Proposed use for Moon: Storage locker for DNA
By Richard Morgan The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2006

When the dust settles after World War III, or World War IX, humanity
will still want to grow pineapples, rice, coffee and other crops. That
is why in June on the island of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, all
five Scandinavian prime ministers met to break ground on a $4.8 million
"doomsday vault" that will stockpile crop seeds in case of global
catastrophe.
While it has the extra safety of Arctic temperatures, the seed bank is
just the latest life-preservation plan to reach reality, joining genetic
banks like the Frozen Ark, a British program that is storing DNA samples
from endangered species like the scimitar-horned oryx, the Seychelles
Frégate beetle and the British field cricket.

To a certain group preoccupied with doomsday, these projects are
laudable but share a deep flaw: They are Earth- bound. A global
catastrophe - like a collision with an asteroid or a nuclear winter -
would have to be rather tame in order not to rattle the test tubes in
the various ark-style labs around the world. What kind of feeble
doomsday would leave London safe and sound?
Cue the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, or ARC, a group that advocates
a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA
samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human
knowledge - the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It
would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen
human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to
their role as a new Noah.

Far from the lunatic fringe, the leaders of the alliance have serious
careers: Robert Shapiro, the group's founder, is a professor emeritus
and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University;
Ray Erikson runs an aerospace development firm in Boston and has been a
NASA committee chairman; Steven Wolfe, as a congressional aide, drafted
and helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which mandated that
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plan a shift from
space exploration to space colonization, and was executive director of
the Congressional Space Caucus; William Burrows, an author of several
books on space, is the director of the Science, Health and Environmental
Reporting Program at New York University.

Shapiro has written a number of books on the origins of life on Earth,
as well as "Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth,"
where he unveiled the civilization rescue project.
In 1999, the same year the book came out, Shapiro wrote an essay with
Burrows for Ad Astra, an astronomy journal. There, they formally laid
out their plan for the rescue alliance, beginning by warning that "the
most enduring pictures to come back from the Apollo missions were not of
astronauts cavorting on the Sea of Tranquillity, nor even of the lunar
landscape itself."

"They were the haunting views of Earth, seen for the first time not as a
boundless and resilient colossus of land and water," they continued,
"but as a startlingly vulnerable lifeboat precariously plying a vast and
dangerous sea: a 'blue marble' in a black void." A conversation shortly
after the essay was published, Shapiro recalled, resounded with the
earnest imagination of science fiction drama:
Shapiro: "We've got to use space to protect humanity!"
Burrows: "By God! Yes!"

The concept is not new, but there is some fresh momentum. Burrows's new
book, "The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth," is due
out this month.
The mission of ARC has also attracted the support of Buzz Aldrin, the
second man to walk on the Moon. "It takes a big reason to go to the
Moon, because, frankly, it's a lousy place to be," Aldrin said by
telephone. "But this is exactly the kind of planning as a human race we
need to secure our future.

"But the ARC idea isn't ahead of its time because it's needed right now.
It's a reasonable thing to do with our space technology, sending
valuable stuff to a reliable off-site location. NASA is certainly not
bending backwards to do it. It's the private people like ARC."
Born and raised within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo in New York -
and he walked that distance often - Shapiro developed an early interest
in biodiversity. He frets over the frailty of civilization and the
planet, but he is not a pessimist. He compares the Moon- base idea to a
safe-deposit box.

"It makes sense to protect the things you
value," he said. "But we, as a civilization, we don't have anything like
that." The trouble with doomsday, Shapiro argues, is that it is almost
always rendered in popular culture as grandiose, though in reality, many
minor incidents present substantial everyday threats.

In 1918, an influenza strain killed about 30 million people; a possible
new bird flu strain spurs contemporary panic. In 2003, a tree fell on
power lines outside Cleveland, resulting in a blackout for much of the
Northeast. Doomsday can be understated.

"But I'm not here to predict doomsday; I'm here for sanity," Shapiro
said. "When we've gained what we've gained, we should fight to keep it.
"And, worst-case scenario, if it's all for nothing, we'll have a nice
museum."