Humans Will Live Beyond Earth, Thrive Well, and Travel Far

The discovery of seven likely Dyson Spheres suggests the possible existence of civilizations beyond our own. Whether or not that claim is ultimately supported, the fact that was made at all is an important element in the broader search for extra-terrestrial intelligences (SETI). It is highly unlikely that billions of galaxies with billions of stars most with planets all exist without intelligences, except for us here on Earth. Contrary to that, on the astronomy discussion board Cloudy Nights, Sky & Telescope editor, Tony Flanders, has been hosting an open exchange of opinions -- his own and from several other writers -- that overwhelmingly assert that human colonization beyond Earth is unlikely, or impossible, or unnecessary, or undesirable. I believe that it is inevitable. 

See here for the 40+ comments "Will Humans Ever Settle in Outer Space? - Science! Astronomy & Space Exploration, and Others - Cloudy Nights" https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/947257-will-humans-ever-settle-in-outer-space/ 

 Seven possible Dyson Spheres from 

MNRAS 531, 695–707 (2024) 

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1186 

Advance Access publication 2024 May 6 

In that discussion, the objections to human colonization beyond Earth are that the environments of the Moon, Mars, Venus, the asteroids, etc., and the space between them all is worse than hostile: it is irremediably lethal because of the electromagnetic energies (“radiation”) that exist. (We are protected here by our magnetic fields and atmosphere.). Moreover, water is critical to life for us and rare almost everywhere else. And food must be created and no other planet has soil that is amenable to the lifeforms that we depend on. Having evolved in a gravity field, we find living in zero-gravity debilitating of our muscles and bones. And those are just the gross structures. At the cellular level, zero-gravity is just as bad for us, if not worse in the long run. We are not at all adapted to that environment. 

Virgin Galactic 11 July 2011

Further objections grew from the economics of trade: there is none. In other words, spaceborne manufacturing so far has been in batches too small for commercialization. It has all been proof-of-concept, at best. Mining the Moon, Mars, or asteroids was also dismissed as difficult to impossible in the first place. Consequential to any success the economics of mining suggest that anything initially rare enough to justify the expense becomes too common to support it. 

Space-X Crew 5 Oct 7 2022

 Overall, I found the objections especially disheartening because they came from people whose hobby is observational astronomy. They have the technical knowledge and special interest that I expect from enthusiasts rather than nay-sayers.

Learning to fly in the 20th century.

 

Working at NASA Exchange in the 20th century.

I can project several scenarios that take humans beyond Earth. All of them come from known science fiction and are merely extrapolations of known history, as science fiction must be: “if this goes on…”; “unless this changes…”; “if this takes over…”; “if this is forgotten…”; and so on. 

 1.     New propulsions. Beyond chemical rockets or plasma engines or huge sails, something we have not expected and could not expect but may be hinted at now will come along. We have had the steam engine, electric motor, internal combustion engine, jet engine, … balloons, airships, and airplanes … and the International Space Station. Something new but understandable in retrospect will change how people leave the planet.

2.    New technologies. The unexpected cross-use of existing tools will open new opportunities. The transistor is a case in point. The “transfer of resistance” by crossing two diodes solved one limited problem in one field. Now, we have power transistors pushing over 200 amps with potentials over 4000 volts. And we have very large scale integrated circuits with a million tiny transistors. 

3.    New biologies. The “people” who go into outer space may not be recognized as “people” today. Modified by microorganism that themselves were modified, they will be engineered to thrive in environments that right now are lethal to us. Those people will engage with symbionts that also were engineered for their environments. Not knowing fully what those ecologies will be, we could allow them to evolve through planned but open epigenetics.

4.    New sociologies. You do not need to take your tribe with you or go with them. Rather than as colonies and settlements, we may burst forth as a billion individuals. Individuals in individual carriers can be linked into complex social engagements. Some intelligent actors can be long-distance communicants while others will be mechanoids like dogs or cats aboard your ship. 

5.    Radiation is energy. The electromagnetic wavicles that are dangerous are also the dynamos that can power the transformations we need. Elements can be created and from them molecules. 

6.    Space is rich. Water Hydroxyl ions, water itself, and aromatic hydrocarbons are known to exists in outer space. Asteroids, moons, planets and their atmospheres are all sources of the materials upon which the abundant radiation can be put to work.

7.     New challenges. One complaint repeated is that there is no reason to go to Mars (or the Moon, etc. And I can grant that. But I also point to the 7,269 people who have climbed Mount Everest—over 90% of them in the last 40 years. Some have died for lack of oxygen because the crowding prevented them from getting to their camps. In 1985 only one person had climbed the tallest summits on each of the seven continents. Now, it is regarded as “a popular challenge.” 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Space is the Place! Come to the High Frontier. 

