U.S. military space confusion

RAND Corporation recently issued a report entitled “Charting A Path To Thoughtful Allied Space Power.” It shows how the U.S. military space bureaucracy is too big, uncoordinated, and not as effective as it should be.

The report highlights what RAND calls the “say-do gap” – that is, the difference between what U.S. military space officials say, and what their various organizations are doing. The situation this report describes is not good in the current environment, where U.S. DoD is insistent on maintaining space superiority over China (and everybody else, for that matter).

“The RAND team reached six key findings:

• Entities across the DoD space enterprise— including the U.S. Space Force (USSF), the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy (OSD(P))—lack a consistent vision and desired end state for partnering with allies.
• DoD space enterprise roles and responsibilities remain ambiguous and disputed. Separate entities develop separate allied space cooperation approaches with separate engagement activities.
• DoD regulations, processes, and infrastructure limit the feasibility of integration with allies. With- out changes, U.S.-allied “integration” is unlikely in the next two to five years.
• The United States and its allies lack adequate, interoperable communications standards and infrastructure across all levels of classification.
• Continued U.S. inefficiencies and a “say-do gap” between what the United States says and does regarding space integration risk weakening the allied space coalition.
• Efforts to articulate a vision for cooperation and to improve overall coordination across the DoD space enterprise are nascent and insufficient.”

More from the report: “At least four DoD organizations—OSD(P); USSPACECOM; the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs (SAF/IA); and the USSF—appear to be vying for the lead in setting priorities for space engagement with allies and in undertaking such engagement. More than a dozen additional DoD organizations…claim a role in coordinating space cooperation with allies, and each of these organizations prioritizes allies and topics differently. This situation produces incoherence in identifying priorities.”

Oy vey….

What does RAND recommend? “Across the DoD space enterprise, the United States should be forthright, consistent, and clear with allies when and where cooperation and information-sharing are possible.” No kidding.

Sounds to me like a typical Washington, D.C., problem – people carve out fiefdoms and vie for power, influence, and turf. I’d guess that this problem is not peculiar to DOD’s space organizations, but given the size of their budgets (the 2023 budget for the U.S. Space Force alone was $24.5 billion, $30 billion requested for 2024), we should be concerned. We deserve better.

Another update on NASA’s Artemis program

On January 17, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee held yet another congressional hearing on the state of NASA’s Artemis back-to-the-Moon-and-on-to-Mars program. Returning to the Moon: Keeping Artemis on Track. All committee members present, both Democrat and Republican, expressed concerns about competition in space from China and stressed that the U.S. must get people to the Moon (a second time) before China does.

I wonder: what would happen to the United States if China were to land people on the Moon before NASA’s return? The media and politicians would go nuts, but, really, what else would happen? NASA is still under a legislative prohibition against cooperating with China in space.  That’s a shame.

In her written testimony, Catherine Koerner, NASA Associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said NASA is developing “a blueprint for human exploration throughout the solar system for the benefit of humanity.” My question – again – is, how will this program benefit humanity? It will benefit the aerospace industry, for sure. During Q&A, Koerner said we still don’t know much about how human physiology responds to microgravity, and we know nothing about how humans will respond to moving from microgravity to partial gravity (on the Moon or Mars) and back to microgravity.

Huh.

During Q&A, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told Koerner that NASA needs to explain why the Artemis program matters to the American people. Koerner gave the standard NASA answer: it will provide inspiration, maintain national posture, and benefit humanity. And, she asserted, “We will be on the surface of the Moon before China is.” Koerner added that the Artemis program will deliver “great economic and technological benefit.”

I’d like to see some details.

In his written testimony, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, said, “The Artemis Program should not be ‘kept on track’; it should be fixed and then prosecuted with all deliberate speed.” He noted, “The agency has awarded fixed-price contracts to SpaceX and Blue Origin to carry out lunar landings for, respectively, $2.9 and $3.4 billion dollars…award of these unrealistically low fixed-price contracts makes it clear that cost reasonableness was not a factor in ranking these contract awards. The further implication is that the United States is not yet serious about a program that should be regarded as a core national interest – returning U.S. and international partner astronauts to the Moon before our self-declared adversaries can do so.”

