Shoot for the Stars (But Make Sure to Aim First): Questions for the Future of Space Policy

Image Attribution: European Southern Observatory (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License)

Warning! Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, of reading any actual answers in this article. This will be an article that shamelessly, indeed deliberately, asks a load of questions without even tantalising the smallest prospect of meaningfully answering them. I will make the point simply that these questions should be discussed more, and that answers need to be arrived at. The job of doing that, I have decided, should be outsourced to someone- anyone- else. Just thought you deserved the advanced notice.

A stage set, but actors absent

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a nation in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a space program, Jane Austen didn’t write. Every technologically advanced nation has one, every rising power wants one; every kid in the world thinks it’s cool, every politician thinks it’s a brilliant way to foster national pride. The possibilities are quite literally limitless. Why, then, is there no serious public discourse about space policy? 

Space costs a lot of money. Yes, NASA has a minuscule budget compared to the US military, but so do most countries - space expenditure is far from a trivial amount, especially for the smaller countries in the ballgame like Israel and the UAE. Why then do we not care about where it’s going to the same extent that we whine and moan at every other use of public money? We fuss and faff about how much money is being spent on migrant hotels or hedgehog bridges, but when we spend millions upon millions to launch stuff into space for programs hardly anyone knows or cares about, there is no outcry.

Space is important. Yes, issues like whether the government were hosting Christmas parties in Covid are important to an extent, and yes the big-hitter moral issues of the day like trans rights or abortion obviously merit discussion, but on a cosmic scale nothing quite compares to the cosmos itself. Elon Musk calling Trump a pedo on twitter is a news story that will probably be outdated by the time this article gets published, let alone on the span of decades; in a few centuries if not earlier all our hand-wringing about which toilet trans people should use will look about as sensible a topic to be discussing as whether left-handed people really are possessed by the devil. The fact is, most political issues won’t matter tomorrow, and the ones that do will look very silly not long after. Space is an exception. Our progress in space exploration and settlement is fundamental to the entire future of our species, and how we approach this next era of space will affect the trajectory of thousands of years of human existence, if not the very existence of humanity itself. If NASA decided tomorrow “fuck it, scrap this moon nonsense, we’re going all in on Mars”, that would instantly be a top ten most important moment ever, and yet might not even make the front page if a by-election in Scotland has a moderately surprising result. The lack of any discourse about space, therefore, is baffling. 

Finally, space is not a solved problem. There seems to be a widespread assumption among people who moved on from their toddler space phase that space is just like any other scientific discipline: it is a slow but steady march of continual improvement. We did the Moon, we’ll do Mars at some point, and we’ll keep going to whatever’s next without the need for direction or guidance, just like we keep going on medical research, or on finding new particles. We don’t need to regularly check in on the field of marine biology to make sure it’s still heading in the right direction, so why should we with space? Science is as close as we get to teleological simplicity, after all: it only goes forward! But of course, alas, space is not so simple, for the same reason that AI or gene editing is not so simple, for when science mixes with politics, it very much does need careful discussion and direction. Settlement on other planets, as just one example, will have severe knock-on effects on discussions of everything from dealing with climate change to the very nature of sovereignty and our concept of nationhood.

And with these three things considered- the fact that space is a highly effective way to haemorrhage public money; that it is without doubt the most impactful political issue around on a scale longer than the next few election cycles; and that it needs guidance go be effective- it is inconceivable to me that we have gone half a century and more since the moon landing without proper discussion of what we are actually doing, and what the next questions that need to be answered are. My noble contribution to this self proclaimed crusade will be to scout out some of the crucial battlegrounds that need to be fought on in the short-to-medium term, and outline a few of the more important issues that merit more public airtime. 

Where the hell are we going (and why)?

It seems like a stupid question. But think about it: what is your answer? Where are we going in space? Why go anywhere in space? 

