Get ready for a mind-boggling journey into the future, where the stars are not just twinkling dots in the night sky but potential homes for millions of humans. This is not science fiction; it's a reality that tech giants like Amazon's Jeff Bezos are predicting. But here's where it gets controversial: who gets to call the shots in this new frontier, and what does it mean for the rest of us down here on Earth?
At a recent tech conference, space manufacturing startup founder Will Bruey made a bold statement: in the next couple of decades, it will be cheaper to send a working-class human to orbit than to develop advanced machines. This prediction raises crucial questions about the future of space exploration and the role of humans in it.
To delve deeper into these questions, we spoke with Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a renowned ethicist and professor at Wesleyan University. Rubenstein's expertise lies in the ethics of space expansion, and her insights provide a thought-provoking perspective on the issues at hand.
Rubenstein highlights a fundamental issue: the power imbalance between workers and employers. She emphasizes that workers on Earth already face challenges in paying bills and ensuring their safety and health. This dependence on employers intensifies when basic necessities like food, water, and even air become dependent on employment in space.
Her assessment of space as a workplace is straightforward: it's not a romantic escape but a harsh environment devoid of the comforts of Earth. "It's not nice up there," she says, dispelling any illusions of a pristine frontier.
But worker protections are just the tip of the iceberg. The ownership of space resources is a highly contentious issue, especially with the acceleration of commercial space operations. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that no nation could claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, but the U.S. passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act in 2015, allowing ownership of resources extracted from these bodies. This move sparked international concern and debate.
Rubenstein draws an analogy: it's like saying you can't own a house but can own everything inside it. She argues that this interpretation is flawed, as the resources of a celestial body are inherently part of that body.
Companies like AstroForge and Interlune are already positioning themselves to exploit this legal gray area, pursuing asteroid mining and Helium-3 extraction from the moon. The problem, as Rubenstein points out, is that these resources are not renewable, leading to potential conflicts between nations.
The U.S. responded to international criticism by creating the Artemis Accords, bilateral agreements with allied nations that formalize the American interpretation of space law. While this move brought some countries on board, it also left out major players like Russia and China.
Rubenstein proposes a solution: handing control back to the UN and COPUOS. She also suggests repealing the Wolf Amendment, which restricts collaboration with China, arguing that if we can imagine housing thousands in space hotels or sending a million people to Mars, we can certainly imagine collaboration between the U.S. and China.
Her broader concern is the direction in which space development is headed. She criticizes the current approach, which she sees as misguided, turning the moon into a "cosmic gas station" and establishing warfare capabilities in orbit.
Science fiction, she notes, has offered different templates for imagining space. She divides the genre into three categories: conquest stories, dystopian warnings, and speculative fiction exploring alternative societies. She laments that the current space development template falls squarely into the conquest category, missing an opportunity to extend our values and priorities into new realms.
Rubenstein suggests some realistic paths forward, such as tightening environmental regulations for space actors and addressing the growing issue of space debris. With over 40,000 trackable objects circling Earth at high speeds, the Kessler effect—a runaway collision scenario—looms as a potential disaster.
She is working on a proposal for an annual conference to bring together academics, NASA representatives, and industry figures to discuss a mindful, ethical, and collaborative approach to space exploration.
The question remains: will anyone listen? With startup founders projecting major changes in space and companies positioning themselves for resource extraction, the future of space exploration hangs in the balance.
And this is the part most people miss: the ethical implications of our actions in space. It's time to start talking about who inherits the stars and under what conditions.
