Tag: Space

God, Aliens, And Us, Ctd

But first, E.O. Wilson explains why he believes extraterrestrial life is out there:

Many readers counter Linker’s doubts that monotheistic faiths could cope with the discovery of E.T.:

There is no problem here. It’s called the scandal of particularity. God revealed himself to the Jews and not to other nations. Nevertheless, it became incumbent upon the chosen people to spread the good news to the other nations. “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6

The nations were the aliens of their day.

Samaritans, then the Greeks, then the Romans, …. the Irish and the Native Americans we all aliens to the promise, yet God preaches peace to those who are far off and to those who are near. Eph 2:17  The Irish took to the Gospel like ducks to water. So much so that there were no Irish martyrs. Why would we assume that ET wouldn’t be receptive to the good news as well?

Damon Linker says, “the discovery of advanced life on other planets would imply that human beings are just one of any number of intelligent creatures in the universe.” And that is a problem how? Indeed, the would need to be intelligent in order to receive the gospel. He seems to think that God speaks to us because were better than others.

Not so. The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers” Deuteronomy 7:7-8

Finally, does Linker think created in God image means body shape? Surely, he can’t be that naïve!

Another notes “one obvious flaw” with Linker’s position:

The monotheistic religions I know of all believe in “Angels”, who are not human, nor are of earth (also Devils/Demons, fallen versions of the same). To adapt to finding a THIRD group of intelligent beings, is different than if they believed we were unique in our intelligence and will.

Another reader:

Has Damon Linker communicated with all of the space aliens out there? If not, how can he write the line that you quote: “Did God create those other intelligent creatures, too, but without an interest in revealing himself to them? Or did they, unlike human beings, evolve all on their own without divine origins and guidance?”

If he doesn’t chat with them, how does he know that they have no divine origins and guidance, that they do not have religion? How does he know that God has not revealed himself to them? If they are out there, maybe some space people live in far greater harmony with God than we do on earth.

Another notes:

Seventh-Day Adventists, the denomination of my youth that I no longer claim, believe quite readily in aliens.  The story is that other worlds do in fact exist, that god created a universe of many inhabited planets with unique beings, that each had a Tree of Life and a temptation and that we are the only planet that fell.  So life on this planet is part of a “Great Controversy” between God and Satan to determine who’s right about everything, and the other planets are simply waiting and watching for the outcome.  Adventism came out of the mid 1800s, I’m sure there are some cultural contributions to the SF narrative in their eschatology.  But I’ve never seen anyone really pick it apart.

One more reader:

For a decade or so, all the subjects surrounding these questions have been discussed in conferences held by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley and in its journal, Theology and Science. So Christian, Jewish and Moslem theologians are involved and will not be caught unaware. Both CTNS and the Vatican (with an observatory in Arizona) are active participants in SETI – the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

One Step Closer To Mars

NASA’s Orion spaceship, which failed to launch yesterday, successfully made it today – watch the launch and journey here. Nicholas St. Fleur describes its significance:

During its grueling four-and-half-hour test mission, NASA’s Orion space capsule must shoot 3,600 miles away from Earth, orbit the planet twice, and brave a thick belt of cosmic radiation. Upon re-entry it must withstand a 4,000-degree Fahrenheit fireball created by atmospheric friction decreasing its speed from 20,000 miles per hour to 300 mph. Once it slows to that speed, the craft must deploy 11 parachutes in order to slow down to 20 mph, before plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

It’s a mouthful of challenges, but if Orion triumphs it may one day take astronauts on adventures beyond Earth’s orbit—and potentially to Mars. … This mission is the first of three trial runs that the Orion mission must overcome before NASA deems it safe enough for human space travel.

Jesus Diaz is psyched about this mission and other recent ones:

We sent an amazing rover to Mars in a seemingly impossible mission that had the entire world watching with baited breath. A few weeks ago, we landed on a comet. This week, we sent another spaceship to return material from an asteroid. Today we launched the spaceship that will take humans back to the Moon, asteroids, Phobos, and Mars.

So yes, I look at Orion rising against the deep blue, I hear the cheers coming out of my mouth and countless others, I see the millions of people watching this apparently insignificant event—just a spacecraft that is empty going up and splashing on the Atlantic Ocean—and it feels like the 60s all over again. The path is open again, a sunbeam illuminating its gates, now clean of the vines that had grown through all these years of abandonment.

Joe Pappalardo offers a more critical take:

The Orion launch has been be a triumph of engineering, hiccups and delays aside. But the Empire may not love the sequel. SpaceX is planning a historic launch of its own next year – the rocket is called the Falcon Heavy. Yes, Musk named his rocket after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and he promises it will take twice as much payload into space as the one Nasa launched on Friday, and at one-third the cost. So far his claims about SpaceX have come true, and soon he’ll be fighting, with the lobbyists and the politicians who play favorites, for satellite contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Combine that kind of force with Elon Musk’s capsule full of actual people returning to space – under a Nasa contract to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station – and you have a private startup that can beat Nasa or any other government agency back to the moon, if it so chooses.

Return of the Jedi, indeed.

Update from a reader:

The quote you included from Joe Pappalardo betrays a deep misunderstanding about SpaceX’s role in space exploration and its relationship to NASA. I work for a nonprofit space advocacy organization – The Planetary Society – and I direct its Advocacy and Space Policy program. I do this sort of stuff for a living.

The idea that SpaceX is a purely private, Silicon Valley-esqe startup is fueled by our society’s current swoon for tech culture, frustration at the lumbering pace of NASA, and Elon Musk himself. But it’s not true. SpaceX is a contractor whose business depends almost exclusively on NASA money. NASA provided hundreds of millions of dollars of crucial development money for SpaceX’s Falcon-family of rockets and Dragon crew capsules, and billions of more dollars in contracts for delivering crew and supplies to the space station. Without NASA, there would not be a SpaceX today.

Orion costs more than SpaceX’s hardware because it is tasked with carrying humans far deeper into space than anything SpaceX is developing. You get more radiation. You need to carry more life support. Your heat shield needs to be bigger for reentry. Your safety requirements are higher. And so forth. You can’t really compare the two, because they’re built for entirely different goals and under entirely different contracting regimes. SpaceX is doing what has been done before. Orion is pushing the envelope.

This isn’t to diminish SpaceX’s capabilities and achievements, but to baldly state that SpaceX can send humans to the Moon or Mars for cheaper than NASA, without any actual proof of capability (not to mention a business model, which is conspicuously absent at the moment), undermines the difficulty of what NASA is trying to do. It’s also just flat-out wrong.

Another notes:

Jesus Diaz may have been psyched, but he put Orion down in the wrong ocean; it was the Pacific, 250 miles west of Baja, California. Just rocket science, Jesus.