fourth rock from the sun “The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war.” Noam Chomsky
Author: Jordan Hindson Image: Yerida by Chris Richardson Planetary Resources has devoted itself to the pursuit of asteroid mining. The global economic model feeds on seeking out new markets, and it is no surprise that corporations are keen to absorb the final frontier into their profit margins. The Outer Space Treaty and other treaties have attempted to patrol and police the geopolitical power balance of space, but are in urgent need of updating to account for the non-state actors — such as SpaceX and Blue Origin — that are active in this emerging market. This drive to expand our sphere of influence from planet Earth (Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot”) to our solar system and beyond begs the age-old question: are we alone? There is no direct evidence to suggest that we are not, and much discussion around the question of extraterrestrial life is limited to vague statistics and thought experiments. One such conversational launch pad is Enrico Fermi’s famous paradox, an equation that aimed to help us estimate the likelihood that there is life somewhere else in the universe. Our brains whimper at the scale of the numbers involved, so suffice it to say that the Universe is impossibly large. Confronted with this scale, and therefore the overwhelming mathematical likelihood that life is not restricted to our own tiny corner of space, poses the question that has been named Fermi’s Paradox: If it’s
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statically likely there’s other life out there in the universe, Where is everyone else? Why haven’t we contacted another civilisation already? This simple question has prompted endless speculation. “The Great Filter” theory, held by philosopher Nick Bostrum of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, posits that evolutionary history contains several steps that are so unlikely that the chance of intelligent life arising is minimal. Not everyone agrees though. Physicist Lawrence Krauss has asked, “do all routes of evolution lead to intelligence?” It is not necessarily the case that complex life must tend towards what we know as intelligence. This is all little more than speculation, comprised of one data point: our planet. Because of this, science fiction can act as a useful reservoir of ideas on the matter, but it still often depicts non-Earth life as vaguely humanoid; the Narcissus that is humanity cannot help but see its own reflection in the black mirror of space. The human imagination is terrestrial and local, and space is a mental frontier as much as a physical one. As with so many other scientific advances, from artificial intelligence to genome editing techniques, these space projects contain the seeds of both liberation and repression.
Politics goes where humans go, and it is politics that will dictate the future of space exploration and exploitation. As president, Trump has appointed a climate change sceptic as the head of NASA, and there is no reason to believe that this scientific illiteracy is limited to climate change. These retrograde ideas stalk the halls of power, and the space race is as beholden to political influence as any other aspect of life. Environmental and nuclear disasters are only going to encourage those who want to flee. Privilege and power will not remain tethered to terra, and we can be sure that those with the means – in other words, those most responsible for the crises – will attempt to eject themselves first. In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the eponymous character unveils a plan to preserve the political leaders in underground bunkers. Climate change, however, has changed the game, and a modern Machiavellian may turn their attention skyward in search of an escape route. Alternatively, one could imagine a referendum on the question, with its very own Leave and Remain campaigns. Such questions are to become more pressing and less abstract as the century progresses. Our future success as a species depends upon the answers we choose.
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