Focus on goals, resources, history and modeling issues concerning human and social dimensions of the space program using CSS. Design and development of socially viable human communities in extreme environments.

Learning objectives: to understand past and current trends in human space program, including robotic support; to understand the requirements of human communities in extreme environments; to analyze energetics and economics of spacefaring human communities; to model potentially viable social organizational solutions

This moment in history may be a major turning point for space exploration. Both China and the United States are planning to go to the Moon, and the US is developing the "21st century exploration system" to reach Mars. After thirty controversial years of emphasis on the space shuttle and still unfinished space station, NASA is changing course. Also noteworthy are the revival of interest in artificial intelligence and robotics, the development of nanotechnology, and the emergence of computational social science. All these factors and more permit a fresh start in space exploration and require fresh ideas, both technical and social.

Class: 4:30PM - 7:10PM, Thursdays

Room 338 Innovation Hall, Fairfax Campus

Prerequisite: CSS 600, 610, OR permission of instructor

William Sims Bainbridge, Ph.D.

Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Computational Social Science

wsbainbri@gmu.edu

Resources are available on a special part of the professor’s website, including useful links, software, a bibliography, publications, and other material. The URL is: http://mysite.verizon.net/wsbainbridge/space.htm

The class begins with two readings and some lectures intended to give participants a clear picture of the social history of spaceflight and the possible future developments. No exams will be based on these readings, but participants will take turns leading class discussions, based on selected chapters in these two books:

1. Bainbridge, William Sims. 1991. Goals in Space. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. (Do not worry about buying this book. The publisher has given us permission to scan the book in and place it on the class website, so everybody can download a free copy.)

2. Garber, Stephen J. (editor). 2002. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S. Human Spaceflight Symposium. Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Grades will be based on five small laboratory-type projects using computers (together worth 50% of the grade) and a final project that may be a term paper or a creative computing project (50% of the grade). The five small projects will provide material for class discussions, as participants learn from the experiences of each other, and will prepare participants' minds for the final project.

Schedule:

January 25: First class meeting

February 8: 1st project due

February 22: 2nd project due

March 8: 3rd project due

March 15: Spring Break, no class

March 29: 4th project due

April 12: 5th project due

May 3: Last class, final project due

Here are the five small projects, each worth 10% of the grade:

1. Outlining your own Predictions about the Future in Space (special, free Windows-based Year 2100 software provided). Using a software tool and database called The Year 2100, each participant will rate 500 ideas about the future a century from now, including 100 about the space program and 400 others about aspects of society. From your own perspective, you rate each prediction in terms of how likely you think it will come true, and how good you think it would be. The software automatically generates a report of your top predictions, your utopian vision of what would be good but unlikely, and your optimism or pessimism in each of five areas including spaceflight.

2. Applying Existing Computer Simulations to Space Exploration. Each student will select an appropriate example of existing social science simulation that, by analogy, could be reinterpreted as a simulation of some aspect of space exploration or colonization. Working either with the actual simulation, or a published journal article or book chapter reporting it, the student would write a scenario and theoretical justification explaining how the simulation could model the space-related social process. Result: a brief (6-page) essay.

3. Understanding Spaceflight Culture on the Web. This project employs online search engines or recommender systems in innovative ways to chart the spaceflight culture as reflected in websites. Several methods will be demonstrated in class, and participants may choose among them to do this project. These include, comparing frequencies of word usage across web domains, language-based clustering of websites, clustering websites by counting how many other websites link to each pair among the sites under study, content analysis for concepts, charting clusters of space-oriented books at Amazon.com, and other approaches. This is especially suitable for understanding motivations or cataloguing ideas about technical, logistic, or social developments required. Result: a brief (4-page) lab report.

4. Computer Simulation of Interstellar Colonization (free Windows-based space simulation software provided). This project uses computer simulation software to imagine a civilization that begins to establish colonies on planets circling nearby stars. It models cultural drift, evolution of culture by natural selection, and the dynamics of an expanding civilization whose expansion may halt or accelerate depending upon the assumptions of a particular computer run. Result: a brief (4-page) lab report.

