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Development and imperialism in space
Abstract
This article analyses established models of imperialism and seeks to apply them to possible space development scenarios. Inherent in such an analysis is a critique of the predominant rationales for advanced Solar System development (permanent planetary bases, settlements and colonies). The argument that emerges suggests that no single rationale is sufficiently strong to propel humans towards Solar System expansion as yet. However, in the instance that an extraterrestrial material becomes economically valuable, Solar System development will probably proceed. Under this scenario the present politico-legal regimes which govern prospective space development (and, moreover, the philosophical inclinations of many of those involved in formulating such regimes) dictate that Solar System development will be of an imperialistic nature.
... Exploring, settling, and governing space is pictured as something that earth states will do, no doubt (despite the idealistic language) for their own partisan nationalistic interests. Hence, development scholar Alan Marshall, writing in the journal Space Policy, was almost certainly correct when he declared that "the present politico-legal regimes which govern prospective space development (and, moreover, the philosophical inclinations of many of those involved in formulating such regimes) dictate that Solar System development will be of an imperialistic nature" [16] (p. 41, emphasis added). ...
First anthropology became unbound from “the village”, then from the single site, and
gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology’s engagement with the subject, going back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the
essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal, will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of human diversity.
... Exploring, settling, and governing space is pictured as something that earth states will do, no doubt (despite the idealistic language) for their own partisan nationalistic interests. Hence, development scholar Alan Marshall, writing in the journal Space Policy, was almost certainly correct when he declared that "the present politico-legal regimes which govern prospective space development (and, moreover, the philosophical inclinations of many of those involved in formulating such regimes) dictate that Solar System development will be of an imperialistic nature" [16] (p. 41, emphasis added). ...
First anthropology became unbound from "the village", then from the single site, and gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology's engagement with the subject, going back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal, will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of human diversity.
... It is also important to stress that the universe is increasingly becoming American imperial space which is not science fiction anymore (Marshall 1995;Ribić 2020). In relation to pseudo-archaeological narratives on the origin of life on Earth, isn't it reckless to post on Twitter that ancient Egyptin pyramids in Giza were built by aliens, even if this is cynicism or sarcasm? ...
This paper analyses the change in the metanarrative of the Alien franchise initiated by the movie Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and continued with a series of three sequels. The franchise was revived in 2012 with the prequel Prometheus. The story of the first four movies is set at the end of the anthropocene, and it deals with the horror of alien life forms, offering an evolutionist approach to the development of the human species. However, the revival of the franchise with the movie Prometheus changed the metanarrative from evolutionism to a creationist and pseudo-archaeological metanarrative with Biblical motifs. This paper points to the dangers of popularizing creationist and pseudo-archaeological narratives in science fiction. Responsibility for life on Earth and in outer space, lacking evidence to the contrary, remains in the hands of humans collectively and not alien Others.
... While calling the spacefaring states to "rise above their short term, narrow, Shylockian view of profits" and show instead "magnanimity, compassion and camaraderie to the whole international community 21 ", Indian scholar V. S. Mani also acknowledged that the developed countries were seeing the Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM) concept as being -"the institutionalisation of the 'menace' of international socialism (read communism), proliferation of international bureaucracy, and threat to their technological superiority -in short … an anathema to everything the Western capitalist ideology [stands] for 22 ". According to Alan Marshall, a supporter of the CHM paradigm, the prospect that companies could have to rent the site of extraction from the global community was likely to "provoke yelps of horror from space capitalists whose ideological tradition would make them reply that those who take the risk and invest the capital should reap the rewards" 23 . And yelps of horror had already been expressed, three centuries prior, by the Father of Liberalism, English philosopher John Locke, who was criticizing what today we call the entitlement mentality 24 . ...
... While calling the spacefaring states to "rise above their short term, narrow, Shylockian view of profits" and show instead "magnanimity, compassion and camaraderie to the whole international community 14 ", Indian scholar V. S. Mani also acknowledged that the developed countries were seeing the Common Heritage of Mankind (CHM) concept as being -"the institutionalisation of the 'menace' of international socialism (read communism), proliferation of international bureaucracy, and threat to their technological superiority -in short … an anathema to everything the Western capitalist ideology [stands] for 15 ". According to Alan Marshall, a supporter of the CHM paradigm, the prospect that companies could have to rent the site of extraction from the global community was likely to "provoke yelps of horror from space capitalists whose ideological tradition would make them reply that those who take the risk and invest the capital should reap the rewards" 16 . And yelps of horror had already been expressed, three centuries prior, by the Father of Liberalism, English philosopher John Locke, who was criticizing what today we call the entitlement mentality 17 . ...