Some of you may have said the Moon, some Mars. But why? Why are we going there? As in, why there in particular? Please don’t mistake this for skepticism of space exploration, I’m its number one supporter, I just think since the Cold War stopped the easy “to beat them damn Russkies/Amis” there’s been a complete negligence towards the very relevant questions of where are we aiming for and why.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as much of a sucker for the emotive arguments of space exploration as the next guy. I cried a lot while watching Moonwalkers and Tom Hanks’ beautiful description of the innately human traits of curiosity, going where no one has before, and pushing ourselves to the limits. There is something in our nature that deeply yearns to see the unseen, to tread the untrodden, to go higher, faster, further, than anyone else. However, while these are very good arguments for why to go to space (general case), they are not relevant to where we should go, or why we should go to that place in particular. There is just as much curiosity and human nature in a mission to Venus as there is to Mercury.

Indeed, a space program based solely on the desire to do new things, with goals set only by curiosity and breaking boundaries, would long since have abandoned the moon (“old hat, dear boy: been there, done that, got the moon rock”) and set out with great haste to put rovers, flags, and people on every fathomable bit of rock, ice, or accumulated gas in the Solar System. 

Gold Rush 2.0: This Time It’s Lithium

Clearly that approach is a non-starter, so there must be other variables at play. Should we, then, decide where to go for economic reasons? When phrased as such this might make some people uncomfortable, fearing the corruption of something as intrinsically romantic and beautiful as space exploration by such dirty things as balance sheets and profit margins. But if we instead view it as a great way to solve the earth’s current looming economic problems (for example: depletion of natural resources, especially rare earth metals) it can seem a little more appealing. It is an oft-repeated critique of our economic system that there cannot be infinite growth with finite resources, but what if the resources in question became a lot less finite? There are those who believe that the European arrival in the Americas and their bounteous natural resources paved the way for the staggering advances in wealth and technology that occurred over the next few centuries- so would it be so fanciful to imagine a similar advance in our species’ progress could be made given access to our Solar System’s resources, resources orders of magnitude greater than those of the Americas? With this mission in mind, the human aspect of space exploration would be necessary only as a means to the end of more efficient resource extraction, and missions would be funded and targeted based on estimates of which resources are most in demand and where they can be found in most easily accessible format. 

Perhaps this would entail a shift from planetary explorations as the centre point of space programs, to a greater focus on asteroids, comets, or dwarf planets. Rovers could be deployed to scout out the areas richest in, for example, rare earth metals, or gold, or even ice, should water become in high demand as climate change continues to occur. Similarly, energy is a resource as valuable as any other, and we could put a far greater emphasis on harnessing space for energy-generation. Ideas have already been mooted for space-based solar power generation that could have an efficiency high enough to cover the earth’s present needs many times over, allowing for a clean(ish) way to have the cake of economic growth and eat it greenly. If some of you are still uncomfortable at the thought of using our solar system purely to satisfy our need for ever more resources and energy, I’d pose the following question: is this substantially different from a scaled up version of the relationship between cities and the countryside? Can we really justify sacrificing the economic growth that pulls millions of people out of poverty, of a potential near-limitless source of green energy, and of enough rare earth metals to sustain the technology industry for millennia to come, simply out of a desire to keep the rest of our solar system untouched? 

Manifest Destiny 2.0: This Time with Less Genocide Ideally

But perhaps the economy is also not the sole reason to go to space. Some wish to go to space as a means to the end of human settlement, and this goal has many arguments going for it. For one, it would alleviate the concerns of earth’s ever-growing population, and how many people our planet can sustain- if we can settle other planets reliably, then we never again have to worry about urban sprawl, or increasing human contact with wild animals that can cause disease transmission, or over intensive agricultural practices. 

Of course, this is a view that some take to the extreme: techno-accelerationists might go as far a saying that if we manage planetary settlement in the not-too-distant future, we never have to worry about this whole climate change thing on Earth or elsewhere: we can simply use the Earth for all it is worth, and when it becomes uninhabitable under the strain, we can simply leave and do the same elsewhere. However, the views of such extremists should not poison the idea of human settlement entirely, and there is no reason why we can not seek both to preserve the earth, and establish human settlements elsewhere. 

