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86   We'd Better Cache Culture
     On Far Side of the Moon
     The Washington Post    Saturday, February 24, 1968

     "Resolved, that there shall be a future!" is the debatable issue
of world politics today.  In the past few years we have seen a flood
of writings on the importance of planning for the next century.  But
what are the odds that there will be a year 2000?

     Dr. Leo Szilard used to remark that "an optimist is one who 
regards the future as uncertain," a definition that cheerily makes most
of us optimists.  It still takes some courage to deny the obvious
implications of the contemporary scene.

     Is there really much uncertainty about the outcome of global 
policies that seem calculated to ensure conflict and then to maximize 
the level of force ultimately used in it?  Has not Western society 
started the liberation of the underprivileged peoples of the world and 
then, having kindled their hopes with visions of technical panaceas, 
turned its back on their orderly development?

     In the January issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
its editor, Dr. Eugene Rabinowitch, expressed the despair of many
scientists by advancing the clock on the cover to seven minutes
before midnight.  This may be too gloomy.  We have no way of measuring
the odds.  They may be even slightly better than 50-50 in favor of
survival, no matter how depressing the world situation appears at the
moment.

     Besides, there is a technical approach to saving hope for
mankind.  The illusion of a posterity is one of the mainsprings of
creative effort.  Who should exert himself to publish a poem, exhibit
a painting, report an experiment, draft a law or write a column if
he seriously doubted posterity, some measure of awareness of his
existence by future minds?

     We have, in fact, stumbled on the ultimate motive for the
exploration of space.  For the past decade, I had thought that the
scientific understanding of the solar system would be paramount.
Man-in-space was a frivolous distraction, an expedient to attract
public interest to an enterprise whose proper justifications were
evidently too abstruse for general understanding.  Astronautics could
be labeled the purest form of escapism.

     Now I have to concede the superiority of the collective wisdom.
Escapism is the most realistic policy actually open to contemporary
culture.

     We have to steer clear of some technical misconceptions.
Emigration via spacecraft is a dubious way to relieve population
pressure on earth.  The inhabitants who stay behind will always have
more economical means to make room for one more.  If they have found
no other way to moderate their numbers, the most massive emigration
imaginable will only briefly postpone the pressure.

     The colonization of the moon and planets is, however, the most
economical insurance we know how to buy for the perpetuation of human
culture through the next century.  In fact, we can already take some
comfort in having created some minor planets -- the Mariner spacecraft
and their U.S.S.R. counterparts -- whose continued orbit around the
sun is almost invulnerable to the convulsions of Earth.

     Existing plans for the exploration of space, with their mix of
manned and instrumented flights, embody a sensible strategy for this
kind of insurance.  Perhaps there should be somewhat stronger emphasis
on planting a microminiaturized library of the world's accumulated
knowledge on the far side of the moon. This would cost less per page
than it does to publish a book or send a telegram.  Space flight
could eventually be financed by private enterprise (marketing an
inexpensive form of immortality), boosted by a contract for an
archives for the Congressional Record.

     Optimists as we are, we must still dedicate our main efforts to
rescuing Earth from its global mess, which we can hardly do until
we educate people toward a planetary perspective.  Yet it would be
foolhardy to take the survival of Earth for granted, which compels
us to press for extraterrestrial commerce.  The very absurdity
of this compulsion may, if we perceive it, help the educational
process on which human survival depends.

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