5. Creating and Decoding Messages for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This project imagines that our planet and an extraterrestrial civilization are ready to exchange radio messages, and we face the challenge of how to frame messages that the other civilization will be able to understand. In class we demonstrate several approaches that have been suggested by scientists who have considered the issue, and then participants create their own messages, exchange them, and then try to decipher the messages. The results of this project, for each participant, are one message created and one message decoded.

Here is an outline for the final project, worth 50% of the grade:

Your final project could be a term paper, written research report based on empirical research, or a computer project such as a database system, simulator, or substantial website. Whatever the topic and modality, the project should be appropriate for the Computational Social Science Program, employing computation as a tool for analysis, modeling, and/or presentation. Here are some possible topic areas for the final project:

Motivation for the space program:

why would people on Earth want to expend the great investments required to create an interplanetary civilization, how individual motives could be mobilized socially (See the professor’s book, Goals in Space, that has been posted on the class website.)

History of space exploration:

perhaps with an emphasis on how the history prepares for, constrains, or predicts the future

Current organization of the space program:

in the US or internationally, in this time of rapid reorganization, perhaps examining a major controversy about future directions

Gantt analysis of space scheduling:

as classically developed by engineer and social scientist Henry L. Gantt, but now adapted for computers; stages in exploring the solar system, developing infrastructure for human interplanetary travel, logistics and supply chains for colonies

Earth from space:

such as Earth observation and remote sensing applications, meteorology satellites, military reconnaissance applications making heavy use of information technology

Extreme environments:

learning from extremophile lifeforms on Earth, adaptation to or terraforming of planets and moons, advantages of thinking outside the box to discover hidden advantages of extreme environments

Human and social factors in space:

zero-G, claustrophobia, separation from families, maintenance of discipline and authority, safety alertness issues, cohesive team building while avoiding groupthink

Near-earth exploration:

radiation environment, space stations, Moon and near-Earth asteroids, resupply and repair of systems of satellites

Space colonization:

comparing and contrasting different scenarios for specific early steps:

L-5, lunar south pole, Mars, robot assembly of large structures, perhaps with analysis of supply, resource, and coordination issues

Social organization in extreme environments:

for example based on Antarctic experience, historical utopian communities, social science of military units in hostile settings, theory-based simulation, or demonstration colonies like Biosphere II

Economic analysis of space resources:

whether with or without the assumption there must be a return on investment to Earth, achieving break-even point or self-sufficiency over different time scales, estimate of value to Earth itself of raw materials, zero-G manufacture, or information

Energetics of colonization:

for example socio-technical implications of alternative propulsion systems (chemical, nuclear, solar sail, ion drive, mass driver, hypothetical space elevators), energy needs and sources for colonies: Earth orbit, Moon, Mars, asteroids, Saturn satellites (and Jupiter satellites if hard radiation problems can be solved)

Precursory exploration:

looking for resources, designing appropriate technologies to exploit alien environments

Spacefaring civilization:

new concepts of historical stages of societal evolution, getting beyond geocentrism, Bester’s issue of “arrival of the fittest” or bifurcation of human species, hypothetical post-capitalist economics, creating a galactic culture, communication with extraterrestrial intelligence

Developing spacefaring civilization will require advanced computational social science, and thinking about the challenges today will help prepare you to work effectively on this planet, even as we develop the technological and social-science innovations to move beyond this world.

About the professor: William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University, with a dissertation based on research about the space program. He is the author of 13 books, 4 textbook-software packages, and about 200 shorter publications in information science, social science of technology and the sociology of religion. Most recently, he is the editor of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction and author of God from the Machine, a study using multi-agent system artificial intelligence techniques to understand religious belief. At the National Science Foundation since 1992, he represented the social and behavioral sciences on five advanced technology initiatives: High Performance Computing and Communications, Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence, Digital Libraries, Information Technology Research, and Nanotechnology, before joining the staff of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. More recently he has represented computer science on the Nanotechnology initiative and the Human and Social Dynamics initiative. Currently, he is a program director in Human-Centered Computing, after having directed the Sociology, Human Computer Interaction, Science and Engineering Informatics, and Artificial Intelligence programs.