Imagine a future where humanity reaches for the stars, not just in dreams, but in reality. But who gets to write the rules of this cosmic expansion? Who decides who benefits, and who bears the risks? The question of space ethics is no longer a futuristic fantasy; it's a pressing issue we need to address now, before we repeat mistakes of the past.
Back in October, at a tech conference in Italy, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, painted a picture of millions living in space within the next couple of decades. His vision? Robots handling the heavy lifting, making space life a desirable choice for humans. He suggested that space inhabitants would be there "mostly because they want to." But here's where it gets controversial… is that truly the whole story?
Just weeks later, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Will Bruey, founder of space manufacturing startup Varda Space Industries, offered a strikingly different perspective. He predicted that within 15 to 20 years, it will be cheaper to send a “working-class human” to orbit for a month than to develop more sophisticated robots. And this is the part most people miss… the implications are HUGE.
While the tech-savvy audience seemed unfazed by this seemingly provocative cost-saving measure, it sparked crucial questions: Who exactly will be toiling among the stars, and under what conditions? Will space become the next frontier for exploitation, or a realm of equitable opportunity? What safeguards will be in place to protect these interstellar workers?
To delve deeper into these complex issues, I spoke with Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Religion and Science and Technology Studies at Wesleyan University. Rubenstein, author of "Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse" (a book that inspired the award-winning film "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), has recently been focusing on the ethical dimensions of space exploration.
Rubenstein's reaction to Bruey's prediction hits the nail on the head: It's all about power imbalances. "Workers already have a hard enough time on Earth paying their bills and keeping themselves safe... and insured," she pointed out. "And that dependence on our employers only increases dramatically when one is dependent on one’s employer not just for a paycheck and sometimes for health care, but also for basic access, to food and to water – and also to air!" Imagine being completely reliant on your employer for the very air you breathe. The potential for exploitation is chilling.
Her assessment of space as a workplace is blunt and sobering. Forget the romanticized visions of weightless freedom; space is a harsh, unforgiving environment. "It’s not nice up there," Rubenstein stated plainly. "It is not nice at all." There are no natural resources to take advantage of, and the human body is not built for such an environment.
But worker protection is just one piece of the puzzle. There's also the increasingly contested issue of space ownership – a legal quagmire that's becoming increasingly problematic as commercial space activities accelerate. This issue could spark differing opinions, as it involves national interests, commercial ambitions, and the potential for international conflict.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty established a fundamental principle: no nation can claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. The Moon, Mars, asteroids – they're supposed to belong to all of humanity. But in 2015, the U.S. passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which, while upholding the ban on owning the Moon itself, allows ownership of anything extracted from it. Silicon Valley's eyes lit up instantly. This law opened the floodgates for commercial exploitation of space resources, while the international community watched with growing unease.
Rubenstein uses a powerful analogy to illustrate the absurdity of this situation: It's like saying you can't own a house, but you can own everything inside it. Actually, she corrects herself, it's even worse than that. "It’s more like saying you can’t own the house, but you can have the floorboards and the beams. Because the stuff that is in the moon is the moon. There’s no difference between the stuff the moon contains and the moon itself.”
Companies have been strategically positioning themselves to capitalize on this legal loophole for years. AstroForge is setting its sights on asteroid mining. Interlune aims to extract Helium-3 from the Moon. The catch? These are finite, non-renewable resources. "Once the U.S. takes [the Helium-3], China can’t get it," Rubenstein explains. "Once China takes it, the U.S. can’t get it." This raises the specter of resource wars in space.
The international backlash to the 2015 U.S. law was swift and fierce. At the 2016 UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) meeting, Russia condemned the Act as a unilateral violation of international law, while Belgium warned of potential global economic instability.
In response, the U.S. created the Artemis Accords in 2020 – bilateral agreements with allied nations that solidified the American interpretation of space law, particularly concerning resource extraction. Countries, fearing exclusion from the burgeoning space economy, signed on. Currently, there are 60 signatories, although notably, Russia and China are not among them.
However, discontent is simmering beneath the surface. “This is one of those instances of the U.S. setting rules and then asking other people to join in or be left out,” Rubenstein observes. The Accords cleverly sidestep the issue of legality, stating only that resource extraction doesn't constitute the "national appropriation" prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty. It's a delicate dance around a potentially explosive issue. What does this say about the future of space governance?
Rubenstein's proposed solution, while perhaps idealistic, is undeniably logical: return control to the UN and COPUOS. Failing that, she suggests repealing the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 law that effectively prohibits NASA and other federal agencies from collaborating with China or Chinese-owned companies without explicit FBI certification and Congressional approval. This is a complex geopolitical issue, and could be seen as controversial.
When faced with skepticism about the feasibility of collaborating with China, Rubenstein has a compelling counterargument: "We’re talking about an industry that is saying things like, ‘It’ll totally be possible to house thousands of people in a space hotel,’ or ‘It’ll be possible within 10 years to ship a million people to Mars, where there’s no air and where the radioactivity will give you cancer in a second and where your blood will boil and your face will fall off.' If it’s possible to imagine doing those things, I think it is possible to imagine the U.S. talking to China.”
Rubenstein's underlying concern revolves around our chosen path for space exploration. She views the current trajectory – transforming the Moon into a "cosmic gas station," mining asteroids, and establishing military capabilities in orbit – as fundamentally flawed.
She draws on science fiction to illustrate alternative visions of space, categorizing the genre into three broad themes. First, there's the “conquest” genre, stories that champion national or corporate expansion, portraying space as the next frontier to be conquered, akin to European explorers claiming new continents. Then, there's dystopian science fiction, serving as cautionary tales about destructive paths. But here’s where something odd happens: “Some tech companies seem to sort of miss the joke in this dystopian genre and just sort of actualize whatever the warning was,” she says.
Finally, the third strand utilizes space to envision alternative societies with innovative concepts of justice and care – what Rubenstein terms "speculative fiction" in a "high-tech key," employing futuristic technological settings as their framework.
When it became evident that the "conquest" template was dominating real-world space development, Rubenstein felt discouraged. "This seemed to me a real missed opportunity for extending the values and priorities that we have in this world into those realms that we have previously reserved for thinking in different kinds of ways.”
While Rubenstein doesn't anticipate immediate policy changes, she identifies some realistic pathways forward. One is strengthening environmental regulations for space activities, particularly as we are only beginning to grasp the impact of rocket emissions and re-entering debris on the ozone layer.
A more promising avenue, however, lies in addressing space debris. With over 40,000 trackable objects orbiting Earth at breakneck speeds, we're nearing the Kessler effect – a cascading collision scenario that could render orbit unusable. "Nobody wants that," she emphasizes. "The U.S. government doesn’t want that. China doesn’t want it. The industry doesn’t want it.” It's a rare instance where everyone's interests align perfectly. “Space garbage is bad for everybody," she notes.
She is currently developing a proposal for an annual conference that would bring together academics, NASA representatives, and industry leaders to discuss approaching space "mindfully, ethically, collaboratively." The goal is to foster a more responsible and sustainable approach to space exploration.
Whether anyone will heed the call remains to be seen. There seems to be little incentive for collaboration on these issues. In fact, just last year, Congress introduced legislation to make the Wolf Amendment permanent, further restricting cooperation with China rather than easing it.
In the meantime, startup founders are forecasting dramatic shifts in space within the next five to ten years, companies are positioning themselves to mine asteroids and the Moon, and Bruey's prediction of blue-collar workers in orbit hangs in the balance, unanswered. So, what do you think? Should space be a free-for-all, or should we prioritize ethical considerations and international cooperation? Is the pursuit of profit outweighing the potential risks? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