The transition from the 1960s to the 1970s has been quite visible in the field of international space law. Whereas the 1967 Outer Space Treaty was a product of the 1960s Cold War between East and West, the 1979 Moon Agreement was clearly a result of the 1970s New International Economic Order paradigm on the NorthSouth coordinate axis. In the time passed between the UN-sponsored negotiation of the former and the latter legal documents, decolonization changed dramatically the geopolitical landscape, and the focus of the international discourse shifted from the security concerns of the ‘First’ and ‘Second’ worlds to the economical concerns of the ‘Third’ world. While the end of the Space Race may have been the end of utopia for the Cold War factions, it represented in fact the beginning of utopia for the new international actors hailing from the developing world. While in the 1960s the ‘have nots’ criticized the race to the Moon as a waste of money that could have found a better use as foreign aid, in the 1970s the same social category sought to benefit from the space age by declaring the Moon as the ‘Common Heritage of Mankind’ and by seeking a share in the yet to come untold riches from the Moon – seen as a solution to the ‘Limits to Growth.’
... The 1979 Moon Treaty is based on the principle of common heritage of mankind which means that no single nation or private entity has the right to appropriate commonly-owned resources. Marshall (1995) notes that a few technologically elite spacecapable nations would appropriate the commonly-owned resources of the Solar System for themselves, without any commitment of sharing of the benefits to non-space capable nations. Already the global demand for spectrum and orbital slots exceeds the availability and the latecomers will find it difficult to launch satellites in the geostationary orbit. ...
Recognition of the interdependencies characterizing the Earth (a global common) and the globalization phenomenon necessitate collective actions at the global level to solve multilateral issues in trade, finance, environment, spread of infectious diseases and security. There is also growing awareness that the existing institutional arrangements to solve multilateral issues exhibit signs of adaptive (dynamic) inefficiency, with institutional changes lagging behind rapidly evolving realities as manifested in growing tensions in reaching cooperative solutions. An International Task Force on Global Public Goods was constituted in 2003 to identify relevant international public goods froma perspective of reducing poverty and to study the provision and financing issues. See International Task Force on Global Public Goods (2006). This Task Force has identified the following priority global public goods (GPGs) : (a) preventing the emergence and spread of infectious disease, (b) tackling climate change, (c) enhancing international financial stability, (d) strengthening the international trading system, (e) achieving peace and security, and (f) generating knowledge. We need a framework for defining, identifying, providing and financing GPGs. Section 2 reviews alternative approaches to defining GPGs. Section 3 classifies GPGs into two categories : pure global public goods and global public goods by global public choice. Section 4 considers delivery systems for GPGs. It assesses the existing institutional frameworks for the supply of pureGPGs through the lens of GPGframework developed by Kaul et al (2003). Then it considers the division of labour among stakeholders at global, national and state levels using the Subsidiarity Principle. Finally, it suggests some changes in the delivery systemfor an efficient provision of GPGs. Section 5 explores the financing options. Section 6 contains concluding remarks.
... I am unaware of any efforts to estimate this benefit, although I suspect that the benefit is often large enough to justify estimation studies, especially if project decisions may be influenced by such estimates. Such estimates may compensate at least in part for the perceived excessive cost of space exploration programs [8][9] which often makes these programs seem difficult to justify [23][24]. ...
Humanity faces many important decisions about space exploration. A major but controversial decision-making paradigm is cost–benefit analysis (CBA). This paper discusses some ethical considerations in CBA that are important to decision making about space exploration, including how we define costs and benefits; space exploration's non-market value; the standing of future humans and of extraterrestrials; and the role of discounting in evaluating long-term space exploration projects.
While the militarization of space has been occurring since the 1950s, it was not considered a domain of fighting nor was it being fully weaponized until recently. Yet, there is a glaring absence of research on space weaponization or space environmental harms by criminologists. Here, using a retrospective approach we juxtapose the environmental harms from wars, military weapon development, maintenance and readiness on Earth and known harms that have occurred due to space expansionism and the space arms race. We then use a prospective approach to critically examine anticipated environmental harms of space weaponization. Our goal is to contribute to research in green criminology and to begin a critical dialogue on planetary geopolitics, space weaponization and the space arms race.
The New Space Age is awash with discourses about space colonization and resource exploitation, and these happily coexist with the age-old and curiosity-driven question, “Are we alone in the universe?” Astrobiology addresses this question and, at the same time, codifies knowledge useful for protecting our planet and other celestial bodies from harmful contamination. This article critically examines astroenvironmentalism as discussed within astrobiology and attempts to rescue it from becoming a principle of border creation in otherworldly ecologies. To do so, it merges astrobiology with visions and images from feminist postcolonial and decolonial theory, STS, and science fiction, and reflects on the enduring colonial tropes that provide the building blocks of current knowledge on outer space. The same colonial cartographic imagination at play in the much-debated frontier narrative animates the concept of planetary parks. These have gained increased popularity as a mechanism of environmental protection in space, but it is important to note how they entertain a settler future in outer space and legitimize claims to territorial property and extraction. In a dialogue that is contrapuntal to the codification of this form of transplanetary environmentalism, this article traces how Lynn Margulis’s cosmic symbiosis, Donna Haraway’s sympoiesis, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1976) intersect with concerns of astrobiological knowledge. Crucially, they enable the blurring of three types of borders: between science and fiction; planetary inside and outside; life and matter. This border-crossing can be generative of a process of creating more-than-human relationalities beyond Earth-centric geographies.
