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Glenn Reynolds on Mars

Brad DeLong and Adrian Hon jumped on Reynolds for jumping on astronomer Martin Rees.  Reynolds's article takes Rees to task for seeming to prefer some kind of careful government controlled exploration and development of Mars over an American Wild West scenario.  Hon attended the scientist's presentation and says he was simply describing two approaches without expressing a preference for either one, and the published quote is certainly consistent with that:

If they were governmental or international (expeditions), Antarctic-style restraint might be feasible. On the other hand, if the explorers were privately funded adventurers of free-enterprise, even anarchic disposition, the Wild West model would be more likely to prevail.

In fairness to Reynolds, though, the Reuters report, the only one seen by him and the rest of us less fortunate than Hon, opens:

Mars could resemble the lawless Wild West if privately funded adventurers seeking to exploit the planet get there before government-backed expeditions, a leading British astronomer said on Wednesday.

That sentence, especially using the word lawless, tends to put Rees's remark into a context he probably didn't intend; Reuters twisted his words, not Reynolds.

But the comparison of Antarctica and the American west is bogus in several ways.  The images conjured by the term Wild West exist mainly in the imaginations of novelists and scriptwriters, not history, as the article points out:

Contrary to the images thrown about by Euro-critics, the American West was a place in which crimes against person and property were comparatively rare, consensual combat excepted.

Consensual combat?  How different was a showdown at high noon from pistols at dawn in Europe during the same period?

Rees's statement distinguishes between government sponsored development and private sponsorship, with America exemplifying the latter.  In fact, the westward expansion was very much a government undertaking, with expeditions like Lewis and Clark's, and land purchases from Florida and Louisianna to Alaska.  The Feds encouraged private participation with land grants and military protection against the indigenous populations.

Compare that with the purely national explorations of an earlier age; crown sponsored expeditions of Columbus and Cabot; lands claimed for Their Majesties; military solutions for problems with the natives.  If Jesse James had lived in that time before railroads, he probably would have thrived on the Spanish Main.  Things weren't that different. It's not that there weren't commercial interests; the state was the commercial interest.

The lack of private involvement in Antarctica is not what distinguishes it from America.  Except for science, it simply doesn't have anything that anybody wants, or that would not be prohibitively expensive to exploit.  If someone finds significant deposits of easily accessible oil, it will be interesting to see what happens to that 'Antarctic-style restraint.'

sez Doug Murray 2:57:07 AM   comment []