What it does mean, however, is that we should then consider why we are bothering with missions like JuIcE or Cassini, since settlement on Jupiter and Saturn is impossible due to their gaseous nature. If we orient our space programs towards settlement, then perhaps such missions to uninhabitable places like gas giants, comets, or the Sun would be scaled back, or cut entirely.

To be sure, this raises entirely new debates about the extent of terraforming (the anthropocentric ‘make other planets as earth-like as possible or even better’ vs the biocentric ‘other planets have unique climatic, geologic and structural features which we should learn to live alongside without destroying them’), but just as now no one would seriously argue it was a mistake for humans to move out of the Rift Valley and settle around the world, perhaps it is also our destiny to live beyond the earth as well. If we are looking for human settlement, then Mars is probably the best option, and perhaps rather than the incremental nature of the Artemis program that will get there via the Moon and the future Lunar Gateway, and will be lucky to get a permanent settlement of any size within this century, we should look to skip the Moon, and revisit the viability of Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan from the 1990s, that would see hundreds of people living on Mars within a couple of decades at the cost of only averaging one heavy rocket launch per year. 

Fair Artemis, Foul Ares

Indeed, Artemis’ lumping of the Moon and Mars as essentially two steps on the same trail is one of the biggest indications to me of the current lack of strategy or thought in NASA’s operations, brought about by political and funding instability (the 2011 Wolf Amendment banning any NASA collaboration with China is an encapsulation of how politicians often meddle with NASA’s operations). The Moon and Mars are not even vaguely similar. If I proposed a road trip, and you asked where we were going, and I said “well it’s either three days or three years away”, you’d be well within your rights to ask which one it was. Their radically different distances aside, the Moon and Mars are not simply the same rocky desert in two different colour palettes. Their atmospheres, geologies, histories, and climates are heavily contrasting; our long-term goals on each must brake these differences into account rather than simply seeing them as Step One and Step Two. Settlements on the Moon would be within easy communicable distance with earth- whether directly or through the relay system China has recently demonstrated. They’d be able to listen to our radio, watch our TV, have zoom calls without too much issue. Yes, alas, even going to the Moon means you can’t get off work. Tourism between the Earth and Moon would be easily possible- families could easily spend a fortnight on the Moon during the school holidays. Since the exchange of resources would be convenient and (relatively) cheap, the Moon would be under far less pressure to manufacture everything itself, and could meaningfully rely on the earth for most of its supplies. Essentially, in the not too distant future, people could live on the Moon more-or-less as they do on Earth, with the only major difference being the housing design, and going outside being a tad more involved.

Mars, by contrast, is a whole different world (pun intended). All communications would be on a six-minute delay, and while that doesn’t sound like very long, it makes so many things effectively impossible. Real-time conversations with Earth would be stilted, casual phone calls impractical, remote working through Teams thankfully made incredibly inefficient. Thus, despite only being six light-minutes away, Mars would be culturally very different. Casual movement of people would be very small, and the interchange of population with Earth would be effectively limited to long-term immigration in either direction. They’d have to learn to be a lot more self-reliant, and thus a lot more thought would have to be given to what can and cannot be produced on Mars, and how that affects what life is like there. Adaptations to our current patterns of life would have to be made, and the result would be that after several decades on Mars, we may see a society meaningfully different to any we recognise here on Earth. Thus, we cannot simply treat the Moon and Mars with the same broad brush: and if we decide to go to either, we must have good reasons for why that one, and what are we intending to do there.

