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(Re)imagining Space

Jan 11, 202514 min read

introduction to space ethics

Dr C. Adeene Denton

  • her research: how giant impacts influence planetary history
    • giant impacts as a tool for testing planetary interior properties

space ethics

= is it possible to explore space in an ethical manner?

  • nationalism, militarism, regulation of space
  • planet colonization , terrafirming
  • space dfebris, dark sky pollution, megaconstellations

nationalism, militarism, regulation of space

  • from sputnik 1 entering orbit in 1957 → space became a sociopolitical entity
  • US & USSR wanted toi establish dominance in space exploration
    1. in military = control the movement and proliferation of people and tech in and around earth
    • control who gets to go to space
    1. civilian = establish control of space as an arm of national propaganda
    • nation destined to do this kind of work (go to space) bc of their national characteristics
  • thus - tied to nationalism and militarism from its inception, regulations ⇒ international law
  • outer space treaty: 1967
    • establishing space as a global commons
      • space can’t be claimed as national territory ⇒ like Antarctica
    • prohibiting weapons testing and establishment of military bases on planetary bodies
      • ban on nuclear weapons in orbit & testing on moon
      • conventional weapons are allowed
      • US at this time had several plans for military lunar bases - Project Horizon & A119 (set off nuke on the moon as threat)
      • expressly limits of planetary bodies to “peaceful purposes”
    • placing responsibility of all objects launched into space on country of origin
      • can include commercial space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin - their actions are the government’s responsibility
  • after end of Space Race:
    • nationalism and militarism continue to dominate outer space
    • forms of seeking to control space have evolved
    • but have maintained same premise: space = means of surveillance & tool of war
    • many US defense & intelligence satellites in orbit and conventional weapons / missiles can destroy them
      • said that it was to prevent it from falling
      • but some say that it was to show that we can destroy your satellites if we want to
  • attempts to address these problems have come in the form of national & international law
    • existing regulations fall short of curbing efforts to acquire & extract resources from planetary bodies
    • regulation lags behind tech devt
    • e.g. formation of Artemis Accords

planetary colonization, terraforming &

  • Terra Nillius
    • “no one’s land”: justify territorial claims by imperial powers, on the assumption that the area is ‘empty’
    • ~ Antarctica right now
      • there were 1950s US claims to it, but no longer
    • what is empty when it comes to land?
  • problem with Terra Nullius
    • tends to rewrite the history of native peoples & enable the violence of settler colonialism across the world, from Turtle Island to Palestine
    • ~ Manifest Destiny
  • Outer Space Treaty - no one has the right to space
  • space exploration still uses the language & legacy of settler colonialism
    • ~ repeated desire to occupy/colonize Mars
    • e.g Europa Clipper
      • the clipper ship - people heralding in a new era of global exploration, but that’s from a perspective
  • → terraforming
    • ~ plans to terraform mars ~ settler colonial desire to control and manipulate environments
    • tied to
      • massive deforestation for lumber, farming
      • israel’s efforts to make the desert bloom in palestine
      • and human made climate change
  • using places as scientifically useful
    • indigenous spaces - use of Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, used for astronomy, at the expense of the indigenous people in Hawai’i
    • French Guiana - France’s oldest colonies, hosts Guiana Space Center, ESA missions launched from here
      • how convenient! near the equator - very favorable for diff launchiung
      • also called Europe’s Spaceport
  • ⇒ colonialism penetrates all aspects of space exploration from earth to the stars
    • telescopes built and rockets launched from occupied land
    • those in charge explicitly cite colonialist frameworks in their lands to occupy and extract value from planetary bodies
    • colonialism is an ongoing project! it is still happening

space debris, dark sky pollution & megaconstellations

  • exploring space generates debris that is difficult to dispose of
  • now: controlled entry into gas giants they study
    • Cassini → crash into Saturn
  • but what about rovers?
    • debris
  • space debris = object must have no purpose or function, either now or in the foreseeable future
    • just a thing we can’t access, we put it there, we need to decide what to do with it
  • debris in moon & mars accumulates slowly - landing stuff there, support apparatus
    • but debris in earth orbit increases rapidly each year
  • structure
    • Low Earth Orbit:
      • ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, most earth observation satellites
      • geosynchronous orbit
    • then GPS further out
  • how much stuff is up there? ~28k artificial objects in orbit
    • some are 10k operating satellites still in use
    • smaller than <10cm: 170M pieces , space junk
  • philosophy of disposability underlies the use of satellite constellations Starlink & Project Kuiper (Blue Origin Amazon effort) which have other unintended effects
    • put them up there, then de-orbit and have them crash back down
    • ⇒ rapid accumulation - who has a right to dark sky? clean orbital environment?
      • you should be able to see the stars, observe the universe unimpeded
  1. Space exploration operates within the complex, pre-existying societal frameworks from which it arose - which means it’s inherited the problems of nationalism, militarism & colonialism
  2. which is why space ethics is actually good
  3. figuring out what ethical space explorations means, and whether it’s possible, takes time effort and collaboration between scientists & engineers and society itself