“The fundamental flaw in the Artemis acquisition approach,” he said, “is the assumption that the U.S. government can and should leverage so-called ‘commercial space’ for national purposes, and that this paradigm is applicable to human spaceflight. It is debatable whether, in general, ‘commercial space’ is other than a catchphrase intended to differentiate traditional prime contractors from newer firms aspiring to obtain government contracts without the excessive and stifling regulatory framework surrounding traditional government acquisition. However, it should be clear that no significant fiscal return on investment in human lunar missions can be expected in the foreseeable future without significant government subsidy.”

That’s for sure.

In his written testimony, NASA’s inspector general George Scott addressed “the Artemis campaign’s enormous expense. Overall, we project NASA’s total Artemis campaign costs to reach $93 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2025. We also project the SLS/Orion system and related ground launch infrastructure will cost at least $4.2 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions, a figure that does not include $42 billion in formulation and development costs spent over the past dozen years to bring these systems to the launch pad.”

Scott also highlighted “the Artemis campaign’s lack of cost and schedule transparency. In particular, “NASA still lacks a comprehensive and accurate estimate that accounts for all Artemis costs.”

What is/will be the economic benefit of this humongous investment?

William Russell, director of contracting and national security acquisitions at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said in his written testimony, “In December 2019 (GAO-20-68), GAO found that NASA did not plan to establish an official cost estimate for this mission. NASA concurred with a GAO recommendation to establish one but has not yet done so. While NASA requested $6.8 billion to support Artemis III programs in its fiscal year 2024 budget request, decision-makers have limited knowledge into the full scope of Artemis III mission costs [and] it does not plan to measure the production costs for the SLS rockets that constitute a significant proportion of future Artemis-related costs.”

Yow. So, the government’s watchdogs are expressing concerns about the cost of NASA’s Artemis program. But NASA keeps moving ahead, spending money without fully accounting for the spending. What good are the watchdogs when NASA doesn’t need to respond to their concerns?

More on innovation in space, pros and cons

On December 13, the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Science held a hearing on the topic of “Government Promotion of Safety and Innovation in the New Space Economy.” The hearing was organized to “address the Federal government’s role in ensuring the safety, viability and economic competitiveness of commercial space activities and discuss regulatory approaches for the rapidly evolving industry,” according to the subcommittee. This hearing followed an earlier hearing convened by the same subcommittee in October. I blogged about that hearing yesterday.

In her written testimony for the December hearing, NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said, “We need to balance U.S. innovation and economic growth against protecting the space environment for future use, foreign policy considerations, and national security concerns, all while meeting our international obligations…. As NASA is increasingly a customer of commercial services, increased clarity regarding who is responsible for authorizing and supervising commercial space activities, particularly where we are not the only customer, is vital for the success of NASA’s missions…. Where we are the sole customer, we feel confident that we can exercise appropriate oversight through our contract. However, where there are multiple customers, both federal and non-federal, the U.S. government faces new challenges with respect to authorizing and properly overseeing these missions. These challenges often create risks for NASA and the U.S. government overall.”

As I wrote earlier this week, Astrobotic’s lunar lander mission carried several NASA payloads but also multiple payloads for private customers, including a container of human remains. The Navaho Nation and other First Nations asked NASA to halt the launch of human remains to the Moon, but NASA’s position was that it could not do so because this was a commercial, not a government, mission.

Melroy explained that the White House has asked Congress “to extend the authorities of the Departments of Commerce and Transportation…to better enable the authorization and continued supervision of novel space activities…. The intent of this supervision is not to stifle nor slow down industry, but rather to work with industry in advancing commercial space. We want to preserve safety, but also economic opportunity.”

Kevin Coleman, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said in his written testimony that the FAA is responsible for protecting “the public health and safety, the safety of property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.” It is also responsible “for encouraging, facilitating, and promoting commercial space launches…and facilitating the strengthening and expansion of U.S. space transportation infrastructure…our mission is to enable safe commercial space transportation.”