Space Tries to Kill You (ArmadilloCon 44 Day 3)

Fantastic Voyages: teaching science with science fiction 

Monsters from the Id 

1000 Words 

 

Astrophotography Session

 My instrument was an Astro-Tech 115 mm apochromatic triplet (extremely low disperson glass) on a Celestron AVX mount and tripod. The ocular was a Tele Vue 32mm Ploessl 52-degree field of view for 25X. The camera was my iPhone 15 (iOS 18.11) mounted on a Celestron NexYX carrier. I was out from 1:05 to 2:30 AM. I shot 19 stills and movies.

Messier 42: the Orion Nebula

Mintaka: double star with companion

Messier 41 in Canis Major

The Pleiades: Messier 45

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Observing with NASA: an open forum for citizen science

Astrophotography and Me

Astrophotography is a Lot Like Love

Lunar Eclipse 8 November 2022

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction 2020

Solar Imaging

 We are approaching a sunspot maximum for 2024/2025 and already are above statistically likely events.

 Images with Explore Scientific 102mm achromatic refractor,  TeleVue 32mm Ploessl, iPhone 15 iOS18.11.  Explore Scientifc SunCatcher filter mounted on the objective. These are two of the best six of 13.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Viewing Mars 

From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell 

Questions about A Brief History of Time 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld's Astronomy Activity Manual 

The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science

It is difficult to know when to accept history on its own terms. We tend to not condemn the ancient Greeks, Romans, or Jews for having slaves, though we hold the ante-bellum South culpable. I was not surprised by Seb Falk’s story about Brother John Westwyk’s productive labors in mathematical astronomy and the consequential instrumentation of measurement for those works. But I was enlightened by the search for and discovery of the man who wrote an astronomy text commonly credited to Geoffrey Chaucer. 

Chaucer did author A Treatise on the Astrolabe. It was Dompnus Johannes de Westwyke (Brother John of Westwick) who created Equatorie of the Planetis, a book that had been credited to Chaucer. So, Seb Falk interleaves two stories here: the life of Brother John as best it can be built from scant records; and the development of astronomy (and, generally, science) in the Middle Ages. 

Reading this book the first time through, I knew that I would annotate post-its to bookmark passages. The second time through the book, it soon became clear that I should just copy the whole thing here—which, of course, is not allowed.

“Far from the stereotype of a stagnant scientific environment which did no more than preserve the ideas of the ancients, computists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries continued to refine their astronomical models, with ever more accurate estimates of the solar and lunar cycles. Scholars became more outspoken in their criticism of the increasingly unrealistic ecclesiastical calendar. In the 1260s Franciscan friar and proponent of empirical science Roger Bacon wrote, at the Pope’s request, a series of tracts on educational reform.” (page 74) 

To compute, you must have a computer. God gave you ten fingers, each with two knuckles. Supported and enhanced with recipes for rapid mental arithmetic, you could calculate the rising and setting of the Sun for your locale—and you could measure musical harmonies, also. If you were enrolled at a university in 1325, to complete a bachelor’s degree required completing the Trivium of Logic, Rhetoric, and Grammar; the master’s degree required the Quadrivium of Geometry, Arithmetic, Music, and Astronomy. But attending one of the newly founded universities was expensive. So, monasteries most often paid for a limited education after which the motivated monk studied (and wrote) on his own—and sometimes her own (page 73). 

 

One result of that was that no two books are exactly the same. Copyists used the intentionally available spaces to add their own amendments and emendations, expanding, explaining, and correcting. Books lived. (ref. esp. pages 77 and 124). Knowing this, and expecting that copies will be carried to other places, Brother John Westwick cautioned the next one building an equatorie from his plans: “Nota I conseile the ne write no names of signes til that thow hast proved this commune centre defferent is trewli and justli set.” (Illustration 7.9).

The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science by Seb Falk; W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2020. (Published in the UK as The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery; W. W. Norton & Company, London, 2019.) W. W. Norton's webpage mentions the Best Book awards from The Times, The Telegraph, and BBC History Magazine. I learned of it because it garnered the AAS Historical Astronomy Division Osterbrock Book Award for 2024.

One thread not followed here, which I considered important, is that the manuscript under discussion was first rediscovered by Derek Price deSolla. Price deSolla is also credited with the first rigorous examination of the Antikythera Mechanism (NecessaryFacts here.) No mention of that appears in this book.

 

Previously on Necessary Facts

Science in the Middle Ages 

Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins 

Galileo’s Two Sciences 

Rescuing Aristotle and the Church 

Copernicus On the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies 

 

 

Christmas 2024

In our neighbood, Steeplechase II, in Kyle, Texas, the Christmas lights started sprouting right after Halloween. The best graveyard changed the headstone to Ebenezzer Scrooge and added reindeer and very much more. 

