There with a Little Biotech Go We

Adapting Humans for Space

The action's at a distance, worse luck.

Let's face it, our own bodies are the problem. We can send our spaceships to the outer edges of the Solar System and beyond, or inward to study Mercury and the Sun. We can take snapshots of geysers on a moon of Saturn, sample the soil and record the weather on Mars, smack into a comet just to see what splatters. Yet we are hard-pressed to maintain an International Space Station 286 miles above Earth (at its farthest), and plans to revisit the Moon have been placed on hold. As a matter of fact, we no longer dare to dream officially of sending human beings anywhere beyond Low Earth Orbit. At least, not soon enough to matter.

Once we dreamed of building colossal habitats in orbit. A frontier more spacious and bountiful than any in history seemed within reach. There was even talk of setting aside the original Earth as a nature preserve.

There but for us go we.

So what went wrong? What's the showstopper? There are plenty of difficulties, but above all, it's the frailty of human beings in space:

• We can't survive the bursts of cosmic energy which pass through space unobstructed above the Van Allen Belt;

• We freeze at temperatures well above what's all in a day's work on Mars. and would roast at high noon on the Moon;

• The material slowly but surely separates from our very bones in a low-gravity environment;

• We need the right supply of oxygen at a narrow range of pressures;

• We have to have a steady supply of water.

• We also require food, which fuels us but does nothing for our space drives.

• Everything we use turns into waste which must be removed from our environment or recycled using energy from somewhere.

On top of all that, we mostly wish to come home again, and neither incineration nor parachuting is for everyone.

So adapt our surroundings.

All of these problems were known in the heyday of enthusiasm for space exploration and human settlement of space (say, around 1976). In general, our proposed solution to all of them was to carry our environment with us, or create a substitute where we were going.

• High energy rays? Carry a shield, or make one from off-Earth materials.

• Deadly temperatures? Whatever you're living or traveling in, equip it for heating and cooling.

• Loss of bone substance in low gravity? Spin your habitat, substitute centrifugal force for gravity.

• Need oxygen? Bring plenty to start with, and use solar energy to separate oxygen from oxides found on the moon or elsewhere.

• Recycle all water (as we unwittingly do on Earth, what's the big deal?).

• Food supply? We can grow veggies with hydroponics, and even create a closed ecology with some rabbits and chickens.

• Waste disposal? We need to recycle the solids and liquids, but we'll provide radiators to get rid of waste energy (heat).

• Round trip desired? Beat the heat with special tiles, and glide with stubby wings.

Weighty decisions.

Good ideas, all of them, but notice the cost: prodigious weights must be lifted from Earth just to keep a human alive, never mind to accomplish anything. Indeed, putting anything in orbit requires a prodigious weight of fuel and cast-off parts. The more fuel is aboard at blastoff, the heavier the structure and the apparatus must be to contain it, contain the forces which it produces, and control it all. In turn, the heavier the structure and apparatus, the more fuel will be needed. But the fuel must suffice to lift the whole thing above the Earth's atmosphere, turn it, and speed it into orbit. As of 1945, there were plenty of scientists who thought it couldn't be done.

Improved fuels, new materials, and numerous clever tricks managed to fill space with the things we've put there, but it remains a close call. One of NASA's space shuttles, complete with external tank and booster rockets, may weigh 4.5 million tons at blastoff, and every bit of it is expensive stuff. Engineers and mission planners do heavy breathing over every ounce. Under the circumstances, the weight of what humans need for survival is oppressive.

"Prodigious weight", of course, is relative to the task. The general principle is that if the cost of getting a payload to orbit is stupendous, but the value of having it there is super-stupendous, then the expense is worth it. Thus far, communications satellites have qualified, even for placement in geogynchronous orbit. Observation satellites also make the cut. They're sent, though, without human attendants. Considered as payloads, and compared with automated equipment, human beings earn their keep in very few space applications.

The unsung service.

Earn their keep, that is, if the value of the payload is only some current service on Earth. Some of us who see off-Earth settlement as a long-run key to human survival are frustrated by this short-sighted valuation of human flight in space. For that matter, we might argue that a space frontier is vital for preserving the Earth environment. We might do mining and processing in space that is destructive to do on Earth.

Considering the stakes, we're tempted to get dismissive about the costs. We fall into a "that's peanuts compared to ... (name your favorite expense to regard as wasteful)" sort of argument. It's a futile debate. People who would have to be taxed or purchase tickets for a major space effort spend money for tobacco, or for drugs, or for anti-drug enforcement, or for national defense, or for international charity, because that's what they like, or consider imperative. Do we expect to override their insights and preferences with a wildly conjectural (and as yet wildly expensive) scheme for a fleet of arks?

An unanticipated alternative.

We would be better off to consider what we might do to reduce the cost of putting humans in space.

Thus far, most attention has focused on more efficient space propulsion, shields against radiation, gravity substitutes, and so forth. But what about physical changes in human beings?

Has it escaped our notice that right now there's a high-flying field of science which deals in just such changes? The leaping progress which was made in rocketry and control systems after World War II has slowed. Meanwhile, biotech has become a hotbed of innovation and discovery. Scientific opportunities need to be grabbed where one finds them.

Wish list.