It’s a big job. Coleman said the FAA has seen “a 186% increase in license applications since fiscal year 2020…we expect the total number of licensed commercial space operations to double by fiscal year 2026.”

Last year, the Department of Transportation (DOT) established a “Human Space Flight Occupant Safety Aerospace Rulemaking Committee (Human Space Flight SpARC). This body provides an opportunity “to engage with the commercial space industry. It “will provide consensus information, concerns, opinions, and recommendations to [DOT] regarding the establishment of a commercial human space flight occupant safety framework. We expect recommendations from the Human Space Flight SpARC by the summer of 2024,” Coleman said.

In his written testimony, Richard Dalbello, director of the Office of Space Commerce in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce (OSC), said “our mission is to foster the conditions necessary for the economic growth and technological advancement of [the commercial space] industry…. In addition to its role as advocate for the space industry, OSC is also a regulator.”

“The government’s continued facilitation of American space leadership necessitates a regulatory system that can support the dynamic and evolving commercial sector. The OSC recognizes that the U.S. space industry faces competition from companies and regulatory regimes abroad. Just as our companies constantly innovate, our government must also adapt to new circumstances,” Dalbello continued. “The U.S. space regulatory system is decades old…. It is not sufficient at a time when a whole range of new space technologies and platforms are being developed and flown…. As more novel space activities are tested, flown, and operated, uncertainty about how such activities will be regulated in the future could affect technical planning, impact business cases, erode investor confidence, and undermine space safety.” Thus, OSC supports the recent White House proposal (cited by Melroy) for legislation aimed at updating the space regulatory system. “This proposal would establish the framework for a new, modern, and flexible regulatory system, building on the strengths of our office and those of our interagency colleagues in DOT and NASA.”

So here you have it – some government perspectives on the importance of promoting safety vs. innovation. Let’s see if the government can maintain a good balance.

In a paper entitled “From ‘more innovation’ to ‘better innovation’?” (Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 9(2): 97–106, 2023, https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1365), Sebastian Pfotenhauer co-director of the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), explores what he sees as three basic messages emanating from studies of science, technology, and society (STS) “that have gained wider traction in mainstream innovation circles and that many actors not trained in STS now readily embrace: on the politics of technology, the politics of experimentation, and the work needed to situate innovation practices locally.” He observes an “ongoing paradigm shift in innovation policy…: instead of simply asking for ever-more innovation, many innovation actors seem to be asking for better innovation, embracing a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between innovation and the public good than mere economic benefits.”

What Pfotenhauer is observing is occurring in Europe, including at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which he describes as “arguably the world’s principal platform for innovation policy that usually exhibits an unapologetic pro-innovation bias with a strong econo-centric orientation.” He continues, “Questions about the relationship of innovation and culture have quietly moved to the center of current academic and policy debates on innovation. In what could be described as a ‘cultural turn’ in innovation studies, a growing number of authors have begun rethinking extant research in [innovation studies] and economic geography through the lens of STS, with considerable resonance in the IS community.”

This is good news. However, I don’t see any evidence that this cultural turn is occurring in the U.S. space industry. Is the U.S. government considering the social/cultural ramifications of innovation in space? And can it encourage industry to do so as well? We’ll see.

Innovation in space: an obsession?

I’m in the process (once again) of cleaning off my desktop, and I’ve come across my notes on a Senate Commerce Committee Space and Science Subcommittee hearing held October 18, 2023, on the topic of “Promoting Safety, Innovation, and Competitiveness in U.S. Commercial Human Space Activities.”

Subcommittee chair Sen. Kristen Sinema reported at the hearing, “It is not a coincidence that the United States is both the only country where private companies are engaged in human spaceflight and the world leader in space innovation and development.”

(Though they have not yet advanced to human space flight, private companies in China and India are pursing space exploration. The U.S. has a growing volume of competition in space exploration, innovation, development, and exploitation.)

Sinema continued: “Space innovation is no longer the exclusive domain of government. As private companies bring private citizens to space, we can see the immense potential of commercial human spaceflight. Commercial space activities can now go from theoretical to very real at lightning speed.”

