Strategic goal: the conquest of deep space

Transcript of Sergey Pereslegin's performance on TEDx “Vorobyovy Gory”, March 2011.

The role of space research from the point of view of a futurologist and military historian.

I am a professional futurist and professional lover of military history .
Therefore, I will show my rather specific view of space.
What I will say will contradict much of what they said before me, especially cultural scientists.
I have a simple advice: in case of discrepancies - choose my position - it will be justified.
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I will begin by saying that we have ahead of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the flight of Yuri Gagarin and this is the best sign event so that we can start a new space program.
Since initially the space program of humanity was carried out by the two countries of the USSR and the USA, the new program can only be announced by the successors and heirs of the USSR or the USA. There are no more options. I must say that China and India, with all due respect to these countries, repeat the space program that took place. Those. they are doing now what was done in the 60s.

A very interesting situation has arisen - we have a rare and very short “window of opportunity”. On the one hand, significant objects of research were discovered for the first time in deep space. "Significant" is not for science, but intuitively understood by all of humanity, roughly speaking, that "prize" has appeared, for which it makes sense to fight. Too quickly it became clear that the moon is not a prize, and Mars claims it with a very big stretch. But thanks to the Americans, thanks to “Voyagers ” and “Cassini” - we saw “prizes” in the systems of Jupiter and Saturn.

(Recently on propane found propylene . Ed. )

Second moment. Since the economic crisis has already begun, and the idea of ​​the development of so-called “new technologies” (info-, bio-, nano-) is clearly very late, a local opportunity has arisen to get excess financial assets and somehow quickly dispose of them. Therefore, we have 2-4 years of opportunity to launch a new program, including the creation of a new element base for research.

The strategic goal of space research is the research itself, and this is what needs to be understood first. In fact, this is the ultimate form of reflection, both of man and of humanity. This is a planetary reflection . We can pretend that this does not exist, but then we begin to lose the property that makes us intelligent people. Because reflection is (according to the ideas of many thinkers) our mind. Losing reflection, we lose intelligence.

The ontological goal of space research is a response to a challenge that is absolutely clear to everyone - we see stars, but we cannot reach them, we cannot recycle them. It is not by chance that a small child of 3-4 years old, asks his mother to get him a star or a moon. It is no coincidence that in European culture a young man, offering the hand and heart of his beloved, often promises her a star from the sky. This is definitely a symbol of our culture.


I have to say a very unpleasant thing. If you do not have an answer to ontological challenges, you begin to experience "ontological hunger." And "ontological hunger" people "stuck."
And “ontological hunger” creates a consumer society, at the same time destroying the social fabric and returning the person to the level of barbarism. In the absence of electricity in large cities, looting begins on the third day. In the absence of the meaning of life, in the absence of an ontological framework, I affirm that looting begins immediately and continues until the total destruction of the available assets. Such looting is usually of a state character and is a special, very specific form of money circulation.

Definitions

Near space - Earth, near-earth orbit, orbit of the moon, inclusive.
Middle space - Venus, Mars, asteroid belt.
Deep Space - The entire solar system
Inaccessible space - star systems.

There is an official point of view - the near space of the earth is needed, it gives us mapping, monitoring, communication, exploration. He makes a profit. As for deep space, these are extremely costly measures from which there will be no good for humanity.
This contradiction (near vs deep space) must be solved in the administrative space: the near space is for state corporations and service structures, the far space is for national states and humanity as a whole. Already, we must set the task to deep space. But first, a little about the neighbor. Middle space is already open America. This “new continent” needs to be mastered. What we have from this “continent”: guaranteed secure communications, global exploration, global navigation, global communications, global transportation. Let me draw your attention to the fact that, in the opinion of the majority, information technologies carry 3 globality: positioning, communication, information. And only space technologies make these globals independent of the will of the nation state. (If there is an Internet in orbit in Egypt, they would not be able to turn off the Internet)

Strategic breakthrough

(scheme of the Schlieffen plan , showing a deep approach to the rear of the enemy)

“In solving real life tasks, we should be concerned with one thing, so that our parts and connections interact as best as possible, and the enemy’s connections interfere with each other as much as possible. This implies conducting operations in converging directions. There are few joys in real war, in the game and in the competition, comparable to the moment when the operational formations that launched the offensive from different parts of the front begin to interact among themselves in the deep rear of the enemy ”

Today we have the opportunity to carry out an operation, which was not equal in the whole history of the Earth. Two strategic breakthroughs - cosmic and atomic - two major civil engineering offensive, can meet each other a billion kilometers from Earth, in the Saturn system. Even from the point of view of Schlieffen’s ideas, it will be a very deep operation.

