Shared in response to some references to shrill commentary elsewhere,
but worth passing along...

SPACE RAPTURE: Extraterrestrial Millennialism and the Cultural
Construction of Space Colonization by Ryan Jeffrey McMillen, B.A.,
M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin.

http://www.lib. utexas.edu/ etd/d/2004/ mcmillend92689/ mcmillend92689. pdf

It is auguable here and there, but a fantastic piece of work.
We'll, I've only just now finished it with gritted teeth. I have serious problems with this. First off, a disclaimer. I'm probably what McMillen would consider a prime suspect for what he's talking about. Although I'm an agnostic and a humanist, both of my parents were fundamentalist Christians, and yes, I was raised in a tradition of Rapture followed by Tribulation. Still, on that day as a high-schooler when I first beheld a magazine cover with an illustration of Island One, I can't believe the quickening in my pulse came from the thought, "Great! The world's going to hell in a hand basket, and if I was instead here when that happened, I'd be safe." I still feel strongly that the excitement I felt came from thoughts of going to new places not yet visited by man, and seeing and experiencing things I could not while on the Earth. McMillen does the same with O'Neill as do all deep ecologists: Attributing tohis thought processesa disposable Earth ideology, ignoring his many statements to the contrary. Philosophers are frequently out of their depth when trying to discuss technical matters, and McMillen certainly is here. He imagines O'Neill's supposed disdain for the Earth coming out in his comparison to climbing out of a deep hole, perhaps unaware that physicist routinely think of spacetime as a flat rubber sheet with celestial bodies making holes of varying depths. He takes the curious argument that a powerful motivation of O'Neill and a chief benefit of his proposals is "the rapture of 0-G", while at the same time acknowledging the considerable thought O'Neill put into providing what would feel like normal Earth gravity for space settlers. (Marshall Savage, who proposes living permanently in 0-G, might be more open to the accusation of being besotted with weightlessness.) McMillen seems of the misunderstanding that O'Neill's proposal stood or fell on whether or not weightless living could be provided, and asserted that the Summer Study's attraction to the torus was a repudiation of everything O'Neill ever stood for. Even if so, he perhaps did not realize that residents of a Stanford Torus would be able to enjoy low and 0-G at the hub, needing only an elevator trip to get there. In truth, O'Neill extolling the entertainment possibilities of low-G was an example of O'Neill the showman. He realized that an academic might get motivated by abstract concepts of removing limits to growth, but that Joe Six-pack was more likely to be stirred by thoughts of what he could do on a basketball court in 1/10 G. Providing low-G living was never the primary goal of High Frontier (indeed, it'sthe only space settlement proposal holding out the promise of normal 1-G living). Arguing at cross-purposes, McMillen at the same time asserts that the Stanford Torus ruled out low-G living, and that Winkler's insistence anything beyond 1 RPM was a mistake meant O'Neill's entire concept was torpedoed, seeming to not realize that if lower RPMs were necessary, lower G living would be the inevitable result. The part where he says O'Neill, "either erred, or lied," regarding first habitatmodel dimensions in his congressional testimony derives entirely from McMillen's confusion between the Model 1/2/3/4 nomenclature of the original Physics Today paper, and the Island 1/2/3 naming convention used later. McMillen seemsincapable of distinguishing between near-term space habitat models which Earth might build, and long-term modelswhich will only get built by a future space-based civilization not yet in existence, and implies that if a NASA study says that a particular thing will be terribly expensive by today's techniquesthen it proves O'Neill is all wet. He asserts that the first Summer Study was very pessimistic about much of what O'Neill had asserted, and that the second one was even more critical. (Does anybody else have that impression? I had considered them ringing endorsements.) The second study might well have emphasized space industrialization more highly than large, Earthlike habitats because not only NASA but O'Neill himself was becoming more interested in near-term activities. Unless I horribly misunderstand him, McMillen makes the jaw-dropping assertion that the reason why NASA stopped funding space settlement studies past a point was because the model designs had evolved to the point that direct views out the windows of the Earth, moon, and universe were no longer possible, causing everyone to lose interest. (I myself had always felt that whenever space artists put these kind of things into their illustrations that it was more a bit of fancy than technically realistic.) In my opinion, McMillen placesfar too muchemphasis on this. In any case, any space habitat should have observation bays at the hub permitting unobstructed views of the outside universe. To my understanding, NASA stopped funding High Frontier studies during the transition from an agency flush with having landed men on the moon within the deadline to an agency which felt that it couldn't even justify studies in support of sending a few humans to Mars. Supporting 10,000 in HEO is probably on the far side of the audacity of sending 4 or 6 to Mars, despite happening closer to home. But McMillen's undue emphasis on aesthetics is pervasive. He appears to think O'Neill came to certain design aspects from aesthetics owing to ancient religious mythologies rather than from the laws of physics. But space habitats are like inside-out worlds simply because outside-out worlds would not holdthe air in. He quotes O'Neill as saying that certain letters were very helpful in forcing me to go into detail and justify on a numerical basis things which I hadnt taken the time to calculate, because I just had had a sort of hunch that the numbers would work out all right. and then darkly opines that, "In other words, ONeill admitted that he was operating from a hunch ... This was, on its face, an inherently faith-based perspective."Thus O'Neill stands starkly revealed as... a human being. I suppose only an android could become the perfect scientist. More irksome is McMillen's cherry-picking of facts. If a prominent NASA administrator turns out to be a sincere, church-going Christian (not exactly long odds in the U.S. of A.), then that's held up as damning evidence. But if the father of space settlement himself happens to be an irreligious humanist, then we leave O'Neill's religious background unmentioned, and instead havecurious discussions of the resemblance between O'Neill habitats and Dante's heavens and hells. Another possible example of cherry picking is the fact that despite having been written in 2004, this paper makes no mention at all of Zubrin or his Mars proposals, despite this being the dominant space settlement meme throughout all of the 90's to today. I suppose this is left out only because going to settle in a red desert is difficult to shoehorn into the Christian millennialist mold. One might wonder if McMillen only objects to the orbital variety of space settlement, considering Mars settlement to be OK. But that's contradicted by his statement at the very end where he advocates that when we do go to the stars, we do so in the manner of "a hiker in the wilderness". A hiker never builds a log cabin in that wilderness. McMillen's thesis is an across-the-board repudiation of space settlement of any kind. Ultimately, it's possible to turn the tables on him here though, and argue that the kind of extreme environmentalists who react so negatively to the O'Neill meme are perhaps themselves motivated by a kind of adherence to a Christian myth. I can't think of the name of the writer who came up with this, but bear with me. He asked us to imagine a thought experiment where a man is revealed to have the power to heal the sickwith a touchof hishand. The problem: In any given dayover athousand people will bedesperately seeking his healing powers. How can the man do what's morally right while at the same time having thetime to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and have a life of his own? The writer of this scenario suggested a moderate-speed conveyor belt. The healer could sit in a chair with his hand outstretched. The conveyer could sweepa thousand or so people past his healing hand in the course of a few hours, freeing up the rest of the healer's dayfor a partly-normal life. The writer's point was this: There are those who would immediately reject this proposed solution. Why? Does it fail to meet the practicalneed of the sick? No. Does it fail to provide the healer with a solution for having some time to himself? No. Why, then, the objection? It will simply be this: Some will object because it's perceived to be a technological solution to what they see as an ethical problem requiring an ethical solution. A technological end-run around the ethical dilemma is cheating. The writer then asserted that deep ecologists who object to the O'Neill solution are like this. Their world view is similar to the story of humanity cast out of Eden.People in ancient times are conceived (againstthe archeological evidence) as having lived in astate of perfect balance with the natural environment, having not yet "known the sin" of technological development. When humanity has the temerity to partake of the tree of knowledge, this perfect paradise is lost. Such environmentalists are not interested in any solutions to the kinds of problems they decry outside of living with less, restraining economic development, and voluntary reductions in our standard of living. In a sense, we must do penance for our technological sins. Then along comes O'Neill, arguing that we can enjoy our technological "sinning" while avoiding the penance. This provokes righteous indignation. Thus, extreme environmentalists may themselves be playing out a kind ofChristian-inspired mythology.