I do not like the sound of for-profit companies sending people (or anything else) into space “at lightning speed.” The regulatory framework for commercial activities in space is currently minimal (though the companies engaged in this enterprise would prefer for the government to go away…).

More from Sinema: “We must draw upon prior experience and take the same enterprising, pioneering approach to commercial space that served us so well in earlier generations.”

Enterprising and pioneering are buzzwords. Free enterprise is a bedrock principle of libertarianism. Pioneering is a bedrock principle of the ideology of the human exploration of space – justifying human expansion, land grabs, and resource exploitation (including, eventually, the exploitation of humans). This approach perpetuates the ways in which the United States expanded westward and the ways in which European nations explored and exploited the people and natural resources of the so-called “New World.” Not a good thing.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the full Commerce Committee, said during Q&A at this hearing: “SpaceX Falcon 9 was the first to take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station [ISS].”

Perhaps it is the first U.S company to do so. But recall that, for years, after NASA shut down its space shuttle program, the Russian space agency Roscosmos was NASA’s sole means of transporting astronauts to and from the ISS.

Caryn Schenewerk, president of CS Consulting, testified at this hearing. She is a lawyer and lobbyist. She worked for SpaceX for several years, and also for Relativity Space.  She claimed in her statement, “The U.S. space industry is highly regulated.” If you’re a libertarian, you might say this statement is correct. For me, it’s an overstatement. IMHO the U.S. space industry is insufficiently regulated – especially when it comes to human space flight and extraterrestrial resource exploitation.

In his written testimony, Brigadier General (USAF ret.) Wayne Monteith, former administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, had this to say:

“The number of FAA AST licensed activities increased from 35 in 2018 to 84 in 2022, and 95 already in 2023. In 2019 there was one FAA licensed commercial human spaceflight mission; so far in 2023 there have been 8 flights, and that’s even with a major contributor like Blue Origin temporarily pausing flight operations…while good regulations and intentions, and even overly conservative regulator interpretations of those regulations, cannot eliminate all risk, they can sub-optimize or eliminate innovation, new entrants, and U.S. global leadership…. it is important that we work through these complex issues to ensure an appropriate level of safety and a “light regulatory touch.”

So now both government and industry are advocating for so-called “light-touch” regulation of space activities. Industry would like as little regulation as it can get away with.

Sirisha Bandla, vice president of government affairs and research operations with Virgin Galactic, said in her written statement, “The emergence of commercial human spaceflight companies is changing the paradigm and aiming to democratize access to space for tourism and research purposes for private citizens, researchers, and government astronauts.”

Oh, come on. “Democratize?” Do these people understand democratization of access to space? It is not a matter of providing access to privileged people who have a lot of disposable income. This is what’s happening in commercial space, not democratization. Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are all about making money from tourist space flights. I don’t care what they want to call their passengers, they’re tourists.

Corporate executives – such as Elon Musk – protest that innovation should be a top priority for the space business, not safety. The owner of the tourist submersible Titan also sang this tune. His “innovative” submersible imploded on a dive, killing all on board, including him.

Government and industry have long been obsessed with promoting innovation. Safety, ethics, and, in the case of government projects, public value should play an important role in considering how to advance innovation. In considering these factors, perhaps we can avoid pursuing innovation simply for the sake of innovation.

The way we’re pursuing space exploration and exploitation: problematic

On June 8, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander was launched to the Moon, carrying 20 payloads, five of them NASA’s (NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million for launching them). One of the commercial payloads contained human remains, to be left on the Moon.

The Navaho Nation and other First Nations protested, to NASA and the White House, against the placement of human remains on the Moon, as they consider the Moon a sacred place. NASA said that since this was a commercial mission, it had nothing to say about what other payloads it carried. A previous NASA mission to the Moon also left human remains on the surface.

It is concerning that some government officials seem to think that they have no say about what businesses do in space.

