Some Lessons for Mars Colonization Tchalakov 2014

Ivan Tchalakov- University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria PAST-Centre, Tomsk State University, Russia

Game-Changing Technologies for Planet Mars: Lessons from Past Colonizations

Paper presented at Mars Society Bulgaria Conference on Technological challenges facing the colonization,

December 13, 2014 – University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria

© Ivan Tchalakov 2014 1

Contents

1) STS approach to colonisation: creating “envelopеs of mobility and durability” (Law 1986)

2) Portuguese and Polynesian colonisations as two polar types and related medical ‘technologies’

3) Mars colonisation ‘envelopе of mobility and durability’ and technologies that make it possible

4) Medical technologies as part of the Mars’ ‘envelope’


I. The ‘envelope’ of colonisation

John Law thesis:

“…it is not possible to understand this expansion unless the technological, the economic, the political, the social, and the natural are all seen as being interrelated…The Portuguese effort involved the mobilisation and combination of elements from each of these categories. Of course kings and merchants appear in the story. But so too do sailors and astronomers, navigators and soldiers of fortune, astrolabes and astronomical tables, vessels and ports of call, and last but not least, the winds and currents that lay between Lisbon and Calicut.” (Law 1986)


The ‘envelope’ of colonisation (2)

Jared Diamond contribution:

“… Smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, bubonic plague, and other infectious diseases endemic in Europe played a decisive role in European conquests by decimating many peoples on other continents. Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe… killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population… Soon after the British settlement of Sydney in 1788, the first of the epidemics that decimated Aboriginal Australians began. Similar epidemics marked the histories of Tonga, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands…

[In turn] malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases of tropical Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea furnished the most important obstacle to European colonization of those tropical areas.” .


What makes colonisation possible

Hence the ‘envelope’ of colonisation integrates different types of ‘technologies’ - ship design, navigation technologies, guns (arms), trade/commercial ‘technologies’, food and water technologies (cooking, storage, conservation), medical technologies, including grass-roots bio-politics…

STS definition of technology (M. Callon):

Technologies are not just ‘applying the laws of nature in given (practical) field’, but are ‘experimentation with the limits of human imagination’.

Pressed by circumstances, obsessed with given problem or fascinated by a great challenge – provided you have courage, resources and imagination – you can change the markets, the technologies and even ‘the laws of physics’.


What makes colonisation possible

As such an ‘experiment’ the technology presupposes :

- knowledge about the properties of ‘natural’ entities and forces and skills to manipulate and control them by using ones against the others;

- accumulation of these knowledge and skills in human communities via their embodiment in people, artefacts and systems of signs (language, letters, graphs, maps, scripts, etc).

- transmission of all this to next generations;

- making the youth interested to continue ‘experimenting with the limits of imagination’, i.e. to expand the scope of known entities and forces, and to develop skills for their manipulation.

All this requires certain level of freedom and competition, as well as economic, legal, political and cultural conditions that make prosper not just the strongest, but the best…


=> Research focus on periods of intensive „experimentation”

The ‘technical progress’ is not inevitable and quasi-automatic, as Marxists think – in some societies it can be blocked for long, often until they disappear.

=> particular interests to the (relatively limited) periods when new socio-technical networks emerge, and against which subsequent centuries are simply an extension and expansion without adding something fundamentally new:

- Nile Valley before pharaohs;

- early Mesopotamian states and Lebanon prior to Phoenicians;

- early Ancient Greece;

- Veneto region between 9 and 11 century;

- XV century Portugal, XVI century Netherlands, XVIII century Britain, XIX century Germany, ?? …


2) The Sociotechnical system of Polynesian colonisation, 800-1300 a.c. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation)


Sociotechnical system of Polynesian colonization (source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4498668/Pacific-olonisation-one-big-pulse)

;


Sociotechnical system of Polynesian colonisation

1. New long-distance naval technology – catamaran consisting of

two large canoe tied by large wooden platform with big enough edifice, hosting crew members with their families, and allowing up to two large canvas;

2. Closely related advanced navigation skills, allowing orientation in open ocean, and reading and memorizing the ‘signs’ of stars, birds, wind, ocean currents, etc.

