Abstract
Reproduced by permission of the artist, Boris Vallejo.
“Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings; if you fly too low or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. Travel between the extremes. … The boy began to delight in his daring flight, and … drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted. He flailed with bare arms … but losing his oar-like wings, could not ride the air. 1
Apparently, the insatiable urge to explore new frontiers is built into our DNA. In fact, given what was available at the time, the ingenious equipment Icarus' brilliant engineer father, Daedalus, fashioned for his son was a bold first step in space flight. Furthermore, if the aviator had listened to his father's warning, he might, in fact, have “traveled between the extremes” and returned safely to earth.
Ovid's story is a warning that overweening ambition and human hubris end in disaster. It's a theme that permeates the history of space flight: often the wildest, most extravagant notions of how to tackle impossible conundrums shut down all but the most intrepid and confident explorer scientists. The most successful of them—who made the strides that brought us to 2017, where journeys to distant planets are within our reach—had an unshakable conviction that all problems are solvable. Sharon Weinberger's new book, The Imagineers of War, paints a vivid personal picture of these first architects of the space program accelerated by the launch of Sputnik 70 years ago. 2 Each man was unique. To name only two: William Godel, the charismatic ex-Marine and wildly creative visionary who helped initiate the first steps in the space program in the early 1960s, and the aristocratic Wernher von Braun, part of the spoils of the Second World War, who developed the rockets that launched Explorer 1 and powered the Apollo program moon landings.
With every piece of new information revealed by our evermore creative and elegant technology, it is apparent that the size, scope, and complexity of the universe are essentially beyond anything we could have even imagined, much less expected. The data about the distances between ourselves and the our neighbors even within our own galaxy, the size of celestial bodies, the intricate configurations in which they are grouped, and the ceaseless activity in which they are all involved make the imagination reel. The rapid expansion of our knowledge underscores futurist Ray Kurzweil's profound observation: “A serious assessment of the history of technology reveals that technological change is exponential.” 3
Many of our precise estimates are brand new. For example, according to 2016 data from the Hubble Space Telescope, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is only one of an estimated 2000 billion others in the observable universe—10 times as many as our recent estimates had suggested! 4
As the cornucopia of new information about the number of planets that populate the universe expands, our intense interest in exploring those distant worlds increases with each new revelation. There is a growing conviction that the universe almost certainly harbors planets on which there may be intelligent life and even civilizations equal to or more complex than our own. Galileo first described the planet Jupiter's moon, Europa, in 1610, but over the past 30 years, NASA'S Voyager 1 and 2 and the Hubble eye have detailed what Britney Schmidt describes as the “complex geology (of Europa) which belies an active, maybe habitable, ice shell and ocean.” 5
Other fascinating reports abound. One of the most mesmerizing is NASA's chronicle describing the long life of the Cassini spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral in October 1997 and scheduled to finish its life when it penetrates the inner ring of Saturn on September 17 this year. 6 The Cassini mission confirmed that Saturn's moon, Enceladus, has a subsurface ocean rich in elements that might well support microbial life. 7 Gleine et al. set out in eloquent terms the implications of the discovery: “Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is a geologically active waterworld … of profound geochemical and astrobiological interest.” 7
The same possibility of microbial life exists for Jupiter's moon, Europa. The scientists investigating it opened its landmark paper with the comment: “Europa is one of the most compelling astrobiological targets in the solar system.” 8
The plan to explore distant moons is advancing quickly. Within the next two decades, NASA hopes to probe the icy oceans of at least six moons, all of which may harbor living organisms. 9 How actually to reach these distant bodies in a reasonable span of time for firsthand exploration is one of the most difficult problems we face. The spaceships currently available cannot achieve speeds that make reaching distant targets possible within a human's lifetime. In a stunning project initiated by Internet investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner and his colleagues, Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg, plans are underway to develop tiny, laser-light propelled nanocrafts that can record information, send the observations back to earth, and travel at 20% of the speed of light. The current target for these mini-explorers is an earth-sized planet, Proxima B, the closest known planet outside our own solar system. Discovered in August 2016, it orbits a habitable zone around the Proxima Centauri system, which is 25 trillion miles— or 4.37 light years— away from earth. 10 In contrast to these mini-explorers, even our fastest spacecraft would take about 30,000 years to reach it.