In a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology last year (22:5 559–567, doi:10.1017/S1473550423000137), titled “Houston, we have a problem…or do we? The trajectory of astrobioethics and indigenous thought,” Indigenous sociologist Ried Mackay reports, “At the 2022 meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, a new affinity group was formed: astrobioethics, a branch of bioethics relating to space exploration, extraterrestrial environments and possible extraterrestrial organisms.” Bioethics, Mackay notes, “has traditionally operated from Western/Global North dominated thought structures and it is difficult to introduce alternative frameworks. However, astrobioethics is…primed to include alternative frameworks, such as pre-Columbian Indigenous American philosophy/ethics and Global South frameworks and knowledge.”

“Since astrobioethics is in its infancy,” he writes, now “is the perfect opportunity to diligently work to ensure that the pervasive legacies of colonialism and epistemic privilege do not continue…. Indigenous scholars are rightly concerned with ensuring that our knowledge is not viewed through a colonial lens or subordinate to that framing and that it stands on its own merits in a way that aims to decolonize the topic.”

“Missions and astronauts must not only consider their autonomy, but also the autonomy of the very things with which they interact,” Mackay writes. “The interaction between these two autonomies must be balanced for the universe to be balanced itself. In this way of thinking, “humanity [has] no inherent or universal right to affect the balance of the environments we enter.”

Mackay concludes, “Indigenous ethics can help to frame our future space technologies and explorations in a new light that gives everyone and everything an intrinsic value beyond its value as a tool or commodity. This will likely be important to avoid the exploitation and destruction traditionally accompanying human exploration and colonization.”

I wonder if anybody at NASA has read this paper? I hope so.

Another interesting paper, “Cosmic injustices: critical thinking, outer space, green values and capitalist ideologies in a planetary age,” by interdisciplinary scholar Brad Tabas, was published last year by the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (https://doi.org/10.1177/026377582311882). Tabas explores “how ideologically charged discourse splits the interests of people and planet.” He examines “the growing place and rhetorical function of outer space within the Anthropocene economy. It illustrates that the promise of extraterrestrial growth…has emerged as a potent means of justifying inequality in the name of planetary well-being, and so also of justifying the gospel of growth despite our increasing awareness of the limits of our planet.” Right on.

Tabas is concerned about the extension of capitalism – capitalist ideology – into outer space. (So am I – I have been engaged in a critique of the neoliberal ideology of space exploration and exploitation for some time.) “Our pollution affects our cosmic province,” Tabas observes. “Orbital space and the moon are being junked. And with an acceleration of economic activity in near space underway, these problems are primed to get worse. They should be the concern of scholars interested in capitalism and the environment.” I agree.

The recent volume I co-edited, Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration (Oxford U. Press, 2023), offers other critiques of the way that governments and corporations are going about their plans to extend human presence into outer space and exploit extraterrestrial resources for human use (and profit, of course). The challenge I see is that space policy makers and decision makers are not thinking about the problematic nature of their ideological frameworks for policy making and decision making. My critical colleagues and I will continue to keep our eyes on what’s going on in space.

Who’s doing what in space?

From 1983 to 1985, I was editor of a (now long-defunct) trade publication called Space Business News. This publication was started in response to then-president Reagan’s touting of the “commercial” development of space.

I have a chapter forthcoming in an edited volume based on a 2021 NASA history conference, “NASA and the Commercial Development of space.” My chapter is entitled, “Commercial space in the ‘80s: a (former) journalist’s view.” In this chapter I document how I reported on so-called “space commercialization” from 1983-1985.

As I wrote in my conclusions in my chapter (ca. 2021): “Since the ‘80s, the proliferation of space-based assets has created a new commercial space sector: space debris removal. Airbus, Astroscale, Millennium Space Systems, RocketLab, Surrey Satellite Technology, Tethers Unlimited, and TriSept Corp. are among companies that are building and demonstrating space debris removal technologies. LeoLabs is tracking satellites and space debris from the ground. Via Satellite magazine reported that in March 2021, Astroscale, “the Japanese startup that became the industry’s leading brand of space debris removal in a short span of eight years, launched its long-awaited ELSA-d debris removal spacecraft.”