Not just any biotech will do. If we want to see it promote human space settlement by adapting human beings to the job, we need to set forth a wish list. Here's what we would like to see in a technology to make ourselves spaceworthy.

1. Changes must confer a relevant advantage for extraterrestrial living -- for example, resistance to radiation, ability to live at extreme temperatures, internal storage of an oxygen supply, bones that hold together in lessened gravity. We're not interested in fashionable pigmentations or pre-installed beliefs.

2. Changes must be applied to volunteering adults, not to embryos or children. Embryos can't volunteer. Children are too vulnerable to adult pressures. Maybe some day the settlers on a faraway planet may want to spawn pre-adapted children, but that's not the situation here and now. And even for the long run we might want to avoid the potential estrangement of new species.

3. Changes must be reversible. Settlers may have second thoughts. (Return to Earth may be costly and difficult, but at least the technology which has adapted the settlers must not stand in the way.)

4. Changes need to be incremental -- one step at a time, not a sudden metamorphosis to something like a six-legged insect. As a practical matter, this is necessary for making the changes testable, let alone acceptable to onlookers. Besides, it goes hand in glove with reversibility.

5. -- but STOP! We've already made a staggering list of requirements. Is it reasonable to hope for this much out of biotech?

A chorus of laughter can be heard from folks who are actually engaged in biological engineering, prosthetics, or other frontiers of medical research. It is easy to anticipate the comments:

• "Good idea! Send that list to Santa Claus."

• "Why pick on biotech? As long as we're counting on magic, we might as well encourage all that's available. Communicate our needs to a fairy godmother."

• "Hey! Our colleagues who've been working on ESP and telekinesis are losing their funding. Suggest the space ploy to them."

• "Actually, our most urgent need is a set of administrative rulings for access to a wormhole."

All right, already. Our aspirations are ambitious. The science that prompts the hopes, though, is real. It's in a state of rapid development. It has what rocketry has lost, for the moment: near-term benefits that everyone wants. (Who can argue with a cure for even one ailment?) Biotech is the economic driver which we once sought in solar power satellites. Everything it does to learn the secrets of the body's development and the microbiology of diseases can undergird the larger achievements which might adapt human beings for space. If they're ever possible, this is how we'll get to them.

What should space enthusiasts do about it?

So what should we who still long for a space frontier be doing about it? Redirect public funding from space exploration to earmarked biotech? Well hardly! Space funding is a pitiful remnant as matters stand. To whatever extent we once hoped for the timely application of "mad money" to a window of opportunity for all humanity -- it's gone. The nations, our own included, no longer have mad money.

What about the private funds going into hoped-for space tourism? Alas, the fat cats who were supposed to buy tickets have been put on a starvation diet. Perhaps we could try what a congressman did in Tucson: invite our supporters to a "skinny cat breakfast" fund-raiser. More seriously: those space entrepreneurs who still have money to invest should be encouraged to look for biotech efforts that bear upon our wish list, and weigh them in the balance.

Very little of the accumulated expertise that has gone into space development, public or private, has been directed at human adaptation. NASA has had some people working on specific medical needs of astronauts, and so have the military. Let the wish list spread and be kept in people's minds as they work on those bread-and-butter tasks. You never know what may be stumbled upon. The same should be said for those who work on biotech and had never considered the application to space.

Ethics for space enthusiasts, and space enthusiasm for ethicists.

But for the cultural activists -- those who labor to impress upon the public the potential of space -- there's a more definite implication. Urgent, in fact. We need to work the settlement of space into the discussion of bioethics. More generally, we need to promote consideration of the positive potential of biotech, especially along the lines of our wish list. And it needs to be an ethical imperative, not an ethical misgiving.

Bioethics (and, closely related, environmental ethics) are not a side-issue. Right now there's a Presidential Commission on Bioethics, following others in previous administrations. There will be discussions that lead to public promotion -- or public discouragement -- of biotechnical tinkering with animate beings. Congress will consider public funding, regulatory bodies, moratoria. Scare stories will air on TV, as well as medical miracle promises that could backfire if they fail. Private efforts will be encouraged or constrained.

There has been a tendency to look only at short-run effects, and a bias toward the downside. Typical concerns are about the microbial equivalent of invasive species. Those misgivings are not altogether unwarranted; we can well remember how "killer bees" escaped the lab in Brazil and made their way irresistably to Central America, Mexico, and all the way to the United States. (Those were not genetically altered, they were just brought across the ocean. Heaven only knows what might escape from the labs when we play with microorganisms.) On the upside, advocates point to possible cures for maladies like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and the feeding of a starving world with blight-resistant crops.

Those are fair fears and fair hopes, but they mustn't lead to over-generalized responses that determine the direction of a whole science, or even kill it in its cradle. We need to superimpose a grander view: in the long run, no species is sustainable without adaptation. The environment will change, whether it's our doing or not. Adaptations in behavior can carry us only so far; ultimately we must adapt physically as well. And if we as human beings have any duty at all, it's the duty to perpetuate our species in time and propagate it in space, to whatever extent we can. Our ethical discussion must embrace a time span in which biotech might be able to achieve the things we've suggested here. Moreover, ethics fall short of ethics if they ignore the "extraterrestrial imperative": it will be a colossal tragedy if humanity never advances beyond one planet.

It would seem there is new work for space enthusiasts. And incidentally, for biologists and ethicists.

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