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Woke goes to space (interplanetary community)

#1
C C Offline
Decolonising the cosmos
https://aeon.co/essays/we-need-a-more-eg...xploration

INTRO: Within four years, American astronauts will once again plant their feet and flags on the Moon’s dusty surface. They won’t be alone: Chinese, European and Russian space agencies have their sights on our nearest celestial body too, as do space companies such as Moon Express and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. If their plans come to fruition, astronauts and their robots will claim the most valuable spots and mine the Moon for water, ice and other resources. Our lunar neighbour will never be the same again.

The Moon is only a foothold, a first step on the edge of a vast landscape. Humanity stands on the brink of a new era of exploration, in which brief, intermittent and tentative space jaunts could be replaced by a multitude of cosmic activities conducted by many competing interests. Within 20 or 30 years, crewed missions could make giant leaps toward Mars – 500 times further away than the Moon – to map out the terrain and even establish colonies. Asteroids and other distant destinations will be next. With this new age dawning, we face a collective responsibility to consider the moral challenges before us, and to avoid committing the grave mistakes of the past.

So far, attitudes to space that focus on power and profit appear worryingly similar to the mindset of European and American colonial powers. The billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has begun transforming the night sky – the cultural heritage of humanity – with its reflective constellations of satellites. Military space programmes and military space companies continue developing space weapons such as anti-satellite missiles, tests of which increasingly clog low-Earth orbit with debris.

Meanwhile, if companies or anyone else carves pieces of the Moon as they please, it could irrevocably change its appearance to us, too. While NASA and other space agencies are more accountable and transparent than the space industry, they too lack a collective, long-term roadmap for what comes next. Without clear guidelines for what can and cannot be done in space, the cosmos will become not a place for collaborative exploration and shared benefits but the site of conflicts, resource extraction and pollution.

If nothing changes, commercial and military interests will influence or even supplant collective ones; the quest for resources such as water, minerals and valuable space in orbit will create imperatives to despoil the commons of space and the night sky; and investment in space exploration will become a way for the powerful to escape accountability for social justice problems on Earth.

A growing chorus of voices within the astronomy community is championing an alternative: a peaceful, sustainable and egalitarian vision of space, which keeps an eye on the injustices and inequalities on the ground. ‘The larger philosophical question is “Are other worlds there for human use or are they sovereign unto themselves?”’ Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, tells me. ‘The viewpoint of European colonisers has always been that everything exists for their use, and we’re witnessing the unsurprising outcome of centuries of that thinking.’

Walkowicz is driven by their longtime involvement in politics and activism, including opposition to the Iraq War and support for Black Lives Matter. After years of giving talks and raising awareness, Walkowicz and their colleagues recently formed the JustSpace Alliance – an organisation that advocates ‘for a more inclusive and ethical future in space, and to harness visions of tomorrow for a more just and equitable world today’, according to its mission statement.

Other advocates and nonprofit organisations with aligned missions include Space Enabled, a research group at the MIT Media Lab, which promotes social and environmental sustainability in space, and applies space technology to foster justice on Earth; the Outer Space Institute, led by researchers at the University of British Columbia, which focuses on peace and sustainability in space, starting with the atmosphere; and the Secure World Foundation, a think-tank based in Broomfield, Colorado, aiming to reduce space conflicts and promote space diplomacy.

With their overlapping objectives, these advocates and institutions want to spark a cultural shift that will reshape NASA’s and other space agencies’ priorities and rein in the burgeoning space industry. Can they succeed? (MORE)
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#2
Yazata Offline
(Nov 13, 2021 10:13 PM)C C Wrote: Decolonising the cosmos
https://aeon.co/essays/we-need-a-more-eg...xploration

INTRO: Within four years, American astronauts will once again plant their feet and flags on the Moon’s dusty surface.

Maybe. I expect Artemis delays to push it further back.

Quote:They won’t be alone: Chinese, European and Russian space agencies have their sights on our nearest celestial body too, as do space companies such as Moon Express and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.

The only one of those that's a realistic competitor to the US in Lunar human spaceflight is China.

The Europeans have no plans for human spaceflight vehicles of their own that I'm aware of and prefer instead to team with the US with European astronauts flying on US Crew-Dragons. They will be participants in Artemis with Europeans flying to the Moon on US spacecraft (that will be using important European components). The Japanese, Canadians and others will be doing much the same. But no entirely European, Japanese or Canadian trips to the Moon on their own vehicles for the forseeable future.

Russia is still flying old 1960's vintage (albeit tried, true and reliable) Soyuz capsules and has no lunar human spaceflight plans or capability that I'm aware of. Their announced future lunar plans are just for unmanned landers.

Both the Europeans and the Russians could put people up there by themselves if they really wanted to, but it would take them years. They have the necessary technology and the engineers, but lack the motivation. Part of their problem is that both the European Space Agency and Roscosmos are government run or owned, so depend on politicians and political will.

