The past decade has seen rapid expansion of the commercial space industry, with rival nations jockeying for key military and economic positions beyond Earth, public and private enterprises scrambling to mine the Moon, and a growing halo of space debris littering low-Earth orbit.
In a 2023 white paper, a group of concerned astronomers warned against replicating Earth’s “colonialist practices” in space. But what’s wrong with colonizing space if there’s nothing there to begin with?
I am a philosopher of science and religion who has been writing about the space industry for several years. As government agencies and private companies look to the stars, I have noticed that many of the factors that drove European Christian imperialism between the 15th and 19th centuries are reemerging in high-speed, high-tech forms.
Some of these colonial practices may include the enclosure of lands, the exploitation of environmental resources, and the destruction of landscapes in the name of ideals such as destiny, civilization, and the salvation of humanity.
Many space industry leaders, such as Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, argue that European-style colonialism may have had unpleasant consequences on Earth, but it is the only way forward in space. In fact, they warn that any attempt to slow down or regulate the space industry will render the Martian frontier inaccessible to humanity, leaving us stuck on an increasingly boring and decaying Earth.
Zubrin has disputed concerns about colonialism in space. Unlike Earth, he argues, space is empty. Why would anyone care about the rights of rocks and a few hypothetical microbes? But as it turns out, not everyone agrees that space is empty. And as concerned astronomers argue, abandoning the colonialism playbook would benefit both industry insiders and outsiders.
Is space really empty?
The people of Bawaka Territory in northern Australia say the space industry has guided human life from their ancestral home across the galaxy, and that relationship is increasingly threatened by vast networks of satellites in orbit.
Similarly, Inuit elders say their ancestors live on celestial bodies. The Navajo leadership has asked NASA not to land human remains on the Moon. Kanaka elders have insisted that no more telescopes be built on Mauna Kea, which Native Hawaiians consider to be an ancestral and sacred site.
These indigenous attitudes stand in stark contrast to the industry’s insistence that space is empty and lifeless.
The key to reconciling these very different positions is to agree on behaviors, not beliefs or worldviews. Secular space enthusiasts do not need to agree that space is populated, alive, or sacred to show the care and respect that indigenous communities demand of the industry.
Approaching space with care may require protecting remarkable natural features, limiting mining, reducing satellite permits and launches, and finding a way to clean up orbital debris.
Environmental concerns
The emerging field of space ecology studies the relationships between Earth’s orbit, artifacts on the Moon and other planets, and natural environments. As the discipline attempts to demonstrate, orbits and planetary bodies are delicately balanced systems.
Without consistent regulation, commercial space activities could render orbiters unusable and disrupt the Moon’s vacuum-like atmosphere.
In fact, light reflected from space debris—defunct satellites, spacecraft parts, cell phones, nuts, bolts, and bits of metal and glass—can prevent astronomers from seeing, photographing, and navigating the stars.
The Moon, Mars, and asteroids help scientists understand how planets and the solar system formed, what conditions are needed for life, and what planets might look like in the future. If the space industry were to blow up, mine, and nuke planetary bodies, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk suggests, scientists could lose access to this information.
The commercial space industry has already caused significant environmental damage on and around Earth.
SpaceX’s constant rocket tests and launches have destroyed the wetlands of Boca Chica, Texas. A SpaceX Starship explosion in April 2023 damaged an estimated 385 acres of land, waterways, turtles, and birds — not to mention cars, homes, and human lungs.
The industry’s rapidly increasing number of private and public launches are releasing substances such as kerosene, carbon and sulfur into the upper atmosphere, where they stay longer than they do in the stratosphere.
Studies have shown that the accumulation of these substances could exponentially increase climate change. By one estimate, rocket emissions warm the atmosphere 500 times faster than aviation emissions.
Even if Musk never makes it to Mars, SpaceX and its numerous competitors are creating a flood of satellite traffic in low-Earth orbit that could threaten astronauts’ lives and render those orbits unusable.
Human consequences
Many space industry leaders celebrate space as the new New World or final frontier, but early modern economies of sugar, tobacco, and gold produced empire-building profits for Europe and the early United States through enslavement and indentured servitude.
Space industry leaders will have to consider what labor regulations will look like as they send workers to staff their hotels, build their shelters and facilitate asteroid mining. After all, space workers will rely on their employers not just for wages and health care, but also for food, water, air and transportation back to Earth.
In 1967, a number of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR, signed the Outer Space Treaty, which, among other things, declared that no country could own a planetary body or any part of it.
The Space Treaty, negotiated and signed after two world wars, was a product of the conflict in Europe in the 20th century. If colonialism on Earth reached its peak in these two wars, the countries that signed the Space Treaty were essentially saying, “Let’s never fight each other for land and resources again. Let’s do space differently.”
At this point, the Outer Space Treaty is outdated and nearly unenforceable, but any future legislation would do well to preserve the anti-colonial spirit of the original treaty.
From a policy perspective, it doesn’t matter whether space is truly habitable or whether rocks have rights. Preventing space colonization doesn’t require the space industry to agree on these metaphysical questions.
Instead, participants from across industry and beyond will need to agree on a common set of standards for planets and their orbits, whether their motivations are scientific, environmental, humanistic, or religious.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that delivers facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.
Written by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University.
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Mary-Jane Rubenstein does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no affiliations beyond her academic appointment.