3. Reliable enough textile technology, transforming fibrous bark of some trees into raw material to manufacture ropes, sets, sails and clothes;

4. Technology for processing and polishing hard stone (obsidian) for axes, knifes, adzes for boats, etc.

5. Ceramic technology, inherited from their far China predecessors, and transformed significantly during the centuries that followed


Polyneisan radical innovation in boats

From small boats to

Catamaran made of

big covered waterproof

boats


Polyneisan colonisation: navigation ‘maps’ of ocean winds and currents (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation)


Textile technologies of Polinesian colonisation


Sociotechnical system of Polinesian colonisation



6. ‘Mobile’ farming and agriculture – grains et tubercles of edible plants, as well as small domesticated animals (pigs, dogs, and chicken), able to survive on catamarans together with crew members and their families

7. Fishing and shell-fishing skills

8. Decentralized social system, allowing the survival and reproduction of communities, and preservation of their social integrity

8. Specific culture – language, folklore, beliefs and rituals, which similarly to Ancient Greece culture stimulated the adventure, risk taking, perseverance and endurance.


Социотехническата система на полинезийската колонизация



9. ‘Implicit’ and explicit health technologies

- Coming from Southern China, the early Polynesian colonizers brought with them microbes they were resistant to, but contagious for the communities on the islands closer to the continent. They lost this during centuries that followed, living in much smaller communities and without big domesticated animals

- As a family and small group endeavor, Polynesian colonisation allowed transfer the accumulated in knowledge and skills about health, usually possessed by elderly family members, medical men and sage women, thus allowing their transfer from generation to generation. The same refers to the knowledge and skills related to nutrition.


What made Polynesian

colonisation possible?

Polynesians short short.mp4


Polynesians short short.mp4

Limitations to Polynesian colonisation

1. Ship-wreck, lost in ocean – these constitute a real threats, if reduced by the practice to travel in groups of catamarans, the later reliability and crew navigation skills. (Dutch captain Schouten

wrote in 1616: «These boats have excellent design, they are so fast in the sea that few Dutch ships could surpass them!)

2. Famine, dehydration and cold during the long trips, cold nights and bad weather. Polynesians had not technologies to concur Arctic and Antarctic.

3. Reaching remote islands with limited resources, unable to sustain large enough human community under the technologies available (Pitcairn island, Chatham island)

4. Ecological failures, where colonizers destroyed the islands

ecosystems (Easter Island - Rapa Nui).


Sailor found several

weeks after the wreck


Forestless Easter Islands

Sociotechnical system of Portuguese expansion in 15-16 century

M Magellan’s

Carrack

(Nau) – 15th

century


Sociotechnical system of Portuguese expansion (John Law, 1986)

• Global trade with spices in the Middle Ages and the dream for direct access to India

• The carrack as radical naval innovation in 15th century – a complex system of shipbuilding, gun and navigation technologies, plus financial backing by Portuguese monarchy

• John Law: carracks were resisting to assault, their new sails required less people, they had new guns at lower deck that made them very stable, they were large enough for goods and they needed fewer stops; they possessed new navigation instruments… All this made carracks ‘independent from their environment’.


Carracks’ system of sails


Carrack


Portuguese navigation tools


Astronomical radius

Octant (reversed radius)

http://www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbho-1/collection/cross-staff-reproduction

Portuguese navigation tools


Astrolabe

And how it

ass used

Naval clocks from 16th century

http://www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbho-1/collection/astrolabe-diagram

http://www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbho-1/collection/method-using-astrolabe

Drawbacks of Portuguese expansion’s sociotechnical system

Food supply during the long trips

Merchant and military expeditions, aiming at returning back home.

Underdeveloped food conservation technologies

…

=> Heavy losses from Scurvy

• - in 1499 Da Gama lost 116 men out of 170 (68%);

• - in 1520 Magellan lost 208 out of 230 crew (90%)!!!

• => Tropical diseases as another problem


The effects of scurvy


Scurvy treated with lemons


Tropical deseases


Comparing Polynesian and Portuguese ‘envelopes’ of colonisation

In Polynesian colonisation of Pacific (as well as those of Phoenician and Ancient Greece, or Puritans and Quakers' colonisation of North America, or Cossacks colonisation of Siberia and Far East) the main efforts are made by the communities (family, religious, merchant) who develop the necessary resources (mostly) internally. The relationships with metropolis are important, but the asymmetric, the movement towards colonies dominate.

The Portuguese expansion in India, similarly to (early) Spanish colonisation of Latin America or British colonisation of Caribbean islands is a different, ‘imperial’ type, based on commercial exploitation of certain goods (row materials, slaves, etc.) at global markets. It presupposes expanding relationship between periphery and metropolis, the interests of the later being dominant.


Comparing Polynesian and Portuguese ‘envelopes’ of colonisation

The Polynesian type of colonisation create a commercial and cultural space, rather than empires, where in addition to metropolis there are also exchanges between colonies.

