Robert Shapiro

Published in Space Policy (2009)25, 1-5.
doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2008.12.002

Abstract

A process is well underway in which the scientific, technical and cultural information vital to our society is stored in digital form within a limited number of computer facilities. This practice will render our civilization vulnerable to a variety of catastrophes which would destroy our knowledge base in addition to the losses they caused to population and structures. The Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) proposes that a staffed data backup facility be constructed in a secure location, with the Moon as the site of choice. If Earth’s population were destroyed entirely, the lunar sanctuary could serve to repopulate the planet.
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1. Introduction: two worthy causes

The ARC (Alliance to Rescue Civilization) group [1] advocates the establishment of a permanent staffed base on the Moon for the purpose of preserving the scientific and cultural documents and objects that support our civilization. We believe that a unique opportunity has arisen to link two worthy causes that have emerged in the recent past; each of which might flounder if allowed to proceed separately.
(1) The past decades have seen an explosion in the production of scientific data and cultural material. By force of necessity, they are being stored in digital form. Older materials are also being converted to digital form, allowing much of humanity access to a treasure of science and art that can readily be explored and utilized. However, this new storage medium is more fragile than paper, both because of its inherent nature and its greater vulnerability to local disasters and global catastrophes. If our cultural heritage were substantially damaged or lost, our civilization could not function, and humanity would be reduced to a barbaric state. A measure of protection could be gained by the construction of facilities which would preserve our heritage, and assist in the reconstruction of society after a catastrophe.
(2) A generation ago, human beings walked on the Moon. The Apollo program may have resulted as a by-product of competition between nations in the Cold war, but it produced media coverage and images that were inspirational. However, no further purpose emerged from that presence that stimulated the imagination of the public, and no further human expeditions beyond Earth orbit have been launched since that time. Several years ago President George Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration [2], which involved a return of humans to the Moon. Economically emerging nations have also indicated an interest in lunar exploration. But the reasons provided have not really justified the expenses involved. In the absence of a transcendent purpose, the prospects for human expansion into space remain uncertain. We believe however that the construction of a substantial lunar base as part of a program to ensure the survival of human civilization on Earth is a goal that would link and justify purposes (1) and (2). This would literally be a marriage made in heaven.
In the next sections I will describe the emerging data crisis briefly and explain the nature of the proposed remedy.

2. We are entering the digital age of information storage.

Digital storage is common in certain areas of science where enormous quantities of data are being generated; for example by the various Genome sequencing projects and the data generated by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland [3]. This data, which may consist of many terabytes (1012 bytes), is generated and stored in digital form, with no existence on paper. Other huge compendia of knowledge have accumulated more gradually. Until recently they were housed for decades as multiple volume sets that challenged the storage space of university libraries.
For example Chemical Abstracts Service has provided a short account of papers published in the significant journals of chemistry, and kept a record of chemical substances. By 2007, it had listed 27 million journal articles and patent record summaries and over 31 million chemicals [4]. In its first year of publication, 1907, the Abstracts required three volumes of ordinary size. I examined one in the New York University library several years ago and found that its yellowed and brittle pages could still be used. The library’s shelf collection extended through 2000, a year in which Chemical Abstracts consisted of 95 much larger volumes. For the years 2001 and on, on line coverage was offered. A similar story applies to many original journals from which the Abstracts were compiled. Electronic subscriptions are replacing paper ones, and even the older volumes are being scanned and converted to electronic form. Some new journals are appearing only in electronic form.
A similar story could be told for other areas of science and most other academic disciplines as well. In 2004, for example, Google announced an agreement with a number of outstanding research libraries to convert their holdings into digital files that could be searched over the Web. This was called “a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library” [5].
A similar fate may be in store for cultural materials that are objects, rather that printed text. Images of the object may serve to preserve some of their value, should the original be destroyed. For example, one ongoing project is taking place in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The collection of rare early medieval manuscripts in the Stiftsbibliothek is being digitized, page by page, by a team of scanning experts that seeks to insure that the original objects are not damaged [6]. A quick visit to the library’s Web site brought me in contact with a reasonable reproduction of an obviously tattered but legible page. Natural History museums contain vast collections of unique specimens and fossils, images of which are in some cases being prepared for storage in digital form [7] Some efforts are also underway to prepare state-of –the –art digital representations of paintings from major museums [8].
The various attempts to preserve our cultural heritage are uncoordinated and in many cases, unfulfilled. For example, the effort to digitalize the Harvard College Observatory’s unique and extensive collection of astronomical photographic plates had run out of funds by mid-2007 [9]. There does appear to be some gradual movement toward cohesion, but for the most part on a discipline-by-discipline basis. As a civilization, however, we seem much more concerned with generating data than preserving it. This is unfortunate, because our developing forms of storage and backup are extremely insecure.

3. Our digital record is fragile, and needs systematic backup

While some ancient and medieval texts have survived to this day, requiring only secure storage, computer-stored knowledge appears quite perishable. In the absence of the test of reality, various estimates have been made of the typical lifetime of the various discs, tapes and drives used to store our data. They vary from less than a decade to perhaps a century. Simple failures in maintenance pose another problem. A survey found that 12% of the Internet addresses cited in three prestigious medical and scientific journals were extinct two years after publication [10]. Even if suitable long-lived materials were created and web sites were maintained, continual obsolescence of the software would pose a problem. We face this on a personal level, where the VHS format for films has given way to DVD, with further improvements yet to come. I still maintain my collection of vinyl phonograph records because I have preserved an obsolete machine to play them.
On a much larger scale, the Sanger Institute sequencing center, near Cambridge, has left a quarter of its space vacant, in anticipation of the next generation of data storage machines. The data in the obsolete older machines will be migrated to the new machines in a piecemeal fashion, with additional space created by the removal of the sections that have given up their function [3]. The timely installation of new software also appears essential. As expressed by professor Clifford Lynch of the University of California School of Information: “ machines will often be compromised if updates aren’t applied; this can mean data destruction or corruption.” [11] Unlike ancient manuscripts that survived for centuries in unattended storage, the data collections of the future will require continual attention from trained staffs. Skilled individuals will be required not only to update the software and hardware, but to control the environment.
For example, massive banks of supercomputers generate considerable heat: “Two floors of the Sanger data centre are devoted to cooling. The top one houses the current cooling system. The one below sits waiting for the day that the centre needs to double its cooling capacity.” [3] Heat represents the worst fear of computer systems administrators. If power were shut off, and emergency backup power failed, immediate shutdown would be needed to prevent data loss and damage to components [3].
Such circumstances essentially compel data centers to keep copies of their holdings. “Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed labs and computing facilities, are important reminders that data need to be backed up frequently and comprehensively in diverse and distant locations.” [11] An example is furnished by an Internet Data Archive which stores copies of public pages posted in the World Wide Web since 1996. The three archive “mirrors” are housed just south of the Golden Gate in San Francisco, at the XS4ALL data center near Amsterdam and under the New Library of Alexandria in Egypt. [3] We might note that these sites are located in an earthquake-prone zone, a flood plain, and a region of political instability.
We inhabit a world where hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, epidemics, famines, local power failures, civil disturbances and riots, limited wars and terrorist attacks are increasingly common. The production of backup copies of data in duplicated facilities protects the data from destruction by such local disasters and from equipment failures. On our current trajectory, it seems likely that much of our data will be backed up, but in a haphazard fashion, discipline-by-discipline, with some collections falling between the cracks and left unprotected. Some unfortunate losses may take place, but civilization will not fall because of them.

4. Larger catastrophes could bring down civilization, unless we preserve our data.

A number of possible events could cause widespread loss of life and property damage. The causes include dedicated cyberterrorism, nuclear wars, asteroid and comet impacts, plagues, supervolcanic eruptions, climate change leading to widespread famine, and civil disturbances due to economic collapse. A detailed description of such catastrophes lies beyond the scope of this article but may be found in recent books [12, 13] and on the Web site of the Lifeboat Foundation [14]. As a result, power grids and the computer-based systems that rely on them would be destroyed. We would lose the heritage that our civilization has acquired through enormous effort over past centuries. Humanity would be reduced to a medieval condition, or worse. To insure us against this event we need to place a copy of our vital materials well out of harm’s way in a suitable sanctuary. In section 6 of this article I shall argue that a lunar location may be ideal for this purpose.
The maintenance of this data store will require a considerable group of curators, software and hardware experts. They will need a support staff of engineers, plumbers, cooks, physicians, and other service personnel to keep the facility in repair and maintain the amenities of daily life. As the sanctuary may have to be self-sustaining for decades under some circumstances, it will need either a large food storage capacity or the ability to produce its own. It will also need to supply its own energy, and manufacture the goods that it requires. In other words, we will want to create a functional fragment of our civilization in a secure location. This will not be a conventional settlement, however, but will more resemble a scientific base: staff will be rotated regularly so that work in the facility would involve a tour of service, rather than a change of life..
The stored data in this sanctuary will duplicate the material in the working centers that we are already in use in the many functions of our society, and it will be updated periodically as new data is created. Unlike the working centers it will not be accessed routinely, in order to protect it from viruses and to avoid proprietary questions of ownership. Its storage capacity could not be infinite, so hard choices will be needed as to which items are essential to the maintenance of civilization, or worthy of preservation for the future for their artistic, historical, or other cultural value. This is not necessarily a disadvantage, as it will motivate the scientific and cultural communities, including almost all academic disciplines, to evaluate their possessions. The discussions and controversies that will arise will call attention to the superb achievements of our civilization, which are often overlooked in the popular media.

5. To fully back up civilization, we will need to preserve biological material as well as data.

One resource that cannot (yet) be preserved in digital form are the biological species that sustain us. The government of Norway has independently taken a step in direction of species preservation by establishing a Seed Bank on the arctic outcrop of Svalbard. A cold storage vault has been constructed to hold seeds for 1.5 million strains of humanity’s most important agricultural crops. This facility will back up a number of independent collections, to protection their contents from the type of destruction that recently took place in Iraq and Afghanistan.[15].
Storing animal species in a frozen form capable of resurrection will be a more difficult task [16] but one that is not beyond the skills of future biotechnology. In one estimate, a temperature of 80oK was deemed ideal for such storage. Terrestrial sites do not satisfy the requirements, but such temperatures can attained in shadowed areas of lunar polar craters. [17].
In the case of a global catastrophe, in which a large fraction of the human population has been lost, and the survivors are suffering and disorganized, it is not immediately obvious to see how the existence of an intact copy of our cultural record and of preserved species on the Moon would be of help. However, the Phoenix Project report of the International Space University, Strasbourg, France provides detailed suggestions about the manner in which a lunar sanctuary could aid recovery after a global catastrophe [18].
Advance preparations would be needed on the Earth, as a form of civil defense against catastrophes. A widely distributed series of repositories would be constructed, equipped with preserved foods, medical supplies and other emergency items needed by a population in distress. Such repositories could even be the first resource in the case of local disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, if more immediate rescue was unavailable. But in addition, they would provide radio equipment, simple computers and tutorials designed to allow untrained individuals to establish rudimentary communication with the lunar sanctuary. The equipment would be sustained by solar, wind, or even human power. The base could provide data and advice concerning longer term survival needs, such as information about other survivors and places where larger depots of food could be found. When some measure of stability had returned, information about rudimentary agriculture and the possibility of restoring electrical power would be furnished. In some cases, advisors could return in person to aid in the recovery of civilization. The ultimate aim would be to restore a fully functional civilization on Earth, with all of the resources that were available before the catastrophe.
An even more extreme case can be anticipated , which involved the total or near-total destruction of the human population on Earth. Whatever the nature of the sterilizing catastrophe, after a few decades, or at worst, centuries, our planet would return to a state of habitability. Atmospheric ash and dust will settle, radioactivity will decay, and pathogens will lose virility or expire for lack of a suitable host. Earth would again become the most suitable place of residence in our Solar System for the bulk of humanity. The lunar base would then have the responsibility of repopulating the planet. For this reason, a sexual balance and a significant presence of younger people in the population in the sanctuary would be advisable.
The cost of constructing and maintaining such a sanctuary would be many billions of dollars, though the expenses would be spread over many years. Further, an expensive support organization will also be needed back on Earth, to establish the repositories, manage them in tranquil times and activate them as needed. Costs could be cut considerably if the sanctuary were located on Earth. Why then place it on the Moon?

6. The advantages of the Moon

A truly secure facility should be unaffected by wars, plagues, drastic climate change and the other global catastrophes listed above. It should be remote, yet readily available for direct communication with most of the Earth. Sites such as the South Pole (where a scientific base already exists) would meet many, though not all of the requirements. A polar sanctuary could be used as an interim location, but the lunar site has psychological advantages which may determine whether a catastrophe-survival project is launched at all. Throughout history, the Moon has been a prominent and evocative symbol in the night sky. Our landings there in the Apollo project inspired a generation, but the lack of any dramatic purpose, once we were there, has deterred further human missions for decades. Its appearance as a stable, airless bleak place, inspired little interest from the general public, yet those same qualities make it highly suitable for the grandest purpose of all; to insure human survival.
The lunar subsurface temperature (232oK at the equator)[19] should provide a sufficient cooling reservoir for computers, and even colder locations exist for biological storage. Further, many other uses are compatible with the presence of a rescue sanctuary. Astronomy would gain by the construction of a lunar observatory. There would be huge benefits to the study of lunar geology and the history of the Solar System. The Moon could act as a staging ground for the exploration of other worlds, Mars in particular. Opportunities for commercial development would open up in power generation, mining for helium-3 and other materials, and in space tourism. Above all, the construction of a lunar base dedicated to human survival would provide a unifying purpose to a space movement which, while drawing enthusiastic support from a large part of humanity, has none the less floundered over the last generation for the lack of a clearly articulated goal.

7. How will the costs be supported?

As we have noted, these efforts will be costly. However the construction of a permanent staffed lunar facility appears to be an integral part of the Vision for Space Exploration [1]. Sites near the lunar South Pole that are under consideration by NASA such as the rim of Shackleton crater and the plateau at the top of Malepert Mountain [20] would also seem appropriate for the lunar facility. Given this head start, the cost of adapting the base to accommodate the survival sanctuary would be greatly reduced. In addition, the governments of some developing nations appear to have lunar ambitions and would perhaps share the costs. In the past, however, governments have not been reliable in sustaining long-term projects, and the overall management of the purpose of securing the future of our species might better be placed of a private, international organization supported by private philanthropy.
Our current prosperity (in comparison to the state of humanity through most of its history) is built upon the achievements of technology. The preservation of this foundation of knowledge must surely rank near the top of causes to be supported, particularly by individuals and corporations whose wealth has come from its applications. If presented appropriately, the preservation of our civilization and species may be seen as the most worthy of all philanthropic purposes. A gift providing even a small fraction of the ultimate cost would be enough to set the project in motion. Initial efforts could concentrate on archiving, constructing an organizational infrastructure and designing an appropriate facility. Above all, an educational effort to bring the project into public awareness would be needed, as an understanding of its goals and participation at the community level in placing the repositories is essential. As funds accumulated over the years, the more massive task of construction could get underway
The completed facility, in addition to securing the existence of a human future, would represent a symbol of the direction in which we must point if we are to survive the ultimate death of our own planet: outward into the vastly larger universe. The Moon again proves to be an appropriate symbol, as keeps one face permanently toward the Earth and the other toward outer space. I can suggest a slogan for this very long-term enterprise: Humanity Forever.

References

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