Future Space Programs

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In response to objective needs, key objectives and exoindustrialization contribute to lighten human burdens in our country and throughout the world. This includes the creation of millions of jobs on Earth. It includes contributions to the most valuable social benefit of all greater job security, since exoindustrial environments and resources are virtually inexhaustible. Last, but not least, it includes contributions to restoring the age of low-cost, abundant energy commensurate with higher environmental standards. I stress "contribute", because the terrestrial potential is far from exhausted. But exoindustries also contribute to our capabilities of developing the terrestrial. potential, and it is through this symbiotic relationship that most of the new jobs will be created.

If exoindustrialization achieves nothing else, and it can achieve more, it will imbed space and public space consciousness firmly into the mainstream of industrial civilization and will globalize it in a positive way. Exoindustrialization is not space colonization, because its purpose is not to generate conditions that demand movement of large numbers of peoples, ten thousands to millions, into space. Space jobs are very expensive, both in terms of initial investments and recurring costs, since it cannot be expected that exoindustrial teams will not want to return to Earth. Space colonies, as defined, are self-sufficient. Therefore they deprive Terrestrials of jobs, except for a period of initial buildup of the first colony. It makes no sense to invest, in order to eliminate job opportunities on Earth.

The argument that certain products can economically compete with a terrestrial alternative only by creating large settlements in space is specious. It flies in the face of the prime objective of exoindustrialization, which calls for the betterment of human conditions by developing resources wherever this can be done best, on Earth or in space. As in all industrial ventures, space team sizes will be determined objectively by an economically optimized mix of cybernetics and human job requirements.

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EXOURBANIZATION

In the evolutionary perspective of the Extraterrestrial Imperative, With exoindustrial growth exoindustrialization is only the first phase. the number of space jobs and the stay times of peoples in space under progressively more comfortable living conditions will increase. This will generate new activities related to the human experience, such as It constitutes the the arts, the media, science, and medicine. tourism • urbanization of space.

With it come the development of space indigenous food supplies (exophonics)
Groups live together for longer periods
and the beginnings of exosociology.
in greater numbers in space habitats and lunar abodes that more and more
This is the beginning of what might be
tend to become the primary home.
called socio-psychological divergence from the origin.

Several factors drive this socio-psychological divergence. Some are
It is more difficult to transfer from physiological
equilibrium in the lower gravity environment of extraterrestrial habitats
physiological.
The surroundings in space
to the higher g-level on Earth than vice versa.
settlements are more antiseptic than Earth's and therefore can be expected
to reduce the resistance to diseases of those who lived in them from birth.
They might find the teeming industrial environment as hazardous as we would
find conditions in medieval cities or in ancient Rome.

Continuing advancement of the exoindustrial infrastructure will increase the
degree of self-sufficiency of some extraterrestrial communities, generating
This will accelerate the
an awareness of growing independence from Earth.
process of socio-phychological divergence from the ways of terrestrial
mankind.

EXTRATERRESTRIALIZATION

As has happened many times before, socio-psychological equilibrium with a new environment follows physiological equilibrium. Then the new "place"

becomes the frame of reference, "home"; the former place becomes foreign.
A new extraterrestrial breed emerges, Home Extraterrestris, who no longer
needs Earth. He does not need, and probably will not want, to slavishly
simulate Earth's environmental or social conditions. The emphasis on
duplicating terrestrial environments in space bottles is indicative of a
still thoroughly Earth-bound outlook. It reminds me of the Europeans who
came to America as a European continuation. But history shows that
America was made by those men and women to whose visions the New World
was more than a continuation of Europe.

The new world of Homo Extraterrestris is space and a plurality of worlds.
The solar system, our magnificant heritage, is his "stomping ground" and
the source of more new motivations than I can enumerate here. Readiness to
diverge to new styles of living and to new motivational infrastructures
will grow with the awareness of the new freedoms and the new options related
to their ability to create self-sufficient new worlds in their totality.
These worlds will not be colonies of and like Earth, nor survival arcs (which
will not be necessary, if the prime objective of exoindustrialization
relative to Earth is met). They will be small neocosms, primarily mobile in
a new beginning, while back on Earth Open World consciousness
moves toward a dynamic industrial and demographic equilibrium that is quite
different from the stupor of no-growth stagnation.

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OPEN WORLD EVOLUTIONARY SCENARIO

In the perspective of the evolutionary thrust of the Open World of Earth and space, exoindustrialization may be regarded as the first phase of extraterrestrialization. The latter, being the achievement of sociopsychological emancipation from the terrestrial origin (roughly analogous to that of the North/South American or Australian from Europe), follows the intermediate phase of exo-urbanization. Oversimplifying somewhat, exoindustrialization provides the technology and the processes needed for life to function productively in space; exo-urbanization introduces the human and biological elements and develops living modes in space; extraterrestrialization synthesizes the two components for growth into whole new worlds.

Thus, each of the three principal evolutionary phases is based on clearly identifiable prime objectives. The changes generated by each (consequence world) render the next phase possible and plausible. Through this positive feedback, each phase contributes to the capability and motivation within the framework of the consequence world, to progress into the subsequent phase.

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Future Space Programs: Hearings Before the Committee on Science and ...