Mars Isn't Turner's Frontier. But It Could Become Zubrin's Frontier of Innovation for Abundance.

Zach and Kelly Weinersmith have written an article for Foreign Policy--"Space Isn't the Final Frontier"--ridiculing "Mars fantasists" who "still cling to dreams of the Old West" on Mars.  The target of their ridicule is the American Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner and the metaphorical extension of that thesis by people like Robert Zubrin who claim that space, and particularly Mars, is America's New Frontier.  

The Weinersmiths are partly right and partly wrong.  They are right in criticizing Zubrin's naive acceptance of Turner's frontier thesis and then applying it to Mars.  But they are wrong in not seeing that a revised version of Turner's thesis is defensible and supports Zubrin's anti-Malthusian idea of unlimited abundance created by the human mind and technology, which could be extended to Mars.

In 1893, Turner delivered a lecture to a meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History."  He began by quoting from a bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890, which announced that there was no longer a clear line of Western frontier settlement because the unsettled area was broken up by isolated bodies of settlement.  Turner observed: "This brief official settlement marks the closing of a great historic movement.  Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West.  The existence of an area of free land, its continual recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."

From the time the European immigrants first settled on the Atlantic coast of America, Turner argued, there was always "free land" in the West, which attracted pioneer settlers who reverted to the original primitive conditions of human evolution and then advanced through all the universal stages of human social evolution: from the hunter to the trader to the rancher to the miner to the farmer and finally to the urban factory worker.

In their struggle to overcome the harsh conditions of life on the frontier and to build a new human civilization, the pioneers in the American West developed all the moral and intellectual traits of the uniquely American national character.  Turner explained: "That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are the traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier."

But Turner also suggested that there had been a tragic turn in this epic story of the American frontier.  If the frontier was closed by 1890, that suggested that the vitality of the American character--its individualism, inventiveness, and love of freedom--would fade away if it were no longter nourished by the challenge of settling a frontier.  Surely, then, Americans needed to find a new frontier that would revive the old frontier spirit of the American West.  That would become a recurrent theme of American political rhetoric.

And, indeed, when John Kennedy was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President in 1960, he promised that if elected, he would lead Americans as pioneers into a New Frontier.  Speaking at the Democratic Party Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, he declared his new version of Turner's Frontier Thesis:

"I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier.  From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West.  They were not the captives of their own doubts, nor the prisoners of their own price tags.  They were determined to make the new world strong and free--an example to the world, to overcome its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from within and without."

"Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier.  But I trust that no one in this assemblage would agree with that sentiment; for the problems asere not all solved and the battles are not all won; and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier--the frontier of the 1960's, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats."

. . .

"The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not."

"Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.  It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric--and those who prefer that course should not vote for me or the Democratic Party."

"But I believe that the times require imagination and courage and perseverance.  I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier. . . ."

Early in his presidency, in the spring of 1961, Kennedy explained that the "uncharted areas of science and space" in the New Frontier would include landing men on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth before the end of the decade.  That launched the "race to the Moon" that ended with the first landing of Americans on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

                                             Did the U.S. Go to the Moon to Beat the Soviets?

There have been no human beings on the Moon since the Apollo 17 crewed landing on December 7, 1972.  And the original NASA plan to land humans on Mars was never executed.

But then, in 1996, Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars was published; and it revived interest in landing humans on Mars and even colonizing it.  Inspired by his reading of the book, Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of having a crewed landing on Mars within his lifetime.

Just as Turner had identified "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," Zubrin identified "The Significance of the Martian Frontier" (2019: 271-86; 2021: 323-34).  JFK's New Frontier would have to be extended to Mars: "Free societies are the exception in human history--aside from isolated pockets, they have only existed during the four centuries of frontier expansion of the West.  That history is now over.  The frontier opened by the voyage of Christopher Columbus is now closed.  If the era of Western humanist society is not to be seen by future historians as some kind of transitory golden age, a brief shining moment in an otherwise endless chronicle of human misery, then a new frontier must be opened.  Mars beckons" (2021: 332-33).

Against this, the Weinersmiths argue that the Turner frontier thesis is incorrect, and it's a bad model for space settlement rhetoric.  Professional historians no longer accept the Turner thesis, they insist.  And they quote the American West historian William Cronon who wrote back in 1987: "In the half century since Turner's death, his reputation has been subjected to a devastating series of attacks that have left little of his argument intact."  But the Weinersmiths ignore what Cronon said about the ultimate truth of a revised version of the Turner thesis that is similar to Zubrin's argument about the sources of American abundance in the human mind.

Cronon saw that historians had made two kinds of critiques of Turner's thesis.  The epistemological critiques noted the vagueness in Turner's use of the word "frontier."  It "could mean almost anything: a line, a moving zone, a static region, a kind of society, a process of character formation, an abundance of land" (Cronon 1987: 158).  The empirical critiques argued that the history of frontiers was far more complex--culturally, economically, and politically--than Turner recognized.  The frontier experience of French Canada, the Spanish Southwest, and South America was very different from that of Anglo-American settlements.  Even the Anglo-American frontiers did not conform to Turner's characterization.  For example, the rates of upward mobility in the West were not much different from those in the urban areas of the East.