The ‘imperial’ type of colonisation increases the asymmetry between metropolis and periphery over the time, and it is not sustainable in long term. Yet it maintains stable relationships between the two, unlike Polynesian type where it is quite possible some colonies to degrade their technology base and even to collapse as such…

The Polinesian type exploits the community resources (including in health issues), it is a ‘form of life’, while in Portuguese type we have ‘crew’ that is rather an instrument for achieving someone's aims. This makes it much more vulnerable, but on the other hand there are more resources involved.

© Ivan Tchalakov 2014

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Modern science and ‘imperial’ type of colonisation

Considered as specific type of ‘capitalization’ (B. Latour), modern science is closely related with the ‘imperial’ type of colonization.

European science actively participate in this process, helping to solve some of its key problems:

- Precise navigation;

- Tropical diseases

- Biology, geology and mining

- New technologies related to colonisation (after 19th century)


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3. The coming colonisation of planet Mars

What type it will be?

– Imperial (NASA, Russia, China) ?

– De-centralized (private initiatives – Mars One, etc.; Mars Society…);

– Combinations between the two (‘Antarctic’ model)?

The discovery of economically viable resources on mars or its use as bases supporting the colonization of asteroids might push the ‘imperial’ model. In the reverse case the decentralized or intermediary patterns are also possible.


‘The envelop’ of Mars colonisation – five key technologies:

1. A spaceship reliable enough (and able host the settlers initially;

2. New types of life-support systems

3. Autonomous manufacturing of tools and spare parts (3D printing?)

4. Extreme agriculture and farming

5. New medical technologies and new approach to health

=> With the exception of the third one (and partly the fourth one), still not a major breakthrough in the other five.


Health issues in Mars colonization – expert based approach (the next slides based on presentation of Dr. Nikolay Tzonev,

Mars Society Bulgaria Conference December 12, 2013)

1. Medical risks far exceed the commonly accepted (higher exposure to radiation, to specific chemical substances and physical effects). If important, crew safety and health related to the mission objectives.

2. Deep space specific environment causes adaptive changes in the physiology of human body, some of which are considered pathological (reduction of bone density, etc.)

3. Stress and other related psychological problems threat; the thraumatic events considered the same way.

4. Preliminary medical check and selection of the crew members to reduce to the possible minimum medical events during the long term missions, but does not prevent them.

5. Prophylactics and early diagnostics of key importance, allowing reduction or early treatment of emerging health problems.

6. Telemedicine as strategic field of development.


The probability of traumatic event and expert based approach

• US submarine Polaris: there were 269 chirurgical interventions on board between 1963 and 1973, i.e. for 7650000 people/days - 21 cases of appendicitis, 17 of which successfully treated with antibiotics, 4 with fatal outcome;

• Probability analysis: with crew of 7 members one chirurgical event in 14 years (by 2035 Mars One is planning 20 colonists at Mars)

=> Need of chirurgical facilities…


Expert based approach – medical events at Mir space station


Expert based approach – medical events at Space Shuttle program


Expert based approach: coping with uncertainties such as extra-terrestrial pathogens


Expert based approach – types of telemedicine

1. Tele-psychiatry

2. Tele-diagnostics

3. Tele-cardiology

4. Tele-pharmacy

5. Tele- chirrupy (the first teleoperation carried out in 2001 - ”Zeus telemanipulator”, ”da Vinci Surgical System”, etc.)


NASA helped turn the International Space Station's ultrasound machine into an all-purpose diagnostic imager with a direct line to doctors on Earth.

The technology could soon help diagnose sick people in isolated communities around the world.


Medical Diagnosis at a Distance

Expert based approach - biological tissue/organ 3D printing

NASA is testing 3D printer for

possible use at Mars

43 © Ivan Tchalakov 2014

What is missing in expert-based approach – „Live-world“ health expertise in families and other types of micro-communities

“Linear progress implies that scientization improves life-word knowledge, makes it more precise, eliminates superstition and error. The possibility that life-word knowledge might be simply different from scientific knowledge and perform different function is thereby overlooked…” (G. Boeme 1986)

Is possible health knowledge and practices, accumulated in family and knowledge communities (parents and patients organizations, activist groups, etc.), to be completely replaced by scientific expertise?

- V. Rabeharisoa & M. Callon (2002) (The involvement of patients' associations in research, AFM)

- B. Pasveer & M. Akrich (2001) (Home birth, Obstetrical Trajectories)

- M.Callon, Y. Barthe, P. Lascoumb (2009) (Hybrid Forums)


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Space scientist’s family dreaming for Mars


Thank you for your attention

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Some Lessons for Mars Colonization Tchalakov 2014

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