Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race by Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Author:Mary-Jane Rubenstein [Rubenstein, Mary-Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, General, Space Science, Space Exploration, Religion, Philosophy
ISBN: 9780226823171
Google: E0mWEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09Z73Y4B7
Goodreads: 60557045
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2022-11-24T22:00:00+00:00

No one asked regular human beings what they thought about [satellite constellations]. Nobody went to Indigenous people who have very dark skies and have been using the skies for a long time to help them understand their relationship to seasons. . . . Their skies are now changed forever. And nobody asked them.45

At the beginning of this book, I said that space was a mess, but it’s worse than that. Space is a disaster. The word literally means that the stars (astra) are out of place, throwing everything out of order. And like any genuine disaster, the disaster of space is affecting everyone. Indigenous navigators can’t see the stars. Western astronomers can’t get decent images. The International Space Station has to perform heroic maneuvers to dodge incoming projectiles. And investors worry about their satellites getting demolished in a high-speed garbage race. Even the Space Force admits that orbital debris is becoming a significant impediment to their operations. (Lest they be further ridiculed for functioning as a sanitation unit, however, the Space Force is requesting that some civilian agency figure out how to take out the trash.46) In short, everyone has a shared interest in not getting pummeled by debris. Could this shared disaster finally make it clear to the corporate cheerleaders and cosmic nationalists that space is a commons after all? Might the space junk threatening to strangle us actually be our salvation?

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