The past decade has seen rapid expansion of the commercial space industry. Rival nations compete for key military and economic positions beyond Earth. Public and private entities clamor to mine the Moon, and a growing halo of space debris litters low Earth orbit.
In a 2023 white paper, a group of concerned astronomers warned against repeating Earth-like “colonial 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 a number of years. As government agencies and private companies turn their gaze to the stars, I have noticed many of the factors that drove European Christian imperialism between the 15th and 19th centuries reemerging in fast-paced, high-tech forms.
Some of these colonial practices may include encroaching on land, exploiting natural resources, and destroying landscapes – in the name of ideals such as destiny, civilization, and the salvation of humanity.
Many space industry leaders, such as Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, argue that while European-style colonialism may have had unpleasant consequences on Earth, it is the only way to do things in space. In fact, he warns, any attempt to slow or regulate the space industry will make the Martian frontier inaccessible to humanity, leaving us stuck on an increasingly boring and decadent Earth.
Zubrin has pushed back against concerns about colonialism in space. Unlike Earth, space is empty, he argues. Why should anyone care about the rights of rocks and a few hypothetical microbes? But it turns out that not everyone agrees that space is empty. And as concerned astronomers have argued, abandoning the colonial playbook would benefit both industry insiders and outsiders.
Is space really empty?
People from Bawaka Country in northern Australia have told the space industry that their ancestors guided human life from their home in the Milky Way and that this relationship is increasingly threatened by large satellite networks in orbit.
Likewise, Inuit elders say their ancestors live on celestial bodies. Navajo leadership has asked NASA not to land human remains on the moon. Kanaka elders have urged that no more telescopes be built on Mauna Kea, which Native Hawaiians consider ancestral and sacred.
These indigenous viewpoints stand in stark contrast to the view held by many in the industry that space is empty and lifeless.
The key to reconciling these vastly different positions is to find common ground—not about beliefs or worldviews, but about behavior. Secular space enthusiasts don’t have to agree that space is populated, animated, or sacred to treat it with the care and respect that indigenous communities demand of the industry.
Managing space carefully may mean preserving unique natural formations, limiting mining, issuing fewer satellite and launch permits, and finding ways to clean up space debris.
Environmental concerns
The emerging field of space ecology examines the relationships between human artifacts and natural environments in the context of Earth’s orbit, the Moon, and other planets. As this discipline attempts to demonstrate, orbits and planetary bodies are delicately balanced systems.
Without consistent regulation, commercial space activities could render the moon’s orbits unusable and disrupt the moon’s vacuum-like atmosphere.
In fact, light bouncing off orbiting space debris – broken satellites, pieces of spacecraft, cell phones, nuts, bolts, shards of metal and glass – can prevent astronomers from seeing, photographing, and navigating through 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 blows up planetary bodies, digs mines, and—on the advice of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—drops atomic bombs, scientists could lose access to this knowledge.
The commercial space industry has already caused significant damage to the environment on and around Earth.
SpaceX’s constant rocket testing and launches have decimated the wetlands of Boca Chica, Texas. A SpaceX Starship explosion in April 2023 damaged an estimated 940 acres (385 hectares) of land, waterways, turtles and birds — not to mention cars, homes and human lungs.
The increasing number of private and public launches by industry are bringing kerosene, carbon and sulfur into the upper atmosphere, where they remain longer than in the stratosphere.
Research has shown that the accumulation of these substances can exponentially increase climate change. By one estimate, rocket emissions heat the atmosphere 500 times faster than aviation emissions.
Even if Musk never goes to Mars, SpaceX and a host of competitors are creating satellite traffic in low Earth orbit, which could be life-threatening for astronauts and could render these orbits unusable.
Human consequences
Many aerospace industry leaders celebrate space as the new New World or the final frontier. But early modern economies in sugar, tobacco, and gold generated empire-building profits for Europe and the early US through slavery 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 bunkers, and facilitate asteroid mining. After all, space workers will rely on their employers not just for their pay and health care, but also for food, water, air, and transportation back to Earth.
In 1967, many countries, including the US, the UK and the USSR, signed the Outer Space Treaty. Among other things, this treaty stated that no country may own a planetary body or part of it.
Negotiated and signed in the aftermath of two world wars, the Outer Space Treaty was a product of conflicts in Europe in the 20th century. When colonialism on Earth culminated in these two wars, the countries that signed the Outer Space Treaty were essentially saying, “Let’s not fight each other over territory and resources again. Let’s do space differently.”
At this point, the Outer Space Treaty is outdated and virtually 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 actually inhabited or whether rocks have rights. To prevent colonialism in space, the space industry doesn’t need to agree on these metaphysical questions.
Instead, it will require participants inside and outside the industry to agree on a shared set of standards for caring for planets and their orbits – regardless of whether their motivations are scientific, ecological, humanistic or religious.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization that brings you facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.
It is written by: Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University.
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Mary-Jane Rubenstein is not an employee of, an advisor to, an owner of stock in, or a recipient of funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.