Our House is a Very, Very Fine House

When we moved here at the end of 2020, I had lights up at two homes. This year, I changed one string of Thanksgiving colors and I used as many Christmas lights as our home would carry. 

A modest neighbor.

We missed the Santa parade this year. Our first year, it took us by surprise as we were out walking. 

The City of Kyle exceeds a thousand words at the old city hall park across the street from the new city hall. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Halloween 2022 

Merry Newtonmas 2021

Created Works and the Public Domain

Public Domain Day 2025 came up as a Google News item. I have given some thought to the traditions and laws about intellectual property and I have only questions. In other blog posts I commented on the contradictions, but I have no integrated proposal. 

Common assumptions about property are rooted in the physical reality of land: it is impossible for two objects to be in the same place at the same time. Thus, land is rival and exclusionary: if an entity (person, family, etc.) possess it, then another cannot. Copyrights and patents attempt to include “ideas” into “lands.” However, intellectual property is metaphysically different from physical property. 

 Based on the definition that property ownership is rival and exclusionary, collectivist thinkers built a truth table to show Common Resources (excludable but non-rival) and Club Goods (rival but non-excludable). That is nonsense. 

Define Human as “rational animal” and the non-rational animal and rational non-animal remain not-human. So, too, are common resources and club goods not property. Non-A cannot be A. Nothing is not a different kind of something.

Contrary to the collectivist claims, freshwater, fish, timber, and pasture are all exclusionary and rival. You can’t have your fish and let your neighbor eat it, too.

 

What they call “club goods” are defined and limited by technology, not by metaphysics. Discussing radio broadcasting in her essay, “Property Status of the Airwaves” Rand correctly pointed that two broadcasters cannot share same frequency. But they can. Just not at the same time. And time-slicing allows two (or more) broadcasters to occupy the same wavelength. However, that does not change the fundamental principle that these timely-sliced increments are property. 

From Diabolo Valley College Econ101 linking from PennState,
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
"EBF 200 Introduction to Energy and Earth Sciences Economics:
Public Goods and Common Pools."
Also found in Investopedia and Quickonomics.

Common resources – non-excludable but rival (freshwater, fish, timber, pasture)

Common resources are defined as products or resources that are non-excludable but rival. That means virtually anyone can use them. However, if one individual consumes them, their availability to other consumers is reduced. The combination of those two characteristics often results in an overuse of these resources because demand exceeds the available quantity (see also the tragedy of the commons). Examples of common resources include freshwater, fish, timber, pasture, etc. -- https://quickonomics.com/different-types-of-goods/

 Club goods – excludable but non-rival (cable television, cinemas, wireless internet, toll roads)

Club goods are products that are excludable but non-rival. Thus, individuals can be prevented from consuming them (i.e., access can be restricted), but their consumption does not reduce their availability to other individuals (at least not until a point of overuse or congestion is reached). Club goods are sometimes also referred to as artificially scarce resources. They are often provided by natural monopolies. Examples of this type of goods include cable television, cinemas, wireless internet, toll roads, etc. -- 

https://quickonomics.com/different-types-of-goods/

 

It is true that you and I can both watch the same program on cable-TV. The hidden error was identified by Ayn Rand as “the blank out” and Rand identified its logical expression as the fallacy of the stolen concept. You and I can both watch the same cable-TV show – up to a point: we all know what happens when too many users overload a website. More deeply and cogently, for anyone to access television or the internet, physical goods must be produced. The perception of social largess as a “club good” blanks out on the previous non-existence of roads and theaters.  

We [the American Historical Association] encountered a similar experience in 2001, when the AHA decided to create a freely available online collection of Civil War newspaper editorials, utilizing two volumes originally published by the AHA in 1931 and 1942. AHA staff quickly discovered that no copyright renewal was ever filed for the second volume, edited by Harold C. Perkins, and it subsequently had entered the public domain. However, the editor of the first volume, Dwight L. Dumond, had renewed the copyright in his own name in 1959. Orphan Works Notice of Inquiry – 70 Federal Register 3739 (Jan. 26, 2005)

http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0676-AHA.pdf

To me, the error was the granting of the copyright to Dwight L. Dumond. As the editor, he was a hireling. His work rightfully belonged to those who paid him for it. The concept of a collective entity in law –what we call a “corporation”-- has roots in the Roman republic. Under Roman law, a flock of sheep was a collective entity: lose a lamb or gain a lamb, it is the same flock. On that basis, cities were taxed: the city was an entity that owed tribute to Rome, itself a collective entity. No one owned a city. Under American law, the American Historical Association as an entity can certainly be protected from theft by its employees. 