Inflection point

Now in the course of setting out these possibilities, it seems likely that the objection ‘they’re not mutually exclusive! Why can’t we pursue multiple aims in space?’ might be on your lips. The answer is, boringly, money (and also professional capacity). The reason the 1960s were such a successful decade for space is that there was a singular goal: get a man to the moon. Of course this necessitated broad research and testing- into rocketry, biomechanics, computing etc- but ultimately all of space research was geared towards one aim. Since then, there has been a lack of such a unified goal, and as such a lack of sustained, significant progress. Our approach has been more scattergun, and based on information gathering and scientific interest rather than any longer term, ambitious aim, despite the endeavours of various groups like the ‘Mars Underground’ which tried to pressure NASA to commit to a mission to Mars of a similar magnitude to Apollo in the late 70s and early 80s. The success of the Mariner missions to Mars and Venus in the 80s was not built on; the next period of major advancement towards Mars came only in the 2010s with the rovers, and now we are not intending to build significantly on these successes until the late 2030s at least. The success of the Voyagers in exploring our outer solar system and beyond was a flash in the pan until New Horizons greatly enhanced our knowledge of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt- yet there is no major next step planned in this department either. Essentially, while there have been plenty of successes in space since 1969, they have been so varied, so spread out chronologically and spatially, that we have not had the opportunity to string them together towards a really big goal. We have improved our breadth, but not our depth. Perhaps this period of consolidation and gradual advance was necessary, perhaps it was a waste, but either way the time has come for a commitment to a new big goal, and deciding what the purpose of going to space is for the next few decades at least. 

This moment is more urgent now than it has been for a while due to the ever-present ills of politicians making budgets. NASA’s budget has been slashed in key areas, and is in turmoil with the White House having removed its nomination of Isaacman for the position of Director mere days before he was likely to be confirmed by a substantial majority. Russia’s long-term economic outlook seems to be in dire straits indeed, and their continued participation and contribution to space research might be nearing its final days. And cost-of-living crises the world over have made the public incredibly sceptical of using public money for ‘frivolous’ activities, as evidenced by the backlash to Katy Perry and co’s flight. The fact is, space agency directors no longer have the funds or political capital to do things for their own sake, or for scientific interest, or where the public benefits are hard to articulate (see the ESA’s tortured attempts to explain what the hell Iris2 is, let alone does). To maintain public support and funding for space there must be a more coherently defined mission statement, a fact that will also help reinforce international cooperation on space at a time when such bonds are fraying due to tensions around the world (even the ESA is becoming obsessed with ‘strategic autonomy’, a very diplomatic way of saying they don’t really trust America anymore and are striking in a more independent direction). 

Not just starry-eyed dreaming

Space is often overlooked as an issue, and not treated as ‘proper’ policy because it is so science fictiony and romantic. Even in this relatively short-term-view article I have spoken of new Martian cultures, of spacefaring barrages of solar panels, of lunar tourism, and asteroid mining. These concepts are quite hard to think of in a hard-nosed, practical policy viewpoint because they are inherently really damn cool. Space policy, to its detriment, will never seem as boring or (excuse the pun) down to earth as tax credits or planning permission reform, and as such will always seem a little childish, a little silly. However, to leave serious thinking about space policy to science fiction writers (some of whom, to their credit, are doing a pretty decent job) would not only be a mistake in giving up a crucial chance to seize the initiative for defining the issues that will, undoubtedly, drive the future, it’s even worse: it’s repeating the exact same mistake we just made. 

For literally decades, AI has been a concept in science fiction, and in the musings of scientists and engineers. Generative AI was not ‘discovered’ in 2022, it was not unearthed from the ground like some sort of Rosetta Stone. We had the opportunity for years and years to preemptively think about the policy response to AI (albeit with the limitations of not knowing exactly how it would first manifest), and we didn’t take it seriously, because it was so science fiction, so faintly ridiculous compared to the pressing issues of the day. And now we are finding it impossible to regulate and legislate at the appropriate speed to AI’s development and are witnessing the costs. We must not repeat the same mistake again. Planning for a pandemic was all theoretical and imaginary until it wasn’t. Planning for the new issues of space must begin now. Failure is not an option.

By Thomas Britton

Recommended Resources 

Space 2069, David Whitehouse: a brilliant, and quite short, book, outlining the history of progress in space since 1969, and looking at what will happen in the next 50 years in a very realistic manner.

The Mars Direct plan, drafted in the 1990s, but very much still relevant today

This article regarding the recent political turmoil within NASA.