U.S.S.

The British Interplanetary Society is a reputable organization of rocket men, physicists, mathematicians and philosophers (including George Bernard Shaw). The society goes in for high-flying thought as well as high-flying rocket ships. Last week it heard a lecture that hit an altitude record.

Scientific Fiction Writer William Olaf Stapledon, Ph.D. (University of Liverpool), solemnly tackled the problems which man will face when he tries to colonize the rest of the solar system. Man is very likely, he said, to keep fooling around with the atom until he destroys himself as a species, or even blows the earth into asteroids. But if man lives long enough, said Dr. Stapledon, he will soon have "a new freedom, the freedom to travel beyond the terrestrial atmosphere and explore the whole solar system."

Much will depend, naturally, on whether the other planets are already inhabited. Dr. Stapledon does not reject the possibility that organisms wholly different from those on earth may live on Mars, beneath the poisonous atmosphere of Venus, or elsewhere. But he thinks it "unlikely that any of the other worlds within the solar system is inhabited by any race even approaching man in intelligence."

New Climates. Mars, he believes, is the most promising site for a colony of Earthlings. "If the venture seemed really worthwhile," he said, "that small, cold, arid world might be rendered at least habitable, if not a paradise for man . . . Human ingenuity, with atomic power, should be able to increase the atmosphere and the water supply, irrigate the desert surface, produce a suitable vegetation and even raise the surface temperature."

Venus might prove more difficult. Its atmosphere would have to be completely revised. But, thinks Dr. Stapledon, Venus "might in time rival and surpass the earth as a home for intelligent beings." Jupiter and Saturn would be extremely hard to colonize, but even they might yield to man's persistence.

Dr. Stapledon does not think that atomic-age pilgrims sent to these distant worlds in space-voyaging Mayflowers could be standard-model people. They would have to be deliberately bred to match the environments they intended to inhabit. Colonists for Mars, for instance, might be descendants of present-day Tibetans, gradually accustomed to even greater extremes of cold, dryness and rarefied atmosphere. Colonists for Venus might be taken from some equatorial race and bred to withstand even fiercer heat.

Such minor adjustments would not be enough for colonists bound for Jupiter. A serious problem on that huge planet would be its powerful surface gravitation (2.6 times that of the earth). To withstand its pull the colonists would have to be very small, with not enough room for the necessary brains, or they would have to be modified radically by eugenics.

Special Bodies. "By very drastic eugenical operation on the existing human form," suggested Dr. Stapledon, "it might be possible to enable the present human brain to be supported, in spite of excessive gravitation, by throwing man into the quadruped position, greatly strengthening the four legs, and at the same time pushing the head far backwards so as to distribute its weight evenly between the fore and hind legs. But what of the problem of providing hands? . . . My only suggestion is that the nose might be greatly elongated into a trunk equipped with delicate grasping instruments like fingers. It would probably be desirable to have two trunks, if not three. The eyes . . . would have to be projected well forward . . . otherwise Homo Jovianus would not be able to see where he was stepping."

These planetary colonies, thinks Dr. Stapledon, might bring about earthwide luxury and ease. But the effort should not be made, said Dr. Stapledon (who, for a scientist, is something of a moralist*); from such low motives. The only respectable and sufficient motive would be to stimulate and diversify the growth of the human spirit. The hardy, high-stepping Martians, the heat-resistant Venerians, the squat, four-legged Jovians and Saturnians with their triple proboscises--all would contribute, Dr. Stapledon thinks, to the spiritual growth of the U.S.S. (United Solar System).

*At 62, grey-haired Dr. Stapledon has lived happily with the same wife for 28 years, but declares that "monogamy is not for everybody." The ideal arrangement, he believes, is "monogamy with well-spaced holidays."

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