space <> distraction from more pressing issues

discussion nothing wrong with moving from place A to B. no the problem is that you create indigeneity by coming, considering urself a diff genre of person, and creating that unequal dynamic of power

the history of geology & imaging

  • foundations of geology & imaging
    • geology started in the age of enlightenment
      • western science as ‘free’ of the social, cultural, political
    • naturalism in the 18th century (ecosystems, animal behaviors, landscapes, water/mineral resources — and human beings, i.e. anthropology) surveying natural resources for the crown
    • terra nullius - land of no one
  • the map
    • quijano: the coloniality of power
    • type of image - quantifying natural resources, writing people out or in of the land
    • palestine
      • ideological project and a material tool for the control and ethnic cleansing of people and ecology — hand drawn maps or satellite data
      • surveys by the british mandate & now google - discluded relaities of palestinian social & political life while also surveilling them and quantifying their natural resources
      • zionist maps serve to advertise palestine to settlers; hebraicization of place names
  • planetary sciences
    • vertesi (2015) - ‘seeing as’: the conditions, intentions and choices surrounding the construction of an image
    • ‘imag(in)ing’: the way images are drawn as something invites the viewer to ..

the role of the image in planetary science

  • refer: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo18295743.html
  • what narratives are we encouraged to subscribe to in viewing an image?
  • edward said - semiotics: what culturally-indoctrinated emotions are you meant to feel?
    • very specific: eg sand dunes - lawrence of arabia
  • planetary geology - terrestrial
  • drawing il/legibility
    • what are we asked to consider relatable, familiar, like home? as others?
    • are these static categories
    • how does the way an image is taken, processed, post-processed, visualized, and narrated reinforce these?
  • mars - turned red intentionally
  • what about when images are ‘corrected’ for earth light
    • to help scientists analyze them better
    • but to appeal to public too - invite familiarity and home, that the other images don’t
    • what images?
  • argument is more about whether it’s ‘scientifically accurate’
    • can we actually know what mars looks like? no, it’s always a drawing anyway
    • the truth isn’t the point - -but if u tell that to a scientist they won’t get it

behind the camera

  • space & MIC database 2024: Palestine Space Institute
    • NASA has 50% of its expenditures to companies arming the IOF
    • 12 of these companies have supplied 6 Mars rover missions
    • Military Industrial Complex - material, financial & ideological entanglement between a state, military, private defense
  • the contracts
    • general R&D, of fighter jets,
    • make it faster
    • adapting a broadly used war tech for a niche, 1 time use space application
  • NASA contributed 130M to the US arms industry in FY21
  • astronaut imperialism
    • 5 soldiers → astronaut corps
  • project she left: https://divyamper.medium.com/i-almost-got-canceled-for-being-anti-war-and-im-asking-you-to-do-the-same-40f3d3b92603
    • space fundamentalism: an exclusive belief system that rejects as unenlightened those who do not advocate the colonization, exploitation and development of space
    • relate water quality <> national security
  • by law - the US & US companies hold a monopoly on high reso date over occupied Palestine - intentionally turn off the high reso data for public access
  • fully overlapping supply chain
  • nearly every telescope and launch facility is on stolen land
    • hawaii, occupied kashmere - australia, puerto rico
    • proximity to military bases
  • does changing our words change this? e.g. changing the name of Webb Space Telescope?
    • are words the driver?
    • or a downstream symptom?
    • a way to manufacture consent?
  • settler geologies
    • current day settler colonialism - deserts → mars → a world dominated by sand. how do we image it? the same way we do it with the sahara desert?
      • when we draw mars, we’re always drawing earth
    • e.g. analog astronaut activities
      • to study psycology, playact the mission
      • on land identified as similar to Mars
      • in: hawaii, palestine, canada
      • naqab desert

recasting indigenous land as so alien and empty that it is akin to another planet - further dispossessing those who are already displaced by the settler colonialism that has removed them from their homelands

  • emphasizing the split of geology from human beings

questions

  • how can we see this connecting w the militarism in the manufacture and control of space activities? to how cultural products like film continue to imagine deserts in space in order to imagine colonialism on earth?
  • who directs these projects of imagining?
  • who benefits? who cashes the cheque?

liberating mars, liberating earth

  • wht is the way we can imagine liberated mars, earth?

