The Moon and the green men

Now some green fellows want to declare the moon off-limits to civilization!

Carl E. Mullin
visionary artist and entrepreneur
homo asteralis
ravenart@...
www.ravenartstudio.com
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one,
He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear."
----Thomas Jefferson

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The NIABY Movement
By James Pinkerton 06/03/200T
You've heard of NIMBYNot In My Back Yard? Well, here's another anti-growth
acronym: NIABYNot In Anybody's Back Yard.
(
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=105

1-060302C)

Environmentalists, wracked with guilt over the progression of industrial
civilization here on earth, have discovered a new cause, the prevention of
progress on the moon. However, "environyms" such as NIMBY and NIABY don't
translate well into Chinese; the People's Republic of China seems intent on
both expanding its terrestrial economy as quickly as possible and also
space-racing into the extra-terrestrial vacuum left by America's post-Apollo
retreat from the moon.

Americans should be of two minds about China's space program. On the one
hand, as Americans, we should regard China warily, as a potential
politico-military rival, even threat. Yet on the other hand, as humans, we
should be glad that some folks, somewhere on the planet, still possess
genuine vision about the outward-bounded future of the species. And if the
Chinese can offer us some friendly, or mostly friendly, space-racing
competition, more power to them.

Because meanwhile, here at home, many Americans seem content to live a
Hobbit-like existence, nuzzling into the earth, competing for nothing more
ambitious than "Recycler of the Year" awards. Yet all this stifling of
domestic activity accomplishes little, of course, if that activity is simply
transferred overseas. Indeed, one can look ahead and see this deliberate
exiling of jobs and profits writ large. That is, if America doesn't want to
compete, other countries still will, space-racing ahead of us in search of
power and profits. And so the United States could be left in the dirt,
literally.

So who are these Not-In-Anybody's-Back-Yarders, these NIABY's? The Wall
Street Journal reports on one: University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner,
who wants the United Nations to include the moon in its list of 721 "World
Heritage Sites," where it would keep company with Independence Hall, the
Acropolis, and the Great Wall of China. OK, strictly speaking, the moon isn't
part of this world, but since when has the UN missed a chance to grab more
turf?

"The moon is a stunningly beautiful place, and it shouldn't be defiled,"
Steiner maintains. The professor's rhetoric echoes arguments that Amerigreens
have been making for years about, for example, the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve. And as would-be oil drillers (and would-be beneficiaries of economic
growth, and would-be energy independents) know, such talk seems to win more
domestic political fights than it loses.

An argument can be made that Tranquility One, the spot where Neil Armstrong
first touched down on July 20, 1969, could use a little historic
preservation. In 1999, two New Mexico State University graduate students
undertook an effort to have what's known now as Tranquility Base added to the
World Heritage List. They were reacting in part to highly hypothetical plans
by LunaCorp, a Fairfax, Virginia, company, to send a pay-per-navigation
"lunar rover" to Tranquility. In addition, LunaCorp was offering to bury
cremated remains on the site. Thought should be given to that historic place,
to be sure, but in any case, LunaCorp has moved on to other missions; it's
the company that hopes to help *NSYNC-er Lance Bass get the necessary
sponsorship for a space-tourist trip to the International Space Station.

But now, just as so often happens on earth, the limited impulse toward
historic preservation has segued into an unlimited push toward what might be
called the "Alaskafication" of the moon. Alaskafication, of course, is
defined as the willful and defiantly non-cost/beneficial effort to keep a
vast resource fallowwhich, of course, has been the fate of Steiner's Alaska.
And while all this legalistic posturing might seem irrelevant now, at a time
when no human has been to the moon in three decades, Steiner is in fact
putting another brick in a green wall against future growth. Unfortunately,
the foundation of that wall was put in place long ago, at the instigation of
the United States government. A nave and short-sighted America was eager to
sign and ratify the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states in Article II that
"outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject
to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or
occupation, or by any other means."

Yet at the same time, China seems to have other ideas, which run more toward
imperialism than environmentalism. The BBC reported last week that the
Chinese are training 12 astronauts for space flight; the goal is to launch
the country's first piloted mission by 2005. Moreover, space program
scientist Ouyang Ziyuan declares that China will have a base on the moon by
2010, from which it could base operations to "mine its riches for the benefit
of humanity." But wait a secondwhat about the Space Treaty, which China
ratified in 1983? That document, interestingly enough, makes no mention of
private, as opposed to public, exploitation of resources, and now that the
Chinese are semi-capitalist, they could easily disguiseto their own
satisfaction, at leastany effort in the appropriate legal framework.

Of course, some might say that private-sector-oriented economic arguments for
occupying the moon are secondary to the national-security/national-strategy
rationale for going to the moon. Talk about the High Frontier. If that's the
case, one shouldn't be surprised if the Chinese do exactly what they wish to
do, Space Treaty or not. The People's Republic, after all, displays a "China
First" attitude that American sovereigntists could only wish for in their own
United States; China, for example, has nothing to do with the International
Criminal Court. And while it did sign the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty, it did
so knowing full well that all its growth-constricting sanctions would fall on
Western competitors. What's not to like?

Besides, if the Space Treaty ever started crimping China's style, the PRC
could always simply withdraw; a signatory country simply writes a letter to
the UN stating its intention to withdraw, and a year later, that country is
out. One might wonder whether the Rick Steiners of the world would complain
much about Chinese, as opposed to American, "unilateralism"; one need not
wonder whether Beijing would spend much time worrying about such complaints.
That's when we'll probably learn for sure that NIABY doesn't compute in
Chinese.

Interestingly, as the Chinese, across the Pacific, move ahead with their
plans, the Europeans, across the Atlantic, are moving ahead with theirs, too,
leaving the United States increasingly flanked on both oceans. The European
Space Agency, which announced in March that it will be putting up Galileo, a
Global Positioning System to rival the GPS already put into orbit by the
United States, now says it will launch by 2008 its Eddington satellite, which
will scour the galaxy for planets similar to Earth; the French plan to get a
jump on the same hunt by putting its COROT satellite in orbit in 2004.

But it's China, not the European Union, that has all the makings of a future
space superpower. Recognizing that they made a huge mistake in the 15th
century, when they abandoned their world-exploring plans, allowing the uppity
Europeans to gain centuries' worth of imperial-commercial advantage, they now
seem poised to turn the world order upside down in the third millennium by
winning the next colonial competition. So while in the eyes of some, the
Chinese are perhaps international law-benders, even law-breakers, in the eyes
of the far-sighted, they are a much-needed space wake-up call.

So thank heaven, as it were, for China's space visionaries. As Oscar Wilde
observed, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
And the race for space is the ultimate equal-opportunity exercise; the most
nervy and deserving people will get there. But of course, the nation that
occupies the moon and reaps all the benefitsbe they animal, vegetable,
mineral, or industrialwill have a lot to say about the nature of equality in
the third millennium. And it's a good bet that in a multi-world-platform
environment where some countries have the keys to the universal kingdom and
others don't, some countries will be a lot more equal than others.