NASA Needs ET!

Science needs ET! We all need ET!

Thanks to Gravitas

Bob Dylan (It’s Alright Ma — 1965) said it as well as anybody:

…him not busy being born is busy dying…

NASA was busy being born in the 1960s. Since then NASA has been busy dying.

I joined The Planetary Society when it was founded in 1980. I’m a charter member! Back in 1980 I retained high hopes that the hiatus in human moon landings would be brief. I longed to see humanity on Mars, on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, perhaps mining the asteroid belt. I’m still waiting.

Humanity is still waiting.

My patience is wearing thin. Humanity has mostly given up.

The Barbarians Are at the Gates!

Science is under siege! Moon landing deniers, flat earthers, killer planet Nibiru, killer planet 9, Mars is approaching Earth, and so on. Anti-vaxers have taken over the US government’s health organizations. Chemtrails, climate change deniers, perpetual motion machines. A president who apparently believes that wind turbines kill whales, lower property values, cause cancer, and decimate bird populations. (Maybe a wind turbine does occasionally harm a slow-witted bird. That’s a far cry from birds being decimated by wind turbines.)

Get John P. Wilson’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

Remember me for faster sign in

Of course as far as President Trump’s dislike of wind turbines and solar panels, as well as his sympathy for climate change deniers, those more likely stem from his close ties to oil producers. Nevertheless, the general public is likely to be swayed by White House pronouncements, however motivated.

A New Dark Age?

The dark ages were mainly a western European phenomenon. The people who compose history textbooks in America are constrained by curriculum considerations imposed by western European descendants. So the period roughly between the fall of the western Roman Empire and the European Renaissance is THE DARK AGES.

A New Dark Age would likely be a WORLDWIDE Phenomenon.

In the roughly one thousand year hiatus of Europe’s dark ages, knowledge advanced in the Muslim world and in China, at least. Probably there were other places. But if that were to happen now? That would be catastrophic! A thousand years might be just the prelude.

We cannot allow a new dark age! Such an age might only be ended by the rise of an entirely different technological species!

We Need ET!

Am I afraid of ET? You bet I am. As Arthur Clarke put it in his third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Irrefutable contact stands to demote us from our final conceit: that we are the one and only sentient and intelligent species. That fall might be very hard, depending on ET’s own level of development. I won’t even try to list all the potential ideas humans have put forth, all the way from us being about equals to us being “gophers.”

No, I don’t want to meet ET! ET scares the hell out of me. But I want even less to slowly (or not so slowly?) sink into a dark dark age, possibly even have my species go extinct. We don’t have to do this! ET may be our best or even our only way to resurrect our increasingly moribund practice of science and move to a new golden age. I want to see us on our way to that golden age. I want our ambitions once again to know no physical bounds.

Except perhaps the bounds necessary to coexist with our newly recognized neighbors.

What Do I Mean By “NASA is Busy Dying?”

The 1960s were a heady period in many ways. And for much of the public, including yours truly, there were two seminal moments: first when President Kennedy set our goal to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade and second when the Apollo 11 astronauts stood on the lunar surface before the end of the decade. Many of us were going into science and related fields. We were on our way to conquering the universe!

Annnd then along came the 1970s and it all began to slip away. NASA went from the vanguard of our dreams to the guardian of our nightmares. Instead of humanity taking a place in the universe, we are stuck with robots looking for microbial slime.

Far from seeking evidence of ET, NASA is running headlong away from ET. When discussing for instance 3I/ATLAS, NASA refuses even to mention any possibility of it being a non-natural object, instead gossing over its several clearly anomalous aspects and retaining only those which are consistent with it being a “comet.”

Pursuing this course will result in the slow death of NASA and speed up our descent into a worldwide dark age.

NASA Needs ET. Science Needs ET! We All Need ET!