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The ancient Babylonians began unlocking the mysteries of the universe more than 2,500 years ago. Meticulous record-keeping of the movements of the stars and planets allowed an instrument no more technologically advanced than a Mark I Eyeball wired to a human brain to predict eclipses with precision.
Not atomic precision, but we got there — and the whole thing started with such an astonishingly improbable coincidence that it’s almost impossible not to wonder whether the universe wants us to look up in awe and unravel its secrets. Surely an eclipse demands attention.
I've never been a man of faith, and sometimes wonder if there's something broken in me that prevents me from experiencing it. But a lifetime spent looking up in awe and wonder took me on a journey from Ayn Rand-influenced militant atheist to gentle agnostic to proud member of Team Judeo-Christian. So it occurs to me that it isn't just us who need to explain the universe — the universe has some splainin' to do of its own.
But this isn't about me.
In Life, the Universe, and Everything, Douglas Adams described a planet completely enclosed in a thick dust cloud. Except for just enough sunlight to sustain life, the people of Krikkit found their sky totally black, giving them no concept of stars, galaxies, or that there even was a wider universe to discover. When they finally did discover it — courtesy of a crashed alien spacecraft they reverse-engineered — they were so horrified by a vast universe full of other worlds and life that they decided it all had to be destroyed.
Would Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ sit in quiet anticipation of Starship Flight Test 12 next week if the ancient Babylonians hadn’t first been given regular eclipses to puzzle over?
John Updike's 1986 novel, Roger's Version, featured a theological debate between a divinity professor (Roger Lambert) and a young computer scientist (Dale Kohler) who is trying to prove God's existence through cosmology and computer modeling of the universe. If that seems dry, consider the following from their discussion.
Dale passionately argued that the fine-tuning of physical constants hinted at intentional design. If the atomic force that binds atoms together were just 5% weaker, no deuterium could form, blocking the nuclear reactions that build heavier elements. Just 2% stronger and protons would bind too easily, making hydrogen explosively unstable. In short, no atoms larger/heavier than hydrogen, no complex chemistry, no life.
It should also be plain to Updike's reader that our innate ability to imagine, discover, tinker, and create placed Dale in a world with computers and atomic science.
I read both books in high school, and those two elements stuck with me all these years, a constant nagging doubt slowly undercutting my teenage cocksure atheism.
But that's seriously Big Picture stuff. Closer to Earth — under an apple tree, actually, if the lore has any basis in fact — an English polymath named Isaac Newton laid the foundation for modern science.
If it was the Babylonians who learned to predict eclipses, it was Newton who explained them. Not to undercut any of Newton's many other achievements — including developing the calculus that bedeviled me in college — but I need to focus today, however briefly, on how he advanced our understanding of physics.
The ancient skywatchers discovered that the heavens followed patterns. Newton discovered that those patterns followed universal laws. Once mankind understood that the same invisible forces governing a falling apple govern the moon's orbit around the Earth and the Earth's demonstrably heliocentric orbit around the sun, the road from Babylon to Apollo became less an act of magic than American grit, ingenuity, and engineering know-how. And I almost wrote "wizardry" instead of "know-how."
Maybe the most important thing Newton discovered is, at least at the level humanity experiences it, the Universe is not capricious. Following up on Updike, it didn't have to be that way.
It would take more than two centuries and Albert Einstein to radically improve and expand upon what Newton achieved in 1687 with Principia.
And he did it all without anything more advanced than handcrafted lenses, pen and paper, and a brain apparently running several centuries ahead of the rest of humanity.
We launch on the shoulders of giants who taught us we can do more than observe — we can touch.
And Another Thing: Speaking of capricious, the discovery of quantum physics showed that Einstein’s theories of relativity, magnificent as they are, remain incomplete in ways almost as unsettling as the gaps in Newtonian physics. There's an old joke that I remember going something like, "There are only two people in the world who understand quantum mechanics, and they’re both wrong.” I couldn't find a source for that quip, so if it isn't an old joke, it should be. Anyway, let's not get into the quantum stuff because it isn't germane, and also because let's not both be wrong.
