Format/Structure

A standard collection of short paper presentations

Long Abstract

“The Moon is a dead rock,” according to the influential founder of The Mars Society, Robert Zubrin. “It cannot do anything, or desire to do anything.” The position is echoed by some of the richest men on Earth and the most ardent supporters of ‘NewSpace’: privately financed missions to send people and things into space, extracting resources and one day establishing permanent settlements on celestial objects. As well as Blue Origin’s founder Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, cosmologists also commonly support the claim that space is but a vast cosmic void of nothing.

In stark contrast to a dominant anthropocentric perspective, a more convivial outlook on the cosmos is shared by many Indigenous peoples. For the Sámi of Northern Europe and the Navajo nation, space is part of Earth and vice versa. Like a cathedral, the moon is sacred. For them, strip-mining celestial objects are acts of profound desecration.

Similar to perennial patterns of settler colonialism that continue here on Earth, colonising space involves the same painful productions of Terra nullius – an exploitation of places and the subjugation of indigenous peoples' ways of knowing. Colonising space is commonly framed as a benign expression of human progress. And yet, privately owned and operated spaceports are proliferating in places contested by indigenous, poor and otherwise marginalised groups.

Some of the many benefits of NewSpace are said to include cost-effective monitoring of deforestation and affordable early warning systems for tsunamis and hurricanes. With all these benefits in mind, the panel considers practical critiques of the NewSpace race rooted in political ecology to provide ways of researching that has practical value while maintaining critical insights.