I also don’t accept the idea that dealing with a cataclysmic meteor is beyond our abilities to control, except with the qualifier “currently”. I think with some effort, ingenuity and improved technology in the future we will be able to deal with meteors, to a certain degree of cataclysm. And to plan for those that are just too large I feel strongly that we need to establish ourselves additionally on a world beyond the Earth.

Mormons on the moon and why faith is dangerous

It includes Joseph F. Smith’s statement about space exploration.

How exactly would we provide for ourselves against a cataclysmic meteor? Follow the fictional accounts in our movies and hope for the best? A cataclysmic meteor is a game changer, is beyond our abilities to control, a highly unlikely event, unless God allows it to hit us, as part of the “End of Days” scenario. Life here on earth is quite fragile. Scientists speak all the time at how precarious it is. One degree off course in our spin around the sun, and we’d lose life here on earth. There is no power that a human being has that could stop something like that from occurring. Thus God retains such powers, and I believe that until his work is complete here, he will not allow such events to occur on this planet.

I believe it is necessary for us to provide for our own safety to the best of our abilities, while calling upon God for his blessings.

I meant that the phenomenon is unrealistic. And I do mean that. I don’t think God will allow a meteor to hit earth while His children are housed here to go through the test of life He has put us here for. I don’t think he will allow for a total destruction meteor or asteroid to annihilate life on earth until his work is complete. So yes, the phenomenon is unrealistic.

Anyone who claims to care for the environment should recognize that there is nothing worse for current life than getting hit by a big space rock

Yeah, we get a movie or two about every year reminding us of this unrealistic phenomenon. :)

Great to see your post! Conjured up lots of memories. Apollo 11 is literally the earliest memory of my life. I spent the next nearly 20 years trying to figure out how to be an astronaut. Even after I realized that the best route is through the military, and simultaneously realized that I wasn’t really interested in the military, I entered BYU as an astro-physics major, thinking that maybe having a Ph.D. in Astro-physics would qualify me.

Alas, life had different things in store for me. :)

On another, related note — in addition to JFS’s “perspective”, we also have reports (although disputed) the both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught that there were inhabitants of the moon (and the sun!). Far from undermining either my faith or my enthusiasm for the incredible accomplishments of modern technology and science (the moonwalk being one of the greatest), the stories of these prophets reinforces in me the logic and need of a ‘third way’. Neither atheism nor literalism and prophetic infallibility are concepts that will help us achieve our greatest potential.

My first two years in the Air Force, I worked at the Space Defense Center inside Cheyenne Mountain, above Colorado Springs, Colorado, writing software for tracking satellites. One of our programs ran a comparison of the orbits of manned space launches against the orbits of all other objects (satellites and debris) in orbit, to predict and avoid collisions.

The vulnerability of the Space Shuttle’s tiles and problems with being mounted on the side of the external tank, rather than atop it, were known from the beginning, but it was supposed to be a “cheaper” way to do a first stage rocket. The Shuttle Orbiter was really designed to ride to about 50 miles altitude on the back of a big aircraft. It is clear now that it is not necessary to stick people into the same rocket that carries your large cargoes, especially with advances in computers and guidance systems. And it is clear that the Shuttle was a deliberately designed dead end, a vehicle that could not serve as an intermediate step to returning to the moon or flying to Mars.

The need to have the power to travel anywhere in the space around the earth, out to the moon and beyond, was clarified when we witnessed Shoemaker-Levy 9 striking Jupiter, making mushroom clouds larger than the earth. If any of those pieces had hit the earth, humanity and nature would have been hard up. We must have the capacity to detect and deflect asteroids and comets up and constantly running, because we will have only short windows in which to respond. Having spacecraft that can take people and equipment to Mars is a good definition of the minimum capability needed to defend the earth. Anyone who claims to care for the environment should recognize that there is nothing worse for current life than getting hit by a big space rock. Nothing you do that is confined to the earth’s surface, seas and atmosphere can protect life from sudden demolition by an asteroid.

I frankly do not recall ever hearing JF Smith or any other GA saying that space travel was impossible. It is hard to even imagine apostles like Talmage, Widtsoe, and Merrill, all scientists, making such a claiim. I do recall that one theory that some Mormons seem to have adopted about the Fall is that it involved the earth being created in orbit around Kolob, usually depicted as being at the center of the galaxy, and then being moved suddenly to its current nighborhood halfway out to the rim of the galaxy. Since this is a distance of 5,000 light years or so, the hypothesis ends up explaining one thing by raising ten times as many questions. Above all, there is surely nothing in the scriptures that suggests a planet-size wormhole to provide instantaneous transport of a whole planet.

The Prophet Joseph Smith allegedly once speculated about people living on the moon as natives. This was actually a popular idea in his time. I find it more interesting that he remarked that the earth was made out of other “globes” or “worlds” (depending on the source). While JF Smith suggested this allows us to attribute dinosaurs to some prior planet, and thus avoid an old earth and allegedly evolution, it seems to me it makes no sense to claim that the earth is young, but that there were other earths that supported life for thousands of years before that. Is the creation of the other worlds left out of Genesis on purpose? On the other hand, modern astronomers a few years ago did a computer simulation of the condensation of the solar system out of the original dust particles, and they concluded that there were at first maybe a hundred smaller planets, which collided, ten or so of them sticking together to form the earth. The last collision was 4.3 billion years ago, when a planet the size of Mars hit the early earth, vaporizing rock that became earth’s unusually large moon. So Joseph’s statement anticipated by 150 years the views of modern scientists about the creation of the earth.

Joseph’s vision in Section 76 and the visions of Moses and Enoch showed an infinite number of inhabited worlds. Somebody is traveling between them.

Someone did a count and found that Mormons appear in science fiction stories more often than any other religious group. Given the breadth of our vision, a little speculative fiction does not phase us.