The Millennial Project

When this book was written in the early nineties, indicators of a stressed planet like climate change were still more or less on the horizon. Now that our attention has been drawn more completely to these things, this book seems even more relevant. But more than that, it is a refreshing and optimistic take on how to ensure our civilization doesn't snuff itself out. Rather than limit population growth or play an international zero-sum game, let's colonize space. We can do it, he exhorts us:

"Let us form of ourselves an army of starship troopers, gird on our tungsten armor, and go forth to do battle with Chaos and the minions of darkness. Let us unfurl the green and golden banners of our cosmic crusade, storm the bastions of vacuum, sow our sacred seeds among the stars, and take this galaxy in the name of Life!"

The basic plan consists of eight "easy" steps, all logically flowing from one to the next: 1) foster a culture shift that allows for these big projects to happen; 2) colonize the oceans, tapping their resources while learning how to be self-sufficient; 3) engineer an efficient means for launching lots of stuff into space, using energy produced by the ocean; 4) colonize geosynchronous orbit, learning how to construct biodomes in space; 5) populate the moon, mining its resources; 6) terraform Mars; 7) colonize and exploit the asteroid belt; and 8) take to the stars once we have fully utilized the Sun's energy.

Marshall Savage supplements his plan with loads of tabulated data, on everything from the nutritional content of spirulina to the physical characteristics of the largest asteroids. But even more to my enjoyment, he makes liberal use of allusions to Norse, Greek, English, and Jewish mythologies. Indeed, many of the names he chooses for the steps are drawn from mythology. At times I think he gets a bit carried away, such as naming his proposed launch system Bifrost, after the Norse rainbow bridge to Asgard. Capsules driven halfway out of the atmosphere by a railgun are further blasted to orbit by a rainbow-hued array of lasers turning a block of ice lodged in their sterns into propellant. He tries to rationalize this scheme by asserting ice is more penetrable by white light and that different wavelengths work better for different altitudes. But I think he fell for the poetic symbolism. After all, he names the next step Asgard.

Adding to the charm are the author's numerous references to pop culture, music of the sixties and seventies, and new age spirituality. Indeed, at times the book reads like a hippy manifesto, a feeling enhanced by the book obviously having been composed on a home computer, and the author's eccentric abuse of commas and other minor grammatical infractions, and some low-budget illustrations. All the while the book strides the line between science and science fiction, true as an arrow. The book is great fodder for a budding sci-fi writer. Looking at the portrait of the author in the back, with his swarthy complexion, full head of hair, and impressive black beard, one can easily imagine Marshall Savage as some interplanetary Captain Nemo, giving a tour of one of his bubble colonies on its way to Mars. Are things as blissful as they seem? Care for some spirulina?

Later on, I was most intrigued by his idea of encapsulating and hollowing out asteroids, and building cities inside them. Trees in such low gravity would grow to titanic proportions, he tells us. I suppose when you're thinking this far out of the box, you can afford not to worry about baobabs shattering little worlds.

In the end Savage tries to convince us that we very well may be the only living things in the Universe, and as such we have a great responsibility to keep the spark lit. While doing so, he manages to get in a good zinger at one of my heroes, Carl Sagan:

"No one knows what the odds are that life will evolve given an earth-like planet around a sun-like star. Sagan rates the chances at one in three. A close examination of the issue indicates that he may be off in his estimate by billions and billions."

And here's one that dates the book and is somewhat prophetic:

"Space Station Freedom is like the incredible shrinking man. It keeps getting smaller. By the time you read this it is likely to have vanished altogether."

I know of no other book like this. I really enjoyed Savage's proposed vision for space exploration, whose essentially organic and symbiotic approach is so drastically different from the sterile and minimalist approach we are so accustomed to. There is much to think about here while awake, and while dreaming.