 

On or about the same day as the link about Public Domain Day, Google News offered a link to a story from GameRant.com about the Star Trek canon. Star Trek is owned by Paramount Global. (The July 2024 merger with Skydance may be challenged now through the FCC but that does not affect what follows.) Since 1966 many details of the continuing, expanding, and extending myth have been changed. Others remain constant. In this case, the legal owners changed an element of the canon - the physiognomy of the Klingons was altered in Star Trek: Discovery and the fans objected. (Klingons had changed once already but that was accepted.) Using a new storyline in Star Trek: Lower Decks, the owners offered some technical explanations for the change. 

 

To me, that is all good because myths change in the retelling. Mythology allows that: characters can merge or split; new characters can be entered while established characters leave. Star Wars: A New Hope is just the Wizard of Oz: Luke is Dorothy; R2D2 is Toto, … But in Star Wars, one aspect of the Wicked Witch (Darth Vader) is saved while the other aspect of the character (the Emperor) perishes. That begs the basic question: Who owns Star Wars or Star Trek or Harry Potter?  At what point does the creation of intellectual private property enter the public domain? Is there such a point? 

Back in the early 2000s, before the Atlas Shrugged movies were released, a Rand Fan created some Atlas Shrugged swag, a Rearden Steel trucker's cap, etc. The Ayn Rand Institute sent her a lawyer letter reminding her that the artifacts were based on the copyrighted works of Ayn Rand. So, as an Objectivist herself, she ceased and desisted. But we cannot imagine Paramount chasing down every "Beam me up, Scotty" bumper sticker. And personally, I think that the ARI should have just shrugged it off by labelling their gear "Official" the way that Major League Baseball does. 

 

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

I have donated to the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine. (Similar archives include the Hathi Trust and the Linda Hall Library.) Like the promoters of Public Domain Day, my comrades at the Internet Archive claim a moral high ground because they are offering the works for free and have no commercial interest in the use. To me, that argument is irrelevant. And it is falsified by several considerations. They do accept donations, and it is easy to assume that donors are users. Absent donors, the entity would not exist. So, they are in business. And in business for a profit because not-for-profit is only a matter of bookkeeping: owner's equity is called "net assets."

Long ago, writing in The Libertarian Connection, Skye d’ Aureus and Natalie Hall argued against Ludwig von Mises’s assertion that truth and beauty are not economic goods. Skye and Natalie pointed out that truth and beauty must be produced by human action.  

As collectivism grows in popularity, and as the nonproductive consider themselves increasingly entitled to the wealth created by the productive, Rand’s arguments in favor of intellectual property rights merit reinforcing not diminishing. -- "Ayn Rand's 'Patents and Copyrights'" by Marilyn Moore, posted May 28, 2019.  https://www.atlassociety.org/post/ayn-rands-patents-and-copyrights

Writing for the Atlas Society, Marilyn Moore (Director of Student Programs) parsed the difference between copyrights and patents and argued contrary to Rand that literary works should be patented while inventions should be copyrighted.  Moreover, Moore asserted, as a metaphysical fact, a discovery cannot be patented or copyrighted. First, the discoverer did not create the fact; and, second, once announced to the public, the discoverer cannot prevent other people from now knowing what they know. Third--and most consequentially--it is immoral to deny independent discovery and therefore independent invention. It is unlikely that two people will write the same book. It is well known that two people can create the same solution to a technical problem based on a shared (though independent) understanding of the facts of reality.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Copy Rights and Wrongs 

Objective Intellectual Property Law 

U.S. Patent Law Does Not Add Up 

Patent Nonsense: Intellectual Property Rights and Non-Objective Law 

Biohackers 

 

LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF ATLAS SHRUGGED

 In the opening scenes of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand sets the conflict of values between the heirs of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad. James invested corporation rolling stock and his own money in a copper mining venture in Mexico. He relied on inside information from his friends in Washington and other corporate collaborators. Dagny has been withdrawing the engines and cars. Earlier this month, Caltrain sold 19 locomotives and 90 galley cars to the government of Peru for $6 million. The justifications for the sale are almost verbatim from James Taggart. 

“This agreement will help Peru embrace a more sustainable future while also bringing millions of dollars to help us keep Caltrain running,” stated Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard in a press release. “Our former Caltrain passenger cars and locomotives will enable the start of new commuter rail service in greater Lima, cleaner air for commuters and community members and the access to opportunity that great public transportation provides.”

As part of the state funding for the electrification, the F40 locomotives were supposed to be rendered unusable, per California state law. However, Caltrain was able to obtain a waiver from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District because of the environmental benefits of establishing a new commuter rail service in Peru. The deal was brokered with the Government of Lima, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Commerce." https://railfan.com/caltrain-f40s-gallery-cars-sold-to-peru/

Previously on Necessary Facts

Greg Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths

That Goddam Ayn Rand Book 

The Influence of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism