May 11, 2021 07:46 PM
RELATED: Rights of nature ... Cultural hegemony / Cultural colonialism ... Whiteness theory
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https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/is-mars-ours
EXCERPT: . . . In 1990, one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s friends, a NASA astrobiologist and planetary scientist named Christopher McKay, posed the question “Does Mars have rights?” in a paper of the same name. Ultimately, McKay answered in the negative: he concluded that, when we speak of the value of nature, we’re really thinking of the value of living organisms. Unless the red planet is alive, McKay argued, we’re unlikely to extend to it the same environmental considerations that we apply to biospheres on Earth. “I thought that might be true for Chris McKay,” Robinson said. “But people living on Mars would develop affection for the place as it is.”
In February, NASA successfully landed a new robotic rover on the surface of Mars. Perseverance, as the vehicle is known, will roll around an area called Jezero Crater, searching for signs of life. [...] I have no ethical qualms about the tracks that Perseverance will lay down, nor about the part that it will play in absconding with a bit of Mars. But, in contemplating a future human presence on the planet, I start to worry about the questions presented in Robinson’s books. If there’s nobody around to stop us from doing what we want, what should we do?
[...] The problems with such [colonization] rhetoric can be seen most clearly when speaking to those whose stories it disrespects. Hilding Neilson, a Canadian astronomer, greeted me over Zoom ... I asked his opinion about the people currently leading the charge on space exploration, and he paused to compose himself. “What I see . . . I’m trying to say this in a way that’s on the record,” he began. “What I see are organizations that view Mars in the same way that colonizers, pioneers, and settlers viewed the early West—that it was terra nullius, a land of opportunity for them, and that the land was free to take.”
Neilson, who studies the life cycles of stars, is Mi’kmaq; the indigenous nation that he belongs to extends over parts of eastern Canada and northern Maine. It’s difficult to be sure, but it’s possible that he is the only First Nations faculty member in astronomy or physics in Canada. “It’s hard for scientists, especially in terms of astronomy and space exploration, to see themselves as anything but ethical,” he said. “There’s a whole system built around this idea of space exploration being ethical and pro-human, but it’s also one that doesn’t necessarily hear voices from non-Western perspectives.”
[...] Neilson is largely in favor of space exploration, and thinks ethically settling other places is possible. “But we have to be more inclusive of different perspectives, and to understand where our own mainstream perspectives come from,” he said. “It has to be about being part of Mars, as opposed to making Mars part of us.”
Those who advocate for human space exploration make a number of arguably unexamined assumptions. These include the idea that travelling to other worlds is inevitable, that the drive to explore is somehow in our genes, and that technological advancement is equivalent to moral progress. I have heard it said that we will learn to exist better on Earth using techniques developed for living on Mars. “That’s a really cute thought,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical particle physicist and cosmologist [...] told me. “But figuring out how to settler-colonize the United States didn’t help us live in a more ethical global community.”
[...] I asked Prescod-Weinstein the question that I’d been contemplating: “Is Mars ours?” “Obviously, my answer to that is no,” she said, laughing. “Like, is the Earth ours? I’m sitting here looking at the trees on the land behind my house. I depend on that photosynthesis, the entire exchange of taking in carbon and making it easier for me to breathe. So does the Earth belong to me or the trees?” She worried about the disregard that humans can have for things that aren’t human; in some indigenous societies, she said, land is considered a family member. “If we think about Mars as family, what do we want for our Mars family? I think we need to learn a different way of being in relation with each other.” (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Black physicist rethinks the 'dark' in dark matter
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https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/is-mars-ours
EXCERPT: . . . In 1990, one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s friends, a NASA astrobiologist and planetary scientist named Christopher McKay, posed the question “Does Mars have rights?” in a paper of the same name. Ultimately, McKay answered in the negative: he concluded that, when we speak of the value of nature, we’re really thinking of the value of living organisms. Unless the red planet is alive, McKay argued, we’re unlikely to extend to it the same environmental considerations that we apply to biospheres on Earth. “I thought that might be true for Chris McKay,” Robinson said. “But people living on Mars would develop affection for the place as it is.”
In February, NASA successfully landed a new robotic rover on the surface of Mars. Perseverance, as the vehicle is known, will roll around an area called Jezero Crater, searching for signs of life. [...] I have no ethical qualms about the tracks that Perseverance will lay down, nor about the part that it will play in absconding with a bit of Mars. But, in contemplating a future human presence on the planet, I start to worry about the questions presented in Robinson’s books. If there’s nobody around to stop us from doing what we want, what should we do?
[...] The problems with such [colonization] rhetoric can be seen most clearly when speaking to those whose stories it disrespects. Hilding Neilson, a Canadian astronomer, greeted me over Zoom ... I asked his opinion about the people currently leading the charge on space exploration, and he paused to compose himself. “What I see . . . I’m trying to say this in a way that’s on the record,” he began. “What I see are organizations that view Mars in the same way that colonizers, pioneers, and settlers viewed the early West—that it was terra nullius, a land of opportunity for them, and that the land was free to take.”
Neilson, who studies the life cycles of stars, is Mi’kmaq; the indigenous nation that he belongs to extends over parts of eastern Canada and northern Maine. It’s difficult to be sure, but it’s possible that he is the only First Nations faculty member in astronomy or physics in Canada. “It’s hard for scientists, especially in terms of astronomy and space exploration, to see themselves as anything but ethical,” he said. “There’s a whole system built around this idea of space exploration being ethical and pro-human, but it’s also one that doesn’t necessarily hear voices from non-Western perspectives.”
[...] Neilson is largely in favor of space exploration, and thinks ethically settling other places is possible. “But we have to be more inclusive of different perspectives, and to understand where our own mainstream perspectives come from,” he said. “It has to be about being part of Mars, as opposed to making Mars part of us.”
Those who advocate for human space exploration make a number of arguably unexamined assumptions. These include the idea that travelling to other worlds is inevitable, that the drive to explore is somehow in our genes, and that technological advancement is equivalent to moral progress. I have heard it said that we will learn to exist better on Earth using techniques developed for living on Mars. “That’s a really cute thought,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical particle physicist and cosmologist [...] told me. “But figuring out how to settler-colonize the United States didn’t help us live in a more ethical global community.”
[...] I asked Prescod-Weinstein the question that I’d been contemplating: “Is Mars ours?” “Obviously, my answer to that is no,” she said, laughing. “Like, is the Earth ours? I’m sitting here looking at the trees on the land behind my house. I depend on that photosynthesis, the entire exchange of taking in carbon and making it easier for me to breathe. So does the Earth belong to me or the trees?” She worried about the disregard that humans can have for things that aren’t human; in some indigenous societies, she said, land is considered a family member. “If we think about Mars as family, what do we want for our Mars family? I think we need to learn a different way of being in relation with each other.” (MORE - details)
RELATED (scivillage): Black physicist rethinks the 'dark' in dark matter