Standard strategic priorities:

1a In the contradiction of "manned-unmanned" astronautics choose manned.



We collect space for people and for their physical parameters. Man is a more accurate, more multi-tasking system than any one we can build. Therefore, we must optimize the ship as a person, and not develop a research infrastructure from scratch that can work without people, and which without people will still not work well.

1b. Astronautics should be non-utilitarian.
We must put the questions of knowledge as more important than questions of benefit, then there will be benefit.

2. The rejection of the average space in favor of the far.
The rejection of Mars and the asteroid belt for Jupiter and Saturn. Temporary failure. Since, from my point of view, the main mistake of the lunar race was that it had the purpose of the Moon, and the systems that were created for it to achieve it, could not move people further than the Moon.
Remember that the first cosmic breakthrough was made thanks to the fact that Korolev, by creating a military strategic missile R-7, made her such that she could take a person to the same Moon. That is, the system was immediately created with a huge margin. What Schlieffen taught us again in military affairs: “We must not act against the front and not against the enemy’s close flank, we must build deep operations ” . R-7 for its time, for 1955, when it was developed, was a very deep operation. Saturn-5 , like the H-1 , like the H-3, like the American Shuttle , was not a deep operation. And that was the reason that space exploration stopped. The first breakthrough was achieved, the second one had inherently inappropriate technical support. Therefore, now it is worth setting the task not to the Moon or even Mars.

It is clear that if we set the task of Saturn and Jupiter, then this is not a chemical drive , this is not realistic. This is a nuclear space ship . By the way, I note that this type of ships were developed in our country and in the states. In the states, this is the NERVA project, we had our own three projects , quite decent ones.

(project NERVA)

The overall strategic goal of the operation is the presence of a person in the solar system, not in the logic of excursions, but in the logic of capturing and arranging bridgeheads

The organizational solution to this problem is only one thing - this is a new technological platform of cosmonautics. Under the platform, we will understand "a set of basic scientific, institutional and technological solutions corresponding to this stage of space expansion, and allowing to solve a certain range of tasks."
The elements of the platform are carriers, ships, stations, satellite complexes and so on.

Finance

To begin with, a country that creates such ships will acquire civilization priority , with all the benefits and burdens. Many thought how much Americans spent on the Apollo program . By the way, everyone knows how much? $ 24.5 billion (for 69 years), it is somewhere around 110 billion today (Wiki ).
Generally speaking, for such money, to get a civilization priority, win the cold war and become a power- hegemon - from my point of view, is called “the gift went”. It is not even money.
I will give you a simple criterion for comparison. All that was thrown into the space program - our, American, Chinese, Indian - from the 1950s to this day, the estimate from above - $ 0.5 trillion. And from global cellular communications alone, the profit is more than $ 2 trillion.
America's war in Iraq in 2003 - $ 780 billion.
Seven times more expensive than the Apollo program and almost 2 times more expensive than all the space research of the whole world for the entire period.
Is space really so expensive?

And look what the Americans got after they did it - they became a power providing absolute absolute priority.

Today much has been said about the Soviet Union. Good, bad, many are offended that the union has buried their “dream”, and he is to blame for this, and not that they themselves could not bring it to the end.
And I will quote the Strugatsky: "Our town has always been a hole, there is a hole and there will be a hole . " I will say the same about the union. But there was a period when our country was a hole in the future. And then she “cost” (speaking even in the language of money) much more expensive. Because the country, which has the ability to do what others cannot, differently assesses the value of its resources, its territory.

- How are your money secured ?
“Ours are Saturn’s two companions, and yours?”

It is clear that studies of Saturn, Jupiter, stars, will always go under the flag of mankind. It is clear that the results of the research will belong to humanity. But we also understand that, as it were, the results of Voyager and Cassini do not belong to all of humanity, but this is a triumph for American science. No matter how the flight of Yuri Gagarin belonged to all mankind, this is the triumph of Soviet science. And in this plan the country which will create a space transport network which will own its infrastructure, will own also space.
Once the English pirate Raleigh wrote “He who owns the sea, owns world trade. And who owns world trade, owns the riches of the earth and of itself ”.
The one who owns the space infrastructure owns the universe.

- Want to have a rich and strong Russia?
- Let her set her flag where there are no other flags.



P.S. I manually typed everything myself, and then I found that someone had already tried; reference .