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- Convenors:
-
Peter Howson
(Northumbria University)
Daniel Walsh (Northumbria University)
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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.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Wednesday 1 July, 2026, -Presentation short abstract
Collecting makes the distant material: From vipers to meteorites, this presentation explores how humans make nature and space tangible through collecting and how this forms moral economies that define ownership, legitimacy, and value, foreshadowing the future of ownership and trade in space.
Presentation long abstract
This presentation explores how humans materialise ideas of nature and space through acts of collecting, arranging, and contextualising objects. Drawing on ethnographic research, it traces how meteorites, acting as tangible links between Earth and the cosmos, circulate through collections that transform fragments of space into objects of value, possession, and imagination.
My earlier research on the Bitis viper trade between Africa and Europe examined how participants navigate legality, risk, and care within overlapping moral economies, understood here as the informal morals and attitudes held by trade participants that shape a trade’s norms and operations (Gregson & Crang, 2017). Building on this work, I extend my research on the materialisation and ownership of nature to the materialisation and ownership of space through the meteorite trade. Drawing on auction catalogues and object biographies of individual meteorites, I explore how actors negotiate authenticity, legality, and moral value when “space” itself becomes ownable.
In the Bitis trade, bio-active terrariums replicate fragments of tropical ecosystems, materialising biophilia, the human drive to connect with life. Similarly, the display and exchange of meteorites evoke astrophilia, a fascination that extends this impulse beyond Earth’s boundaries. This dynamic is also reflected in how wildlife and meteorites are occasionally framed in terms of cultural heritage – formally through regulation or informally through collecting practices – even though they are not human-made. Situating these practices within moral economies shaped by desire, my presentation considers how this foreshadows challenges with space industries as they expand into new forms of ownership and trade.
Presentation short abstract
By December 2025, there were approx. 284 successful annual rocket launches. This democratizes space industrialization yet poses serious ecological and atmospheric concerns. We explore the challenging frontiers of NewSpace to life on Earth, at the nexus of bioethics and the emergent techno-verse.
Presentation long abstract
A recent gathering of the International Astronautical Society, enthusiasticly discussed doubling current global launch schedules. In 2023, orbital launch attempts reached a record high of 223; more than 2,800 satellites were deployed into orbit. By December 2025, there were approximately 284 successful annual rocket launches. This democratizes our dynamic space industrialization. Yet, nothing was mentioned of increasing environmental concerns the space launch industry is posing for the upper atmosphere and ozone layers. We are aware of challenges of lingering black carbon soot, and chemical pollutants from re-entry vehicle combustion. No regulatory regime is or has been proposed. A few companies are taking this atmospheric threat from our burgeoning space industry seriously and meeting the challenge. One such company is AIRCO, literally AIR COMPANY. Deeply invested in Carbon Capture materials creation, they are developing sustainable rocket fuels from CO2, sequestered from the air mixed with green hydrogen – possibly even on Mars. A multi-award-winning company, they have contracts with Virgin Atlantic, NASA and others. SKYRORA, a Scottish based company operating across Europe, designs, manufactures and deploys rockets to insure smaller satellite manufacturers space access. They have developed technology to transform unrecyclable plastics into sustainable rocket fuels; invest in local schools and communities. Yet, what of the atmospheric pollutants from reentry vehicles?; the increasing saturation of night skies with satellite trails?; and ecological impacts to Earth from burgeoning space port dynamics? We explore the challenging frontiers of NewSpace to life on Earth, at the nexus of bioethics and the emergent techno-verse.
Presentation short abstract
Reflecting on ethnographic fieldwork in Scottish and Scandinavian spaceports, the paper proposes an astro-political ecology to explain the causal connections between the environmental impacts of human activities in space with libertarian economics and anarcho-capitalist modes of governance.
Presentation long abstract
New Space (or NewSpace) describes the broad range of primarily US and European entrepreneurs and industry advocates leveraging rapidly falling costs in computing and materials to enable less established corporations (or ‘start-ups’) to successfully design and build space vehicles and habitats independently of NASA. Reflecting on Europe's emerging spaceports in the Scottish Highlands and Islands and northern Scandinavia, the paper proposes an astro-political ecology to explain the causal connections between the environmental impacts of human activities in space with libertarian ideologies and anarcho-capitalist governance.