→ Mars has also been talked about a place to export labor and somewhere that would sit outside of any current laws we have. A point brought up yesterday is that its (not happening) successful colonization would be used to justify everything we’ve done on Earth to get to that point. This reminds me of Zionism as a project to justify liberalism, and everything that had happened in Western society to bring things to that point. But just as the colonization of Mars will never happen, Zionism will also fail.

The state of space law and the pushes to expand it in this context remind me of how the Nakba is both a process and a legal framework, and we have no way in existing law to actually grapple with it yet. So, it seems to me that we cannot develop a better relationship with imagining space and humans’ place in it without first resolving our relationship with settler colonialism.

the imperial boomerang is a lie

  • the origin pt of weapons tech is the west and western imperialist applications
  • palestine is not a laboratory and these technologies aren’t coming for you - they’ve been here
  • e.g. take hermes drone → germany → israel → adapted to the UK, to police the UK border, to surveil migrants coming on boats
    • it’s not imperialism coming home
    • they’re are talking right now, globally

boston project

***post-humanism as soln?

Ellen: how to we imagine mars as not other but an extension of nature n ourselves

  • honestly i think the ans is alw like posthumanism
  • whichever flavour of that appeals to u yk
  • JY: its hard to explain that to people tho
    • had a big debate over team dinner w the partners on my project abt declining birth rate agn (always men who r obsessed w that right?)
    • n it was difficult to communicate that like lowkey idgaf abt whether humanity as it is survives, what we have is probably unsustainable anyway
    • immortality for me isn’t an end goal, but it is for Us (beyond humanity)
  • EW: i think it’s easier for me/you to get to it bc of 1. not being religious i think n 2. the whole feminist porousness thing
  • JY: but its hard to explain that to type 8s, who Know in their bones that they can effect the world, they Matter, the individual’s choices can change Fate etc
    • kind of like main character vibes, so the circle of care is smaller, extends at most to humanity

NASA → r/s w Glocks → for campus police → umbrella org is ICE

using excitement

  • EW: something that drew me to space in the first place is the shared ethos of exploration, excitement, earth as a collective instead of split into nation-states, “pure” science… lots of people are in space because they love it, which is kind of rare in capitalism today imo. could we maybe leverage on that?
    • i just feel like space ethics might be even easier to start talking ab compared to say data ethics
      • just bc people are genuinely upset when their image of like pure science, start trek etc is shattered
      • n they do feel responsible to fix it/stop working for these military/surviellance interests
  • JY: i mean when u can get anywhere past that ultra rationalist facade
    • anywhere at all past that wall that said “hard facts is what matters” “money is what what matters”
    • and that love and excitement for space can be that, and its easier to go from there
    • but when all u see r charts n numbers n not the wondrous image of a world u can imagine beyodn the edges of this planet then its harder
    • the capitalist rational logic is harder to break cos part of it is also cynical
    • that there can’t be anything outside of the numbers in this excel sheet
    • that people can b brought down to the opex of labor
  • EW: like science IS problematic the way it is rn but i also feel like “pure”scientists or those who r genuienly into the stuff eg the deep ocean ppl r easier to move
    • compared to like the fintech
  • JY: a lot of those people r imagining something beautiful something beyond themselves and money. theres a higher ideal
    • but the fintech are quite… i dont know, i can only describe it as a pessimism? like they too feel cynical, but they cant break that cos it enables their rationalism
    • but they’re sad about it too. thats why they work out so much
    • cos if u cant turn to sth beyond urself then u turn inwards n double down on the Power of the Individual
  • EW: that’s very nietsche. the only way to not commit suicide is to turn urself into ubermensch. since society cannot be changed u have to change urself and find solace that wya

Discussion Q: What is one thing you can do tomorrow that is new and maybe uncomfortable? Write this down. Bawaka Collective https://bawakacollective.com/

Astronomy of degrowth is only spoken of in the French scientific community, I believe, so it would be great to try and spread it everywhere!

Cf. https://ladecroissance.xyz/2022/06/07/pour-une-astronomie-decroissante/ if you can read French

  1. Rally my friends in tech and organize an ethics party to encourage each other to search for settler colonialist foundations in their fields
  2. Find the local military supply chains and join activists in protesting there
  3. Read more on ethics in my field, data science

mailto:contact@divyampersaud.com if u want data from PSI database Adeene.denton@gmail.com

Would love to get in touch w anyone who wants to talk ab tech // industry // Bay Area // poetry - I’m at fieldednotes@gmail.com 🙂

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