Opinion Animals on moon, people on Mars: The wrong lessons from Isaac Asimov

In the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, a dying empire is consumed by its own greed, apathy and is on the inexorable march towards entropy and death. Scientist Hari Seldon, though, sees the end coming and hedges against it by establishing a colony to preserve human knowledge at the far end of the galaxy. In essence, he hedges against the apocalypse, extinction and, most of all, the venality built into “advanced” human society. The books are both a fantasy and a warning: The latter because Asimov, with the power of prophecy only great writers can wield, knew of the dangers facing humanity and that in life, unlike in fiction and religion, there are no do-overs. Scientists today, it appears, want to play Hari Seldon in real life.

Prominent researchers and academics have proposed creating a “lunar biorepository” — a Noah’s Ark, if you will — on the moon with tissue and DNA samples of endangered species, to act as a back-up in case of extinction due to climate change, war, nuclear disaster or just human hubris. Given how many doomsdays threaten the earth, humans should indeed be part of this ark. Earth’s satellite, especially at its poles, is cold enough to ensure that the backup hard drive to reboot life is kept in a stable stasis. But that may be missing a point.

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A rebirth from tissue samples on the moon, or plans to terra-form Mars for billionaires may make it seem like science has finally caught up with science fiction. But what is unsaid is that, in most cases, it is not the billionaires or the mandarins who fund projects that perish — it is animals, and people without a voice. While science will constantly push the world into places it hasn’t gone before, looking for a backup must not become a way of staving off the recognition that for the vast majority, there’s no place but Earth. Asimov would certainly want that moral principle to be the foundation for science, rather than his Foundation.