Given the enormity of the universe and the unknown hazards it presents, we are considering what would be necessary for humans to travel to even the nearest planets. We ourselves must be able to cross enormous tracts of space or, alternatively, develop sophisticated robots that can survive in atmospheres that are lethal for us that would be able to perform complex functions such as the mining of precious metals. Such robots might be programmed to reproduce and might eventually establish new civilizations in distant galaxies.
For the roundtable discussion that begins this second issue of our new journal, Dr. Michael A. Schmidt of the Research Innovation Center at Colorado State University organized a group of experts from NASA, Baylor University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Michigan to discuss the issues involved in understanding the personalized omics information of prospective professional astronauts so they could be optimally equipped for multiple trips in space and/or long stays in spacecraft destinations. In his introductory remarks, Schmidt explains that the broad mandate of scientists studying the physiology of humans traveling in space is to assess how such voyages affect gene and molecular networks. He points out that space flight impacts all the omics (genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics), but that the changes in general are temporary and revert when astronauts return to earth. Some of the most interesting points raised during the roundtable discussion include the fact that telomere length increases in space travelers, and that while that might theoretically prolong life, it is also true that cancer cells prohibit telomere shortening, guaranteeing their indefinite survival. Rather than longevity, malignancy might be the outcome. Other data attest to the fact that exposure to microgravity rapidly suppresses brain-derived neurotrophic promotor factor. Rodents challenged with low concentrations of helium had permanent changes in cognitive ability and behavior. G forces in takeoff and landing also impact human physiology, perhaps in a gender-specific way. Two participants in this issue's Roundtable Discussion, Our legal experts, Moussa and Killian, commented on the complexity of dealing with extensive personal data about astronauts, the possibility of discrimination based on that information, and the difficulties in assuring that commercial space travelers would have adequate informed consent about the possible hazards of even a single trip.
There is a universal miasma of depression throughout the world in response to the daily onslaught of news about dire predictions of the possibility of our extinguishing our own planet and the conflicts and failures of global political systems. But our own growing awareness at the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine of the miracles of 21st century technology is a perfect antidote to despair. We are rephrasing questions posed by humans since their 300,000-year-old appearance on the earth. But now, in these last 70 years, the scientific community is finding some answers. How old is the universe? How big is it? How is it changing? Our ideas of how to traverse enormous distances and of how to equip ourselves for those journeys are welcome antidotes to pessimism about ourselves and our collective fate.
In spite of our myopic immersion in the events of the present day, we should remember that we are only the latest iteration of the continuous, long chain of humanity that preceded us. Astrophysicists, at least, seem to feel a deep awareness of this. Even now, they christen celestial bodies with names drawn from Greek and Roman mythology. Jupiter, the largest planet in our own solar system, is named after the king of the Roman gods. Saturn's moon, Enceladus, bears the name of the most powerful of the mythological giants who opposed Jupiter. We have a new vocabulary to learn too: “astrobiology” (which includes the field of study in biology ending in “omics,” that analyzes the genome, proteome, and metabolism of living things), “parsec” (a distance of 3.262 light years or 3.086 × 1013 km), and the classification of galaxies into subcategories based on the degree of their ellipticity.
This new journal, Gender and the Genome, is dedicated to recording the newest findings (and the opinions of the wisest experts about their implications) of this remarkable era. When I think back to the first two journals a and the textbooks b we created to mirror the most important facts about gender-specific medicine, I note that our reports essentially described the clinical features of health and disease in earthbound men and women. As we venture into the wider worlds that are increasingly visible and accessible to us, the need for this new journal is compelling. It is presenting us with the opportunity to record adventures of which we never dreamed in an era where the human capacity to explore, change, and reinvent the environment—and ourselves—is not only unparalleled but, as Kurzweil predicted, exponentially expanding.