It's something like a miracle — and the "something like" is probably nothing more than my usual incredulity creeping in — that the basics of astronomy were discoverable by so-called primitives, and that one particularly curious Englishman could deduce the universal laws governing everything from falling apples to orbiting planets.
Random chance? Or something more?
In a recent post discussing Fermi's Paradox, sci-fi author John Ringo noted that "If Terra had 10% more gravity," in other words, just slightly more mass, "you couldn't get out of the gravity well with chemical rockets. You'd just be stuck unless you invented some type of anti-gravity."
In terms of its ability to sustain life — particularly the megaflora and megafauna required to give rise to civilizations — Ringo calls the Earth the "Goldilocks" planet. But there's so much more to it than that.
We've looked up in wonder at the moon for generations, and to most eyes, its airless, dusty surface appears not just lifeless, but useless.
Au contraire.
The moon's surface largely consists of regolith, which is "actually one of the most valuable and available resources in space," according to a fascinating X essay by wealth management advisor Cern Basher, who more than dabbles in space stuff.
As a dust that gets everywhere and sticks to everything, regolith is nasty stuff. Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan called it "probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the moon. I think we can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems except dust."
That was more than 50 years ago, however, and as Basher noted, "regolith can be heated and fused into solid blocks, much like bricks. It can also be used in 3D printing systems to create entire habitats layer by layer." And the dust itself, piled a few meters thick at most, provides protection from both solar radiation and micrometeorites.
More:
One of the most surprising facts about regolith is that it contains a large amount of oxygen locked inside minerals. In fact, up to 40–45% of lunar regolith is oxygen by weight.
Scientists have developed methods to extract this oxygen using processes like heating and electrolysis. Once extracted, the oxygen can be used for two critical purposes: breathing and rocket fuel.
None of this is easy to do, and like any pioneering efforts, there will be setbacks and casualties. But the thing to remember is that conquering the moon and learning how to exploit its resources opens up the entire solar system.
Our nearest celestial neighbor has all the materials and resources we need to begin off-world manufacturing, up to and including the oxygen needs for rocket fuel. And the Moon sits at the bottom of a shallow gravity well roughly 22 times easier to escape (in terms of energy required per unit of mass) than the Earth is.
Within Elon City's reach from the Lunar Republic lies an asteroid in the Belt named 16 Psyche containing enough metals to manufacture almost anything humanity could ever imagine — something like 10 quintillion dollars worth at today's prices. Tomorrow's prices will practically be zero once our Luna colonists take the next step and haul Psyche in closer for exploitation.
After that? We live in a solar system almost teeming with capturable water. Not only is it capturable, but we know exactly when and where to grab the stuff — and we have, ever since Edmond Halley figured out that comets weren’t omens from angry gods but travelers moving on predictable paths.
Mars won't be truly habitable until we seed the Red Planet with watery comets and allow time for the dust, water, and everything else to settle. It seems absurd on the surface, but in practical terms, making an ocean on Mars might prove far easier than turning the moon into Luna.
But from Babylon to Newton to Apollo and now SpaceX's Starship, each step became possible with the advances of the day. There's a progression from Babylon to Armstrong, and for those with just a little imagination, another progression — difficult, doable, maybe even ordained — from Armstrong to terraforming Mars.
It required the resources of Peak America to reach the moon. It will require the resources of Luna to reach the Asteroid Belt, the water trapped in comets to sustain an off-world civilization, and the riches of 16 Psyche to make mankind a truly spacefaring species. But the point is that everything was in place from the time our solar system settled into its current form — up to and including the perfect Earth-Moon-Sun alignment that drew Babylonian eyes heavenward.
Is that the design of an Architect?
While this system, for lack of a better word, doesn't prove that any particular faith or creed is the "correct" one, I can't help but notice that when it comes to spacefaring, it's Judeo-Christian civilizations leading the way. The peoples that produced modern science, industrialization, and spaceflight emerged from an unmistakable philosophical and religious soil, and I can no longer think that’s accidental.
Call it faith if you like, and maybe someday I will, too.
It might well be that the Deism some of the Founding Fathers shared is as close to faith as I'll ever achieve. But do keep those prayers coming — and never stop looking and wondering at the stars.
Maybe that's what we're meant to do.
Last Thursday: Say Konnichiwa to Our New Old Best Friends
