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OPINION SPACE

Nostalgia For Medieval Explorers Won't Make Us Space Explorers

Cheng Ho's travels took him far at the time, but left China in no
better position to confront the centuries of decline it has faced
until the most recent years.
by Jeffrey F. Bell
Honolulu - Dec 03, 2003
Talk to "Space Cadets" long enough and they will inevitably start
using historical analogies to "successful" sea exploration programs in
order to promote their particular vision for future space exploration.
But it is the historical failures that shed more light on the state of
space efforts today.
Living in Hawai'i, I constantly encounter references to the great
Polynesian canoe voyages. Another popular model is the age of European
exploration that started with Columbus and Vasco Da Gama. Both had an
immense influence on human history, so Space Cadets love to point to
them to describe the potential for the exploration of space.

More appropriate lessons can be drawn from two "unsuccessful" sea
programs. One which does get a certain amount of play is the Chinese
Empire's program of "tribute fleets" that roved throughout the Indian
Ocean in the 15th century. Science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge has
even named his future interstellar trading culture after the most
famous commander of those fleets, Admiral Cheng Ho.

The Space Cadet history of Cheng Ho's voyages goes like this (with
modern analogies in parentheses): Far-seeing palace
eunuch-administrators (JFK's New Frontiersmen) funded an immense
program of exploratory voyages (Apollo) that extended Chinese
influence and culture throughout the Indian Ocean.

The size and technical sophistication of these ships was far in
advance of the pitiful Portuguese (Soviet) caravels that were creeping
down the West African coast at the same time. When Cheng Ho was on the
verge of rounding the Cape and reaching Europe, a palace revolution
replaced the eunuchs with Confucian scholars (Great Society
welfare-staters / Nixon Administration warmongers) who lacked the
vision to appreciate the value of oceanic exploration. The new
administration cut seafaring out of the budget. Eventually, the
building of ocean-going ships was banned, China turned inward and left
the world of the future to be dominated by Europe (USSR / Japan / Red
China).

But some years ago, I read some of the actual literature on that short
period of Chinese oceanic voyaging. The real story is that those
tribute fleets were very much like our current space program: vastly
expensive, but producing no useful results other than propaganda. At
each port stop, the local sultans or maharajas proclaimed themselves
vassals of the Celestial Emperor, expensive gifts were exchanged, and
then the fleet sailed on.

The Chinese didn't get any colonies, forts, naval bases, or trading
posts. They seem not to have even collected taxes or tribute on a
long-term basis from the places they visited. There was no increase in
trade or industry that can be traced to Cheng Ho's voyages.

The emigration of the Overseas Chinese population so prominent in the
economic life of this area today is completely unconnected to Cheng
Ho. The Chinese Empire spent a huge amount of public money on these
voyages and in return it got a short-lived boost in prestige and a few
alien animals for the Emperor's zoo.

The whole operation was really one of those "royal progresses" that
Western emperors and kings used to stage, where the court would
migrate around the countryside and show itself to the provincial
nobility. Cheng Ho's fleets didn't actually carry the whole Imperial
Court, but just enough of it to impress everyone with the power and
majesty of China. It is misleading to refer to these voyages as
"exploration". That concept didn't really exist at the time and
certainly was not a major motivation for the tribute fleets.

The Chinese ruling class of the 15th century felt no need to colonize
or expand in any way. They were satisfied that China was the peak of
human civilization, so any other place would be less fit for civilized
living.

The idea of conquistadores, traders, or pirates going out into the
barbarian world to win fortunes, estates, and noble titles just didn't
exist in that highly ordered and stratified society. The only way to
get ahead was to score high on the Imperial Civil Service tests, so
any ambitious youngster stayed home and studied classical literature
and poetry.

As for the fantasy of Cheng Ho sailing around Africa and conquering
Europe -- Europe was already well ahead in the technology of gunpowder
weapons. After they reached the Indian Ocean in 1498, tiny Portuguese
squadrons smashed much larger Arab, Mameluke, and Indian fleets with
cannon and musket fire, and they would have done the same to Cheng Ho
or his successor.

So I agree with the Confucian scholars that stopped these
super-expensive and pointless expeditions. It would have been nice had
the new regime in the Forbidden City substituted a real sea
exploration program like the one Prince Henry the Navigator had
started in Portugal. But that was outside the realm of political
possibility in China circa 1500AD. Only the West had the pre-existing
social conditions to make the Age of Exploration possible.

An earlier example of a failed sea program is the Norse expeditions to
Canada circa 1000AD. Here, the colonists had a strong motive to
permanently settle and colonize new lands. Their homeland was devoid
of farmable land and ridden with blood feuds that made emigration the
only hope of survival for some families. Only sheer desperation could
have driven the Vikings to settle in Iceland, much less points further
west.

What the Norse colonizers of Canada lacked was the technological base
to maintain themselves in the New World. They had a marginal
technology for crossing the ocean, a marginal technology for fighting
the Indians, marginal cold-weather clothes, and marginal
farming/fishing/mining techniques.

They didn't find an export product that could have been sold in
Europe. They could just barely support one tiny village in
Newfoundland with the help of the larger colonies in Greenland and
Iceland. (And this was in a period called the Medieval Climatic
Optimum that was considerably warmer than today.)

When it became clear that life in Newfoundland would be nasty,
brutish, and short even by Viking standards, they gave up. Later, the
Little Ice Age came along and even the Norse colonies in Greenland
were snuffed out by global cooling that their feeble technical toolkit
couldn't cope with.

I think we are in the same position with respect to space flight that
the Norsemen were in respect to colonizing Canada. Our chemical
rockets are just as inadequate as the Viking longboats. Our spacesuits
are as clumsy as chainmail armor. Our means of defense from solar and
cosmic radiation are as ineffective as the Viking spears and axes were
against the Indians. Our ideas for using local resources are as
primitive as the farming and mining techniques of 1000 A.D. And so
far, our ideas for profitable imports from space have turned out to be
as disappointing as the real lands behind those Viking realtors' names
"Greenland" and "Wineland" (Newfoundland).

What we need are the 21st-century equivalents of the galleons, plate
armor, gunpowder, horses, and plows that made the European
colonization of America practical in the 1500s and 1600s. Even more,
we need some outer space analog to profit centers like Newfoundland's
codfish, Virginia's tobacco, and Mexico's gold.

When we have these things, the Age of Space will really start. If we
emulated the Vikings and the Confucian scholars by closing down our
current useless manned space program, we might have the money to fund
the equivalent of Prince Henry's Navigation Institute and develop this
technology now instead of waiting 500 years.

But no Space Cadet dares to advocate this. They fear that instead of a
second Space Age with advanced technology, we would get what the
16th-century Chinese got: no manned space program at all. They insist
that we need to continue spending the existing budget on Cheng Ho's
pointless and expensive voyages, and find new money to fund Columbus
and Da Gama.

Unfortunately, there seems little possibility of significant new
money, at least from the US government. The Congress recently sent
letters to President Bush asking for a modest increase in the NASA
budget. These letters were signed by only 18% of the House and 23% of
the Senate! This level of support is not enough to start a major new
spending program.

So the International Space Station will continue to circle the Earth,
like Cheng Ho's tribute fleets circling the Indian Ocean, and the
Space Shuttles will continue to make expensive and dangerous crossings
of the 300-km gap to LEO, like Viking longboats venturing into the
Atlantic gales. Remembering history is not enough. We need to
understand it as well, or we will be doomed to repeat it.

Jeffrey F. Bell is Adjunct Professor of Planetology at the University
of Hawai'i at Manoa. All opinions expressed in this article are his
own and not those of the University.