Blue Origin and Moon Express are simply working on lunar landers and both lack the boosters necessary to get their landers up there. (Blue is working on that aspect, but a suitable rocket is years off.)

The obvious contender that isn't mentioned here is SpaceX. They already have human spaceflight capability and are gaining experience every day. They have Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters already operational and are working their butts off on Starship at their Boca Chica Starbase. They have the HLS contract. So it's conceivable that they could give Artemis a run for its money all by themsleves, simply bypassing the SLS. 

Quote:If their plans come to fruition, astronauts and their robots will claim the most valuable spots and mine the Moon for water, ice and other resources. Our lunar neighbour will never be the same again.

Isn't that what we want? Moon bases, Moon settlements, Moon laboratories, Moon factories, Moon mines, Moon observatories, humans scurrying to and fro in their pressurized Moonmobiles... a whole network of human activities up there? A permanent substantial human presence? Probably some US government, some Chinese government, some private companies, and whoever else wants to get involved. It's a whole new world up there. That seems like a desirable goal to me, far from a nightmare.

Quote:The Moon is only a foothold, a first step on the edge of a vast landscape.

The Solar System at the very least. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are almost like little solar systems in their own right. I'd love to see human beings establishing their outposts all over.

And if we think interstellar, it's the "infinite frontier". Always something new to discover.

Quote:Humanity stands on the brink of a new era of exploration, in which brief, intermittent and tentative space jaunts could be replaced by a multitude of cosmic activities conducted by many competing interests. Within 20 or 30 years, crewed missions could make giant leaps toward Mars – 500 times further away than the Moon – to map out the terrain and even establish colonies. Asteroids and other distant destinations will be next.

I certainly hope so!

Quote:With this new age dawning, we face a collective responsibility to consider the moral challenges before us, and to avoid committing the grave mistakes of the past.

So far, attitudes to space that focus on power and profit appear worryingly similar to the mindset of European and American colonial powers.

The analogy between space exploration and European colonialism only seems to me to hold if there are indeed sentient aliens on the other solar system bodies. That seems exceedingly unlikely, but if by some chance some are discovered under the ice shell or Europa of some place like that, it shouldn't be hard to establish a hands-off cordon to protect them.

Quote:Meanwhile, if companies or anyone else carves pieces of the Moon as they please, it could irrevocably change its appearance to us, too.

It's hard to imagine anybody doing anything to the Moon that would change its naked eye appearance, apart from some dots of light appearing up there to mark human settlements.

Quote:A growing chorus of voices within the astronomy community is championing an alternative: a peaceful, sustainable and egalitarian vision of space, which keeps an eye on the injustices and inequalities on the ground. ‘The larger philosophical question is “Are other worlds there for human use or are they sovereign unto themselves?”’ Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, tells me. ‘The viewpoint of European colonisers has always been that everything exists for their use, and we’re witnessing the unsurprising outcome of centuries of that thinking.’

If the rest of the planets in the Solar System are uninhabited, who is supposed to be sovereign? The rocks? Why shouldn't humans make use of whatever resources they find out there? Seems unobjectionable to me. What sort of value would be maximized by prohibiting it?

Quote:Walkowicz is driven by their longtime involvement in politics and activism, including opposition to the Iraq War and support for Black Lives Matter. After years of giving talks and raising awareness, Walkowicz and their colleagues recently formed the JustSpace Alliance – an organisation that advocates ‘for a more inclusive and ethical future in space, and to harness visions of tomorrow for a more just and equitable world today’, according to its mission statement.

That's awfully ungrammatical. "Walkowicz and their colleagues"? Who does she think she is, the queen of England? The royal "we"? Or is she just unwilling to accept she's a woman?

I don't see how she's in any position to instruct me on ethics. And I'm certain that her entirely self-appointed moral righteousness will just bounce off the thick skulls of the Chinese leadership. They will pay her no attention.

Quote:Other advocates and nonprofit organisations with aligned missions include Space Enabled, a research group at the MIT Media Lab, which promotes social and environmental sustainability in space... the Outer Space Institute, led by researchers at the University of British Columbia, which focuses on peace and sustainability in space

Any self-sufficient colony in space will have to be "sustainable" just by its nature. It isn't remotely a moral issue, it's an engineering issue. It will have to manufacture/recycle as much of what it consumes as possible. Electricity, air, food, manufactured goods... It can't be dependent on importing all of its consumables from millions of miles away.

Quote:and the Secure World Foundation, a think-tank based in Broomfield, Colorado, aiming to reduce space conflicts and promote space diplomacy.

Yes, somebody probably does need to give some thought to that.

But I don't really foresee sci-fi style space war. There's more than enough to go around out there, human outposts will be small and far between. The way I envision space settlements evolving is like Antarctic outposts today. They don't fight little wars, they welcome new arrivals and make mutual aid arrangements to help each other. The first human off-world settlements will be hanging on by the skin of their teeth and will welcome all the help they can get.
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