Don't Forget the Droids

The last couple of years have been very tumultuous, but not very productive, in more ways that one.  Thus, it is not surprising that the prospects for speculative fiction -- and science fiction in particular -- have become blurry at best.  Before the beginning of the second Trump presidency, America's race into space appeared to have revived, with bold plans to finally establish a moon colony in the next decade.  Much has changed since then, as NASA's budgets and plans have been continually modified in a less expansive direction and other initiatives have taken precedence of the importance of boots on the moon or Mars.

Setbacks in rocket hardware have turned back the clock on manned missions to outer space.  These have not been serious enough to cancel plans entirely for the goal of an eventual moon settlement, but they have certainly caused some delays and redirections of effort, to the point that it is difficult to see where the short term objectives of lunar settlement and the longer term hopes of Mars landings are clearly articulated.  The place of the International Space Station, projected for abandonment in the relatively near future, and an eventual successor station seem to change continually.  Such a patchwork planning schedule does not bode well for a well organized approach to interplanetary expansion.  Nor does the ongoing exclusion of China from NASA's timetables offer much of a boost to Earth's prospects for exploring the rest of the solar system in a systematic and financially responsible way.  

The muddled nature of Earth's defense priorities also present stumbling blocks to accessing the rest of the solar system.  Distrust among the planet's major powers prevents much cooperation, as resources are directed into competing programs involving secret types of spacecraft, communication systems, and possibly even space-based weaponry aimed at Earth-based targets instead of space-sourced challenges such as rogue meteors.  We are still too obsessed with blowing each other up, instead of dealing with existential threats to our planet and its civilizations, much less exploiting advantages beyond our own thin and increasingly threatened atmosphere.  

Contrast this to the marvelous and burgeoning achievements of our mechanical creations.  Man-made machines have registered unimagined success in outer space.  The Mars exploration devices we have sent to explore that planet have exceeded almost all expectations in their ability to furnish information about that world, outlasting their predicted timespans by large measure.  Incredibly, the "ancient" Voyager technology continues to function almost beyond the limits of believability in the depths of interstellar space.  Other probes have reawakened to further discover new things about the universe, as space telescopes have revealed thought-challenging pictures of wonders previously inaccessible to our senses.  

The success of our machines begs the question of whether we should reassess the role of our physical human bodies in the entire enterprise of interplanetary, and eventually interstellar, activity.  Films such as the extraordinary Interstellar invite us to keep us focussed on the Golden Age obsessions of humans in the cosmos that have prevailed since the time of classics like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Perhaps we need to concentrate more on getting along among our organic selves and relying to a greater extent on our droid extensions to solve outlying problems that lie more within their capabilities than our own.  The R2D2s and C3POs of our own future may hold the key to being more than just robotic sidekicks to our exploration of the universe.  There are ways that we have to learn to trust them, and also to distrust them at times, in order to profit from ongoing progress.  Droids, not drones, may be the repositories of our futures.