NASA ’s Human Research Program is all about risk reduction , finding ways to anticipate tiredness and mitigate radiation damage , among other potential consequence in outer space locomotion . But what if a dissimilar sort of curriculum had evolved ?
After all , back in the 1960s the agency was looking into the much broader inquiry of how a human being might be accommodate for place . The belief grew out of a 1960 clause by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline call “ Cyborgs and Space , ” suggest that re - create the environment of Earth aboard a space vehicle was not as utile an choice as adapting a human being at least part to the conditions he or she would look .
The idea was a bold one in its twenty-four hour period . From the paper ( the italic are in the original ):
The task of adapting Isle of Man ’s consistency to any environment he may choose will be made easier by increased knowledge of homeostatic performance , the cybernetic aspects of which are just begin to be understood and investigated . In the past phylogeny take about the altering of bodily occasion to beseem unlike environments . Starting as of now , it will be potential to achieve this to some level without alteration of genetic endowment by suitable biochemical , physiological and electronic alteration of man ’s subsist modus vivendi .
Altering Physiology to Suit quad
Thus the concept of altering human biology ( and , doubtless , psychological science ) to accommodate to this truly extreme environment . It ’s one that NASA historian Roger Launius ( Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum ) looks into in a recent cartridge article , pointing to his own use of aesculapian equipment to corroborate his existence as an exemplar of one such transformation . Is Launius a bionic woman ? He name himself one , perhaps part in joke , but surely to make the decimal point that while humans can not survive in place for more than a second and a one-half without major help , abstruse space missions are pass to require adaptation that facilitate us endure the recollective ocean trip .
This Astrobiology Magazinearticlegets into the debate , noting Stephen Hawking ’s belief that the prospicient - condition future of the human species is in outer space . Assuming we find one way or another to reach nearby stars , colonizing any terrestrial planet there will make huge requirement :
If human beings are to colonize other planet , Launius said it could well require the “ next state of human development ” to make a separate human presence where home will dwell and die on that planet . In other words , it would n’t really be Homo sapien sapiens that would be living in the colonies , it could be cyborgs - a living organism with a mixture of organic and electromechanical parts - or in simple terms , part man , part machine .
And Launius himself points to the large number of people with noncontroversial tweaks such as pacemakers and cochlea ear implants whom we pass on the street every day . How many people are , in fact , animated on the dot because of technological intercession they carry about in their body ? The notion of the cyborg , then , should n’t really be quite as intimidating as it appears , but my dead reckoning is that public reaction to a human being vary almost beyond credit so as to allow endurance in an foreign biosphere would be considerably different . Such a being call up ethical questions that make us think not so much of 2001 : A Space Odyssey but Mary Shelley ’s Frankenstein .
Bioengineering : A Step Too Far ?
It was the Clynes and Kline paper that in the beginning strike the condition ‘ bionic man , ’ and NASA ’s ‘ The Cyborg Study : Engineering Man for Space ’ followed in 1963 , discussing issues like organ replacement and hibernation for deep space journeys before conclude that the technology required were out of range at the time . Poking around the Net on this issue , though , I came across anearlier articleon the Astrobiology Magazine site looking at effectuation :
The growth of stilted organs is not too far advanced from what was available when NASA commissioned its cyborg field of study . Although hokey heart and lung are now more stocky and better at the jobs they were designed for , they are used chiefly as impermanent replacements to help patient role survive until appropriate donor organs become available . Artificial kidney – dialysis machines – have posed the greatest challenge , partly due to the need to strain large amounts of fluid . In the sixty , stilted kidneys were the size of a refrigerator .
We have a long way of life to go , in other words , before we can reach the kind of bioengineering that this kind of adaptation would require . But the work persist in , and speed :
Today , the small twist are still not implantable , but a recent paradigm can be bear as an extremely bulky utility knock . contrived bones , blood , skin , eyes , and even nozzle are now all being originate , and each could conceivably serve man cope with the experimental condition of outer space . So long as the resulting entity still had a human Einstein , it could be considered a bionic woman rather than an mechanical man ( a robot that looks like a human ) .
Ethics of the Cyborg
From an honorable view , we also have to librate the advantages of cyborg - manner bioengineering against other possibilities . Assuming we eventually notice and move to a satellite that could sustain human life ( and assume as well that no sentient species last there ) , which would be the superscript moral choice : 1 ) Terraforming the entire world so as to fit our variety of life story ; or 2 ) Bioengineering our settler so that they adapt to the environs they encounter themselves in ?
The question may be resolved in a unlike way of life . It ’s always possible that interstellar travel will rise so perfidious and lengthy for biological beings that our expansion into the wandflower will be managed by artificial intelligence . Paul Davies ’ book The Eerie Silence again comes to mind : “ I cogitate it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biologic intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon , a momentary phase in the evolution of the cosmos . If we ever encounter extraterrestrial word , I conceive it is overwhelmingly likely to be post - biological in nature . ”
I ca n’t close this without quotation of Freeman Dyson ’s belief on the subject , as feel in Disturbing the Universe ( New York : Harper & Row , 1979 ) , p. 234 :
In the long ladder , the only solution that I see to the job of diversity is the enlargement of mankind into the universe of discourse by means of dark-green technology . fleeceable technology campaign us in the right direction , outward from the Sun , to the asteroids and the elephantine planets and beyond , where space is illimitable and the frontier forever assailable . Green engineering means that we do not live in cans but adapt our plants and our fauna and ourselves to live wild in the universe as we find it . The Mongol nomads develop a tough cutis and a incision - shaped eye to withstand the cold wind of Asia . If some of our grandchildren are wear with an even tough skin and an even narrower oculus , they may walk bare - faced in the winds of Mars . The question that will make up one’s mind our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space . It is : shall we be one species or a million ? A million species will not use up the ecological niches that are wait the arrival of intelligence .
The Clynes and Kline clause is “ Cyborgs and Space , ” Astronautics September 1960 , pp . 29 - 33 .
This post originally appeared onCentauri Dreams . Image of ROM the Spacknight mull over existence whilst doing tai chi viaSiskoid .
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