“As to space-based microgravity research supported by NASA with potential commercial applications, a 1999 NASA report  indicated that, from fiscal year 1995-1999, NASA’s microgravity research program funded 290 principal investigators (PIs) in 1995 and 409 PIs in 1999. In 1995, one patent was awarded as a result of this sponsored research, and in 1999, 26 patents were awarded. The research funded was in biotechnology, combustion science, fluid physics, fundamental physics, materials science, acceleration measurement, and advanced technology development. The report did not provide any information about the economic value of this work. The experiments covered in this report flew on Shuttle missions, the ISS, the Russian space station Mir, and KC-135 flights. Some of the experiments were ground-based research projects.”

“In 2011, the U.S. government designated the ISS a ‘national laboratory’ and put the Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) in charge of marketing and managing the lab. CASIS offers information on the products of ISS research. In a 2019 announcement, CASIS said is it was ‘opening the [ISS] for commercial business’ and soliciting bookings for private-sector customers.”

“It is not clear whether the economic benefits of ISS research outweigh the cost of building and maintaining the ISS – respectively, around $100 billion for construction and about $2 billion a year for NASA operations.” Thoughts?

As I wrote in 2021, “Today, who’s in the launch business? SpaceX and Blue Origin, of course, and Arianespace, Firefly Aerospace, Orbital (now part of Northrop Grumman), RocketLab…among others. China, Japan, and Russia also are marketing their ELV systems to private customers.”

“As to space tourism, Space Adventures, founded in 1998, appears to be a space-tourism success story. MirCorp was, briefly, a success story. As to the space-tourism potential of Virgin Galactic, it remains to be seen how it develops. The same is true for Blue Origin’s space tourism flights, a pet project of company owner Jeff Bezos.  SpaceX and Axiom are also in the business of marketing to space tourists. The trend in recent decades of shifting more wealth into the hands of the few at the expense of the many does appear to have created a growing pool of people who can afford to spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on space adventures.”

“With a tremendous boost from the U.S. government (White House, Congress, NASA) over the past decade or so, commercial development of space is proceeding. It is unlikely, however, that commercial space businesses will continue to succeed without considerable government contracts and, likely, continuing subsidies.”

That was my ten cents worth, ca. 2021.

This is just a recent sampling, ca. 2023, of space companies that didn’t exist when I was reporting for Space Business News, 1983-1985, drawn from a day of news feeds, 12/17-18/2023:

Astrobotic, GomSpace, Helicity Space, Intuitive Machines, ispace, Orbit Fab, Orbital Micro Systems, Orbex, Ovzon, SaxaVord, Sidus Space, Startical, Terran Orbital, Ubotica, Yahsat….

I have some vague idea of what a few of these companies are doing. The rest, not so much.

Two U.S. asteroid mining companies popped up in the 2000s, then died – Deep Space
Industries and Planetary Resources. They claimed they were going to mine asteroids “for the benefit of humanity.” Oh, please. In any case, they’re gone.

Now we have the U.K.-based Asteroid Mining Corporation: “Our mission…is to establish a market for space resource utilization through innovative robotics and a Space Resources Database…. We specialize in viable near-term solutions and all of our ventures are profit-driven rather than speculative.” At least this outfit admits that it’s profit-driven.

I have no predictions about what’s going to happen in space exploration and development over the next five to 10 years. With minimal government regulation – thus far – I expect that the way corporations will behave in space will be pretty much the way they’ve behaved on Earth: with little regard for human and environmental health and safety or labor rights, with essentially no concern for “benefit to humanity.”

An update on Mars exploration

I was asked by editors of a peer-reviewed journal to write this commentary. When I submitted it, they decided it wasn’t a good fit. So I’m posting my commentary here.

In 2006, I wrote in the journal Space Policy, “A space tourism industry appears to be about to take off. Businesses have announced plans to launch people into suborbital space for $200,000/person, with flights beginning as early as 2008…. Today’s space tourism model emphases the concept of luxury, and the lifestyle of hyper-consumption.” It took longer than predicted for space tourist flights to take off, but the model for space tourism hasn’t changed. Except for a handful of paying tourists who Russia flew to the International Space Station (for tens of millions of dollars), space tourism flights – by Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic – have only recently begun. And except for a few people flown for free for publicity purposes (e.g., William Shatner, Wally Funk), passengers on these tourist flights have been the ultra-rich. The cost of tourist flights ranges from hundreds of thousands of dollars for a suborbital flight (90 minutes) to tens of millions for an orbital flight. Tourist visits to the International Space Station cost in the tens of millions.