Regards,
Mike Combs

If faith in a "higher" being didn't seem so blasted
necessary to most people, I would advocate outlawing
ALL religion, but as we've already seen with the
Communist experiment, that works about as well as
trying to boil water while holding it containerless in
your hand.

Religions seem to develop out of a misperception by
most folk of the extraordinary experience of a
singular person, ie, the "mystical" experience. As
Sufiis try to teach, the only way to know the truth of
god is by direct experience, All else is hearsay, by
those who THINK they know, but have not the courage to
experience themselves.

Hmmm, a rather awkward deliniation, but pointed none
the less.

O'Niell was looking for a solution to growth that was
as humanist as could be obtained. He found it. It's
open ended and I think THAT is what perturbs the
millenialists, that there really is a way around the
accounting, a way that holds great promise for a
humanist, non god dependent life. I think that scares
the hell out of some people. With no one to tell them
what to do, what WILL they do???

Ah, ambiguity, the ban of small minds!

GAry 7

> [mailto:ssi_list@... On Behalf Of Don
> Davis
>
> Shared in response to some references to
> shrill commentary elsewhere,
> but worth passing along...
>
> SPACE RAPTURE: Extraterrestrial
> Millennialism and the Cultural
> Construction of Space Colonization by
> Ryan Jeffrey McMillen, B.A.,
> M.A. Dissertation Presented to the
> Faculty of the Graduate School of
> The University of Texas at Austin.
>
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2004/mcmillend92689/mcmillend92689.pdf
>
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2004/mcmillend92689/mcmillend92689.pdf>

On Behalf Of GARY ANSORGE

O'Niell was looking for a solution to growth that was
as humanist as could be obtained. He found it. It's
open ended and I think THAT is what perturbs the
millenialists, that there really is a way around the
accounting, a way that holds great promise for a
humanist, non god dependent life. I think that scares
the hell out of some people. With no one to tell them
what to do, what WILL they do???

Your points are interesting ones, but actually, the gist of the paper
we're fussing about is that the thinking of O'Neill et. al. have been
unduly influenced by the meme of the Christian millennialists
(specifically, the escaping of a tribulation period via rapture to the
heavens).

Regards,

Mike Combs

The old gods must fall. Or rather the old concepts of
opposition/good vs evil/and vengence for being on the
"wrong" side of things. The humanist approach is one
of evil=that which is against life while the good is
prolife,,,it's a bit more evolved that the exculsivity
principal inherent in religions that promote the "if
you ain't with us, you're a'gain us,,," concept.

The millenialists want vengence for what they perceive
as evil, an accounting. I wonder if they also believe
that Santa really keeps a list and is checking it
twice?

GAry 7