Isaac Asimov: Science, Technology and Space

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Moreover, if such explorers developed nuclear fusion, they might even eventually become completely independent of the sun . . . and be able to pilot their asteroids into outer space.

PLOWBOY: Why send an asteroid off into space?

ASIMOV: Ah, because then the travelers could explore the stars without ever leaving home. They wouldn't have to abandon the world they've lived in . . . or have to say goodbye to their friends and relatives and all the old familiar places. Instead, the whole asteroid could just stop going around the sun and take off. Eventually—after a long, long time—the explorers' descendants might reach another planetary system.

PLOWBOY: But the nearest solar system is light years away.

ASIMOV: Granted, a huge time factor is involved in all this, so it's difficult for you and me to see how people could possibly undertake such a trip. But I can imagine speaking to an amoeba—if you'll allow me to imagine an amoeba capable of discussing the matter—and asking how it would like to be one of 50 trillion cells making up a multicellular organism such as a man . . . a creation in which the individual amoeba didn't count at all. The tiny cell might be horrified at the suggestion. "What?!" it would say. "Give up my consciousness and individuality just to be part of a large group? Never, never, never!"

Yet as each of us—as the consciousness of our combined 50 trillion cells—knows, there are things we can do and pleasures we can experience that an individual cell can't even imagine. You or I can't help feeling that it's worthwhile for our cells to give up their independence and individuality for the sake of what we have.

Well, I feel a reverse development may someday occur on a grander scale. An individual asteroid settlement will decide not to be part of a large community of settlements, will prefer to go off by itself and become an "amoeba" again . . . for the sake of eventually establishing a new planetary "individual" under completely new circumstances.

Of course, it's hard to see into the future with accuracy. It may be—in fact, it's almost inevitable—that once we start moving out into space, events will take a completely unexpected turn. Some new development will occur which will afterward appear so obvious that future generations will wonder why we didn't foresee it.

PLOWBOY: Dr. Asimov, I'd like for us to come back to Earth now, so I can ask you about one more issue. What do you think of man's relationship with nature? Do you see it as, say, a human using a tool . . . observing something pretty . . . or interacting with a symbiotic equal?

ASIMOV: Well, you're personifying nature, while I see nature as encompassing man. We've had an ecological balance on Earth, and we don't want our race to upset that balance. But it may be that—as a result of man's movement in space—we will eventually create an altered ecology that is even more to our liking!

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