Near-Earth space is already cluttered with operating satellites, dead satellites, and a growing field of space debris. Plans to fill cislunar space with more public- and private-sector spacecraft promise to make outer space more crowded, and more dangerous. Beyond the licenses that launch companies must obtain (so far, all in the United States) to put their rockets into space, there is little (if any) regulation or oversight of space tourism.

In addition to space tourism, government-sponsored human space flight is picking up speed. NASA has its Artemis Moon-to-Mars program, with several other nations joining as partners. Notably absent as partners are China and Russia. China has created its own international partnership to establish a human presence on the Moon. Insufficient attention has been paid to the moral and ethical implications of extending human presence – again, for a privileged few – into space. Some advocates of human expansion into space claim we must do it because our home planet is dying. If Earth is dying, and a privileged few are able to leave our planet for life elsewhere, what happens to all the humans and other living creatures who are left behind?

Neoliberal values of private property rights, “free enterprise,” and unlimited growth are driving U.S. human space flight endeavors, whether they be public or private. This neoliberal ideology sustains the U.S. space policy goal of maintaining American dominance in space. And it marginalizes the rights of other nations, violating the terms of the 1967 United Nations Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (OST), which establishes that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all humankind; that outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all states; and that outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means (Billings, 2023).

Spacefaring nations have just begun to explore the potential habitability of other planetary bodies. A robotic Mars sample return mission is some years off, but at the same time NASA continues to advance plans for sending people to the surface of Mars. Once humans land on another planetary body, it will be contaminated with terrestrial biology – no matter how hard these human missions might work to comply with planetary protection requirements. It also should be noted that a single Mars sample return mission is unlikely to prove or disprove that Mars is or once was habitable.

In the United States, public opinion does not rank the human exploration of space – to the Moon, or Mars, or elsewhere – as a high priority for NASA. High priorities are preparing for planetary defense against asteroid impacts and studying climate change. Yet NASA continues to place its highest priority on human exploration. NASA officials claim that it is promoting the human exploration of space “for the benefit of humankind.” But it does not – perhaps cannot? – offer details of these benefits to humankind. The primary beneficiaries of human exploration are the aerospace companies involved in the enterprise.

So far, all signatories to the OST, including China and Russia, appear to be abiding by the terms of the treaty. But there is a growing awareness that the OST is not sufficient in and of itself to address concerns noted here. The exploitation of resources on other planetary bodies will require a regulatory regime. And if such a regime is established, it will likely favor corporate and government interests, not citizen interests and environmental protection. The record of enforcement of terrestrial resource exploitation of resources is not good. There is no good reason to expect a better record of compliance in outer space.

How laws and regulations will be enforced in outer space remains to be seen. Non-spacefaring nations have argued that access and rights to extraterrestrial resources should not be provided on a “first come, first served” basis. As to the alteration of extraterrestrial environments for human habitation – terraforming – this proposition is controversial. Should pristine extraterrestrial environments remain pristine? Or do humans have a right to explore and exploit them?

What legal, ethical and other value systems should govern human settlements and other activities in space? There has been some discussion in the space community about this question, but there is certainly no agreement. And, it should be noted, most if not all proposed systems are Western. Most of these systems focus on legal concerns. Ethics and values have received insufficient attention.

Sociologists Peter Dickens and James Ormrod (2007) have observed that, “To an increasing extent, capital is setting the pace, displacing governments and using outer space for commercial purposes” (p. 142). They wrote, “A powerful coalition of financiers, industrialists, states and pro-space activists is beginning to make outer space into an extension of Earthly society. This process seems destined to be made into a hegemonic project, a form of ‘common sense’ with investments into an infinite outer space supposedly bringing great benefits to the whole of society. Tragically, however, such a project also seems likely to make outer space in the image of the Earth itself, with all its power relations and consequent social injustices” (p. 176).

