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from the if-a-kessler-syndrome-is-not-triggered-first dept.
Charlie Stross, a science fiction writer based in Scotland, has written a post about different possible approaches to space colonization. He includes a discussion of several different models.
While the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is evidently invalid, a weaker version—that language influences thought—is much harder to argue against. When we talk about a spaceship, a portmanteau word derived from "[outer] space" and "ship", we bring along certain unstated assumptions about shipping that are at odds with the physical parameters of a human-friendly life support environment for traversing interplanetary distances. Ships, in the vernacular, have captains and a crew who obey the captain via a chain of command, they carry cargo or passengers, they travel between ports or to a well-defined destination, they may have a mission whether it be scientific research or military. And of these aspects, only the scientific research angle is remotely applicable to any actually existing interplanetary vehicle, be it a robot probe like Psyche or one of the Apollo program flights.
(Pedant's footnote: while the Apollo crews had a nominal commander, actual direction came from Mission Control back on Earth and the astronauts operated as a team, along lines very similar to those later formalized as Crew Resource Management in commercial aviation.)
Anyway, a point I've already chewed over on this blog is that a spaceship is not like a sea-going vessel, can't be operated like a sea-going vessel, and the word "ship" in its name feeds into various cognitive biases that may be actively harmful to understanding what it is.
Which leads me to the similar term "space colony": the word colony drags in all sorts of historical baggage, and indeed invokes several models of how an off-Earth outpost might operate, all of which invoke very dangerous cognitive biases!
There are few more models which he missed.
Previously:
(2022) Moon Life 2030
(2022) Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization "Will Inevitably Fail"
(2020) Elon Musk Will Run Into Trouble Setting Up a Martian Government, Lawyers Say
(2018) Who Owns The Moon? A Space Lawyer Answers
(2017) Stephen Hawking Urges Nations to Pursue Lunar Base and Mars Landing
(2015) NASA Working on 3D Printers to Print Objects Using Martian Regolith
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2024, @07:40AM
From TFA:
If he doesn't like Star Trek, he's entitled to his own opinion. The first season of TNG was mostly bad, and the second season wasn't great despite some big improvements and bright spots like Q Who. I understand not liking Encounter At Farpoint, which wasn't an especially interesting story while portraying humanity as supremely arrogant [youtube.com]. But the validity of these criticisms doesn't justify getting the facts wrong.
Even TOS established that there were different types of colonies, and they weren't all based around Starfleet, which was designed to have some characteristics of a navy. For example, This Side of Paradise [chakoteya.net] is about an agricultural colony, and there's a for-profit mining colony that serves as the setting for The Devil in the Dark [chakoteya.net]. Dagger of the Mind [chakoteya.net] takes place at a penal colony. Or there's Deneva, a colony in Operation: Annihilate [chakoteya.net], which has over a million inhabitants across several cities. It was originally established as a mining outpost but grew into several settlements that appear to have large civilian populations. Although Starfleet is a quasi-naval organization with both enlisted personnel and commissioned officers, the Federation is a civilian government that spans hundreds of worlds and was intended in TOS as an allegory for the United States. One need not watch TNG or anything afterwards to know that Star Trek is stories told from the perspective of commissioned officers in a uniformed service, there are a large number of colonies with very diverse organizations and for very diverse purposes.
As someone who has seen nearly all of the 700+ episodes between TOS and Enterprise, this is completely inaccurate. If anything, Star Trek supports the idea that many space colonization models work quite well, whether they begin as for-profit operations, terraforming outposts, or just people trying to leave Earth for a simpler and less technological life on their own planet. There are different governance models. Some colonies use money while others do not. Even just the stories I cited from the first season of TOS demonstrate that the show didn't suggest that a military-like model was necessary.