This chapter examines the rapid mobilization and almost complete militarization of the German economy long before Goebbels called for total war, and even before Albert Speer arrived on the economic scene to engage in the mythification that long has surrounded studies of Germany’s economic war effort. Just as the insufficiency of the nation’s resources made achieving Hitler’s territorial aspirations ultimately impossible, that insufficiency drove production efforts that increasingly alienated executives but also induced them to participate in crazed and costly schemes to save themselves and their firms.

This chapter dissects the defects of both the prosecution and defense cases at postwar trials of German big business figures, and then the role of German corporations in creating and propagating a legend of corporate “decency” under compulsion during the Third Reich for decades thereafter, while also concealing the surviving corporate records that would have undermined this legend.

While the fate of a multigenerational interstellar population cannot be predicted with anything approaching certainty, the many dangers presented by the instantaneously lethal environment of space, plus the interpersonal pressures and conflicts that might result in social breakdown, make it doubtful that a successful transit to another star system with all the successive onboard generations remaining safe, healthy, and happy across time, is a realistic possibility. It is far more likely that the crew would suffer one or another kind of irremediable catastrophe en route than that everyone aboard would survive, and that the final, arriving generation would get there intact. But if that is true, then the question arises whether it would be morally justifiable to launch such an expedition to begin with, given its immense costs, high probability of failure, and lack of any benefit accruing to the sponsors back on Earth who had paid for it all.

Beyond the task of developing a realistic and workable propulsion system that would make interstellar travel possible and practical, there is the prior challenge of identifying an extrasolar planet that would be suitable for long-term human habitation. Any planet that is a candidate for human colonization has to satisfy a surprisingly large number of requirements stemming from the fact that human biology has evolved on Earth and nowhere else, and is therefore fit to survive only in an environment that is substantially similar to our own. As Daniel Deudney has said in his book Dark Skies, “Humans are sprung from the Earth, have never lived anywhere but on Earth, and the features of this planet have shaped every aspect of human life .… Life is not on Earth, it is of Earth.” And for that reason, a planet fit for human colonization elsewhere must be earthlike in several important respects.

Researchers proposed ever larger and yet more implausible designs for interstellar vehicles. And so in 1996, writing in the journal Nanotechnology, one Thomas L. McKendree discussed what would be possible if materials provided by molecular nanotechnology were used to build spacecraft in place of then current structural building materials such as aluminum, steel, and titanium. Molecular nanotechnology was the theoretical ability to design and build products to atomic precision. Such a technology, which does not exist as yet and might never, would allow the use of diamondoid materials that had much higher strength-to-density ratios than those that are now used to build structures. In his paper “Implications of Molecular Nanotechnology Technical Performance Parameters on Previously Defined Space System Architectures,” McKendree argued that the use of diamondoid structural materials would make possible extremely large space colonies. The classic cylindrical colony, for example, if made of diamondoid structural elements could have a radius of 461 kilometers and a length of 4,610 kilometers, or 2,865 miles.

The prospect of human travel to the stars faces such an exceptionally wide and diverse assortment of obstacles, improbabilities, multiple risks, and inestimable costs, as to make any attempt to traverse the final frontier far more likely to end in tragedy than to succeed in getting human beings safely lodged on the surface of an extrasolar planet that is in all respects suitable for continued and sustained human life. There are, in general, seven separate categories of problems facing starflight: physical, biological, psychological, social, financial, ethical, and motivational. Starting with the physics of the enterprise, we have seen that none of the three icons of star travel embodies a realistic, practical, proven design that would be likely to work as advertised. Not the nuclear-powered Bernal sphere, nor the Bussard Interstellar Ramjet, nor the Project Daedalus rocket, which in any case was not even intended to carry passengers. Project Orion represented the high-watermark of deep space craziness, as many project members themselves realized afterward. As Freeman Dyson acknowledged much later, “We really were a bit insane, thinking that all these things would work.”

Many propulsion systems designed for interstellar travel are last-ditch, desperation schemes with very small chances of a payoff. The decidedly iffy status of some of the propulsion concepts so far discussed – the Alcubierre Drive, Sonny White’s warp drive – have led some star travel proponents to conceive of other exotic, “alternative,” or overly imaginative propulsion methodologies: flying through wormholes, for example, or crackpot faster-than-light schemes such as tachyon drives. But those concepts are so far-out and unlikely as to be well beyond even Hail Mary desperation status. There are some further theoretically possible systems, however, that just might work. The least implausible of them all is the controlled nuclear fusion drive. It was this type of engine that would supposedly propel the otherwise unworkable Bussard Interstellar Ramjet as well as the second stage of the Project Daedalus starship. In its favor is the fact that nuclear fusion is the single Hail Mary propulsion technology that is currently under active development.

The obligation to support space exploration can be defended in at least three ways: (1) the ‘argument from resources,’ that space exploration is useful for amplifying our available resources; (2) the ‘argument from asteroids,’ that space exploration is necessary for protecting the environment and its inhabitants from extraterrestrial threats such as meteorite impacts; and (3) the ‘argument from solar burnout,’ that we are obligated to pursue interstellar colonization in order to ensure long-term human survival. However, even if we accept all three propositions, that space exploration will give us access to asteroidal and other resources; will allow us to defend ourselves against meteorites (by intercepting or destroying them); a+L16nd finally that interstellar colonization might be useful in saving us from solar burnout, it does not follow that we have an obligation to do any of those things. What follows is that we have reasons to take those actions as practical measures that will bring about the ends in question. But no obligation per se arises from the fact that those measures will be helpful in attaining those ends.