clarke.

By the way, what if the first people who get there find a planet of warriors who have depleted their ozone, polluted their air and decimated their rain forests? Never having seen the sun set over the Pacific, perhaps they will not notice.

Lee Dye, a former science writer for The Times, has covered a broad range of science subjects for more than two decades. He can be reached via e-mail at 72040.3515@compuserve.com.