‘Milky Way’ Explores Space, and Spacey, Dreams

If TV viewers on other planets pick up PBS’ “Voyage to the Milky Way” tonight at 8, I expect there’ll be a big run on extraterrestrial home alarm systems--just in case these Earthling wackos ever achieve their goal of invading some unsuspecting world.

The two-hour potpourri of various plans to tour the galaxy and “colonize” space is often more fertile ground for Freud than for Einstein. The scariest moments of the program reside not in the depiction of the probably insurmountable obstacles and dangers of human space exploration but rather in the minds of Earth’s would-be colonists.

Entrepreneur Jim Benson of Space Development Corp. is the apparent leader of the movement to strip-mine whatever celestial objects he can get his robotic claws into. Benson’s plan is to start by making up to $70 million a year by prospecting ore from asteroids.

“We will claim that we ‘own’ that body,” said Benson, who can’t wait to usher in the era of “private property in space” as his company becomes “the Standard Oil of space.”

Charming.

It is this type of thinking that leads science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison to warn of the mining of Venus and San Francisco Examiner science writer Keay Davidson to envision someone seizing the recently discovered ice on our moon “at gunpoint.”

Less chilling but equally zealous are members of the Mars Society, a grass-roots organization with 70 chapters in 25 countries dedicated to establishing colonies on a planet that our space probes have pretty much shown is devoid of anything close to being hospitable to human habitation. Nevertheless, it is clear from an evangelical-like meeting of the society in Boulder, Colo., that members will hear none of that.

Mars, despite its lack of livable atmosphere, water and life (and its nighttime low temperature of minus 116 degrees Fahrenheit), has everything humans need to not only survive but to live a groovy life, society founder Robert Zubrin tells his cheering flock. Zubrin does later concede to an interviewer, “We’ll probably have to start small.”

Fortunately, real scientists inject real science into the picture, and this is where “Voyage to the Milky Way” shines. Though the program is filled with optimism and exuberance about the prospects of limited, manned exploration, it also places things in perspective.

Specifically, unless we come up with new ways of propelling ships much faster, find a space shortcut such as a “wormhole” or extend human life span, “I don’t believe that travel between stellar systems is possible in normal space,” says Steve Howe of Los Alamos National Lab.

For instance, to get to the nearest star--four light-years away--in even 40 years, a craft would have to go 10% the speed of light. At the currently more realistic speed of 39,000 miles per hour, it would take 70,000 years to reach that star--Alpha Centauri--with time to shower before dinner.

UC Santa Cruz astronomer Sandy Faber is not likely to be elected an officer of the Mars Society any time soon. “Do I think [sending people to other planets] is part of our destiny? No,” she says. “People don’t belong on the moon or Mars,” she says. “I’d rather see a robot go than anyone I know.”

To which Alpha Centaurians should--if they breathe at all--let out a collective sigh of relief.

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* “Voyage to the Milky Way” airs tonight at 8 on KCET-TV. The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).