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- Convenors:
-
Karl Aspelund
(University of Rhode Island)
Mae Jemison (100 Year Starship)
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- Stream:
- Sui generis
- Location:
- VG 4.105
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
How to dwell in outer space? When planning long-duration spaceflight, assumptions of humans' relationship to their environment need reconsidering. As Earth fades, what will nurture creativity, ritual, and community? What "inspired ethnographies" enable societal development? What stories to tell?
Long Abstract:
"To successfully go to Mars and back you will need a song…" says poet Nikki Giovanni.
Human missions to Mars by 2030 are in preparation. Researchers pursue capabilities required for human expeditions beyond our solar system by 2112. The numbers and diversity of people to live ever longer in space grow continually. Successful human expansion off Earth demands attendance to the confluence of agency, culture, design, technology, and purpose that lie in answers to: How shall we dwell in outer space?
Space: a harsh, dangerous, vast tabula rasa, with untold opportunities to evolve humanity. Leaving Earth implies more than leaving landscapes. As we plan and engage in long-duration spaceflight, assumptions of humans' relationship to our entire environment must be reconsidered. Social, physical, creative, biological and spiritual aspects are open to restructuring.
Physiological concerns in space are carefully studied, but not human behavioral and cultural constructs (and their health impacts.) Rigorous discussions must include: place-based ideas of culture and heritage; essential elements of Earth culture to bring; defining "space settler." As Earth fades in the distance, the more critical these become. What seeds and nurtures creativity, ritual, and communal bonding? What "inspired ethnographies" will enable societal development? What stories to tell in space? What stories on Earth? How will "Earthlings" react to a new "other"—space-based humans?
This panel invites papers addressing factors of creating dwellings in space and the impact on current and future Earth dwellers. We especially welcome papers providing direction to research "first steps".
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Dwelling in space will demand carefully planned forms of life for inhabitants of off-Earth bases and crews of multi-year missions. Considering how humans create and relate to their environment when learning to dwell will provide guidance toward success in establishing human communities in space.
Paper long abstract:
The human sphere will soon extend to dwelling in outer space. Groups will live for extended periods on the Moon and Mars. Crews in long-duration-space-flight (LDSF) will explore deep space on missions lasting for years, even decades, possibly lifetimes. These groups will not live in Earth-like environments. Nor will their ecosystems, social systems, and communal structures afford them all of Earth's material, spatial, and physical options. Dwelling in space will require careful planning of material resources, ecologies, and sociocultural structures, to maintain well-being within the new communities. Little may be left to chance or open to interpretation so not to risk deterioration of team cohesion. It will be as necessary as any mechanical plans, to consider and frame the "notions of beauty and bodily comfort and social propriety" into which the off-Earth humans "may learn to dwell, to feel at home" (Glassie, 1999). However, we must also consider these communities in the light of Heidegger's assertion: "The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell" (Heidegger, 1971). Glassie's considerations of vernacular craft and architecture, and Heidegger's discussions of building, dwelling, and poetry, prompt suggestions for constraints and needs to guide planning for a variety of situations at increasing distances from Earth. The author's studies of psychosocial and material needs relating to clothing for LDSF provide a point of departure for how to design frameworks into which these small-group cultures may constructively develop forms of life.
Paper short abstract:
Envisioning longer stays in outer space will require creating multispecies ecosystems. This opens existential and ethical questions of how to include and dwell with non-human others in contained spaces.
Paper long abstract:
« It's not a plant, it's a hazard. » A nuclear engineer voiced this concern during work to qualify astronaut Don Pettit's companion species - « a space zucchini » - on board the International Space Station. It stands as a reminder of the technical logics of containment that prevail in spaceflight.
Envisioning longer stays in outer space - whether on a spacecraft or on another planet - will require programs that create multispecies ecosystems. But this opens existential and ethical questions of how to include and dwell with non-human others in contained spaces. Drawing on interviews with space architects, astronauts, microbiologists and biologists actively preparing current and future human presence in space, I will argue that "ecosophical" aspects of human life (Naess, 1990 ; Guattari, 2014), e.g., understandings of the fundamentally interrelational nature of life, are currently treated only as technical problems. I will address changes in traditional western human-centered rationality (Plumwood, 2002) that dwelling with non-human others will require, as the idea of « shared living space » comes into conflict with the technical ethos of control and rationality that has prevailed in space design and mission planning thus far.
This presentation, which is part of a PhD. in philosophy project on ecologies and ecosystems in outer space aims to hybridizing philosophical inquiries and the fabrication of concepts with ethnographical methods. Anthropological approaches of outer space such as Debbora Battaglia's (2016) and Valerie Olson's (2010), and wider multispecies ethnographies are resources mobilized to engage further with those extra-human and extra-gaian worlds.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses two points. First, long-duration spaceflights require paying special attention to the visions of the future, particularly middle- and distant ones. Second, experiences of refugees and IDPs could be important for understanding the process of giving meaning to objects on a spaceship.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers what can be learned about long-duration spaceflights from the existing practices of the displaced on Earth. Drawing from anthropological analyses and ethnographic research on refugees and IDPs, it discusses two points. First, it suggests that human dwelling in outer space would require paying special attention to the visions of the future, particularly middle- and distant futures. The astronaut training generally produces visions of the immediate future, by preparing astronauts for the procedures and operations that need to be done to keep the spaceship going and to keep oneself and the mission alive. However, it is unclear how a crew of a long-duration spaceflight would conceptualize futures that are temporally further away, especially during an exploratory, long-term journey. Socio-historically particular visions of future deeply affect everyday life of humans, while uncertainties over future are related to social instabilities. The paper offers some initial thoughts on this. It looks at the contemporary and historical examples of visions of future, including different utopias, dystopias, and "failed" futures, in order to understand what sort of social life these visions of future have had and how they affected everyday practices of people who practiced them. Second, the paper looks at what can be learned about the process of giving meaning to objects and spaces around oneself from the experience of those who permanently left their place of residence, such as refugees and IDPs.