Recently, dinitrogen (N2) binding and its activation have been achieved by non-metal compounds like intermediate cAAC-borylene as (cAAC)2(B-Dur)2(N2) [cAAC = cyclic alkyl(amino) carbene; Dur = aryl group, 2,3,5,6-tetramethylphenyl; B-Dur = borylene]. It has attracted a lot of scientific attention from different research areas because of its future prospects as a potent species towards the metal free reduction of N2 into ammonia (NH3) under mild conditions. Two (cAAC)(B-Dur) units, each of which possesses six valence electrons around the B-centre, are shown to accept σ-donations from the N2 ligand (B ← N2). Two B-Dur further provide π-backdonations (B → N2) to a central N2 ligand to strengthen the B-N2-B bond, providing maximum stability to the compound (cAAC)2(B-Dur)2(N2) since the summation of each pair wise interaction accounted for the total stabilization energy of the molecule. (cAAC)(B-Dur) unit is isolobal to cAAC-E (E = Si, Ge) fragment. Herein, we report on the stability and bonding of cAAC-E bonded N2-complex (cAAC-E)2(N2) (1-2; Si, Ge) by NBO, QTAIM and EDA-NOCV analyses (EDA-NOCV = energy decomposition analysis coupled with natural orbital for chemical valence; QTAIM = quantum theory of atoms in molecule). Our calculation suggested that syntheses of elusive (cAAC-E)2(N2) (1-2; Si, Ge) species may be possible with cAAC ligands having bulky substitutions adjacent to the CcAAC atom by preventing the homo-dimerization of two (cAAC)(E) units which can lead to the formation of (cAAC-E)2. The formation of E[double bond, length as m-dash]E bond is thermodynamically more favourable (E = Si, Ge) over binding energy of N2 inbetween two cAAC-E units.
Although the human species required over three and a half billion years to evolve, George Robinson, a space philosopher and attorney, observed that in the past 50 years we have moved beyond Earth to penetrate near space, deep space, and other planets [2]. In the process of transforming our perceptions of humanity, space law scholars speculate that Homo spatialis or spacekind will develop as a new species, altered in time from Homo sapiens, physically, psychologically, and socially (see Appendix A). In contemplating the human occupation of outer space, issues related to its industrialization and settlement may be viewed as problems or challenges [3]. Preferring the latter approach, there are indeed numerous multidimensional challenges: the first are technological, biological, and financial. However, in this chapter, we will delimit analysis to just three dimensions: commercial, legal, and political, ending with specific action plans to further space enterprise.1 We will also revisit and amplify some of the themes discussed in Chapter 1.
According to international agreement between the space faring nations of the world the bodies of the solar system are labelled the province of humankind and are made offlimits to annexation. Because of these agreements it might be thought that extraterrestrial space exploration and exploitation must be undertaken for the benefit of all nations. Unfortunately those charged with interpreting these international agreements tend to do so in a way that generally discourages equitable distribution of space resources and promotes a neoimperialistic attitude to the development and settlement of space. This by itself may only be seen as a predictable development in light of the present state of international relations between the First and Third Worlds but given the grand rhetoric emerging from the space advocacy communitywhere we are told all humanity will share in the final frontierit can also be seen as a betrayal of the humanitarian ideals of spaceflight.
This chapter takes seriously the prospects for applying Rawlsian ideas of fairness to various aspects of space policy. I argue that Rawlsian ideas of fairness are naturally suited to underwrite orbital access regulations, debris mitigation recommendations, and planetary protection policies. I also explore some of the obstacles to applying fairness to more speculative aspects of space policy, including asteroid mining and space colonization.
I argue that the moral justification for space science is more compelling than the moral justification for space development. Thus, we ought to reemphasize the status of science as a major stakeholder in space, especially when entertaining policies which might encourage the kinds of space development activities (e.g. resource exploitation) that are liable to conflict with the scientific uses of space.
Since there is clearly a conflict between the interest of 21st century exploiters of planetary resources on the one hand and astronomers as planetary environmentalists on the other, a new strategy should be established to settle this conflict as soon as possible. The task of planetary scientists within COSPAR would be to survey and evaluate all known planetary environments with regards to their scientific value (or even uniqueness), sensitivity to intervention, difficulty or ease of access by space probes etc. Based on such a survey a list of the scientifically important planetary environments can be drawn up by a COSPAR panel. The result would be a limited list of sites and objects open to scientific investigation but closed to exploitation of natural resources. These international scientific preserves or “wilderness areas” should be legally protected within the frame of an international environment-protection treaty. In the future such a COSPAR classification system of planetary territories - with a gradually decreasing value for science - should determine the strategy of exploration and exploitation of planetary resources.
The Vision of Spaceflight
- Bova
The future of space law: a legal regime for space colonies
- Gorove
Project Apollo in retrospect
- Cargill Hall
Gaia hypothesis. An exposition of which can be found in L Margulis and D Sagan 'Can Mars be colonized?
- Lovelock
The eccentric idea of imperialism
- Robinson