And yet Cronon's final conclusion is that an improved revision of Turner's thesis is correct.  "Turner's notion of the 'frontier' may be so muddled as to be useless, but if Turner's 'free land' is a special case of Potter's American abundance, then the general direction of Turner's approach remains sound" (Cronin 1987: 175).  "Potter's American abundance" refers to David Potter's People of Plenty.  In that book, particularly in his chapter 7 on "Abundance and the Frontier Hypothesis," Potter argued that Turner had failed to see "that the frontier was only one form in which America offered abundance," and that "other forms of abundance had superseded the frontier even before the supply of free land had been exhausted" (Potter 1954: 156).  If we define "frontier" more broadly as "the edge of the unused," then we can see 

". . . that science has its frontiers, industry its frontiers, technology its frontiers, and that so long as Americans can advance their standards of living and maintain the fluidity of their lives and their capacity for change along these frontiers, the disappearance of the agrarian frontier is not at all critical.  In terms of abundance, Turner was correct in saying, 'Never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves,' but his implication that nature would never again offer such bounty is open to challenge, for the frontiers of industry, of invention, and of engineering have continued to bring into play new resources quite as rich as the unbroken sod of the western frontier" (1954: 157).

This confirms Zubrin's anti-Malthusian thesis about how abundance is created by human beings--by their ideas and their inventiveness in transforming natural raw materials into natural resources that can sustain an ever-growing human population enjoying ever-growing wealth.  This is what some scholars have called "superabundance":  in a free society--with private property, rule of law, and free exchange--there will be incentives for innovative solutions to human problems that will create new wealth, which has allowed the human terraforming of the Earth so that today it can support over 8 billion people.  

According to Thomas Malthus, this was supposed to be impossible, because as the human population grows, it must quickly exhaust the natural resources of the Earth for supporting human life.  But what Malthus failed to see, as Zubrin argues, is that natural resources are not inherently finite, because the capacity of the human mind to invent ways to transform natural raw materials into natural resources is infinite.  For example, for thousands of years, oil was worthless for human beings, until human minds discovered the technology for using oil as a fuel for machines.  And as oil becomes scarce, human beings devise ways to make the search for oil more efficient or to find substitutes for it.

Zubrin quotes this remark from two Malthusians--Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren--writing in 1971:

"When a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later it will encounter a resource limit.  This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the 'carrying capacity' of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie.  It must also apply to man on this finite planet" (Zubrin 2019: 313).

But when they wrote this, the population of the world was about 3.7 billion.  Now, it has more than doubled.  Isn't this far beyond the "carrying capacity" of a "finite planet"?

Zubrin observes: "so long as humanity is limited to one planet, the arguments of the Malthusians have the appearance of self-evident truth" (2019: 305).  But notice that there is only the "appearance" of truth.  In fact, Zubrin insists, the Earth is "a world of unlimited resources" as long as human beings are free to create those resources (314).

So, for Zubrin, the reason for humans going to Mars is not to escape "this finite planet" of Earth, but to turn Mars into "a world of unlimited resources" like the Earth.  And just as life has terraformed the Earth, we will have to terraform Mars.  

To do that, human beings on Mars will have to be inventive in using technology to turn raw materials into productive resources that generate abundance.  But it's hard to see that this has anything to do with Turner's American frontier.

For example, Zubrin foresees that "Martian frontier farming will need to deal with a shortage of land, water, and labor," and he compares this with how the labor shortage on "the American frontier" created a need for "frontier agricultural technology focused on labor-saving machinery."  He anticipates that Martian agricultural technology will rely on genetically engineered crops to satisfy "humanity's demand for food."  And thus, in combination with other technologies, "Martian civilization will open the way to unlimited material resources for all of humanity, forever" (Zubrin 2024; 220-25).  But the technology of genetically engineered crops emerged in late-twentieth century America, long after the closing of Turner's American frontier in 1890.  So, despite Zubrin's talk about "Martian frontier farming," this example of American inventiveness in using technology to create abundance has nothing to do with the American frontier.

Zubrin's appeal to Turner's frontier thesis is an unnecessary distraction from his fundamental argument for how human innovation can create superabundance--on Earth and perhaps potentially on Mars. 

REFERENCES

Cronon, William. 1987.  "Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner."  Western Historical Review 18: 157-186.

Potter, David M.  1954.  People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weinersmith, Zach, and Kelly Weinersmith.  2024.  "Space Isn't the Final Frontier."  Foreign Policy (January 21).

Zubrin, Robert.  2019.  The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Zubrin, Robert.  2021.  The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must.  25th anniversary edition.  New York: Free Press.

Zubrin, Robert.  2024.  The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet.  New York: Diversion Books.