As I said in 2006, as spacefaring nations extend human presence into space, they can take with them values and habits that have not served people especially well on Earth. Or they can begin to consider what a spacefaring civilization might, could, or should look like in this new millennium. It is time for the global space community to initiate a broad public dialog about what sort of future in space all people want.

References

Billings, L. (2023). Neoliberalism: problematic. Neoliberal space policy? Extremely problematic, pp. 25-36 in James S.J. Schwartz, Linda Billings, and Erika Nesvold, Eds., Reclaiming Space: Progressive and Multicultural Visions of Space Exploration, Oxford University Press, 2023.

Billings, L. (2006). Exploration for the masses? Or joyrides for the ultra-rich? Prospects for space tourism. Space Policy 22 (162-164).

Dickens, P. and Ormrod, J.S. (2007). Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe. Routledge: London and New York.

More on UAP/UFOs

This month, the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense sent Congress a mandated annual report on their efforts to study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), more commonly referred to as UFOs (unidentified flying objects).

This report offers no big news. It documents the activities of DOD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). It states, “The assumptions inherent [are] that a wide range of factors can influence the observation and detection of UAP, observers convey their accurate recollection of their perception of the event, and that sensors generally operate correctly. However, AARO…recognize[s] that many reports are probably the result of sensor artifacts, equipment error, misidentification, or misperception.”

AARO says UAP reporting has increased across the U.S. government over the past year. According to the report, “The increase in reporting is, in part, due to deepening federal relationships and AARO’s ability to incorporate new reports into its adjudication and research process. UAP mission partners continue to coordinate, collaborate, and streamline processes. With these new reports, as of 30 April 2023, AARO has received a total of 801 UAP reports.”

So, again, there’s no big news in this report. I would like to note this passage from the report, documenting the ridiculously complicated effort to work on the UAP thing: “This report was drafted by AARO and ODNI’s [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s] National Intelligence Manager for Military Integration (NIM-MIL) and coordinated with the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security; the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs; the Office of the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs; the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters; the Office of the General Counsel of the DoD; the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs; ODNI’s NIM- Economic Security and Emerging Technology; ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center; ODNI’s National Intelligence Council; the Department of Energy; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); the National Security Agency; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency; the DoD Joint Staff; the National Ground Intelligence Center; the Missile and Space Intelligence Center; the Office of Naval Intelligence/National Maritime Intelligence Center; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL); the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC); the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Naval Criminal Investigative Service; the U.S. Army; the U.S. Navy (USN); the U.S. Marine Corps; the U.S. Air Force (USAF); and the U.S. Space Force (USSF).”

Good grief.

The report to Congress is unclassified and available online. If you’re interested in this subject, stay tuned to AARO’s “public-facing” web site.

IAWN and SMPAG: an update

At a meeting of the international Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) earlier this week, SMPAG chair Detlef Koschny provided an update on the status and activities of SMPAG. (I did not attend this meeting, this post is drawn from slide shows.)

SMPAG now has 18 member delegations, 7 observers, and a few more “in the pipeline,” he said.

Koschny also reported that the Italian space agency (ASI) is conducting a hypothetical asteroid impact exercise in three “sprints” – the first sprint is done.

Koschny reported that SMPAG has completed its work plan for criteria and thresholds for impact threat response actions. Meanwhile, work is ongoing on:

• A plan for SMPAG action in case of a credible threat.
• Mapping of threat scenarios to mission types.
• Mitigation mission types and technologies to be considered.
• Reference missions for different NEO threat scenarios.
• Consequences, including failure, of NEO mitigation space missions.

A SMPAG working document is available (on the SMPAG web site) on how to produce a “road map” for future work on planetary defense.

Kelly Fast of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office provided SMPAG with an update on the status and activities of the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN).  IAWN now has 53 signatories from over 25 countries. The newest signatories are the University of New South Wales, Australia; the University of Western Australia; the Klet Observatory, Czech Republic; JAXA, the Japanese space agency; the amateur observatory K19-PASTIS, France; the Virtual Telescope Project, Italy; the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Kazakhstan; the Kysuce Observatory G02, Slovakia; and the Mind’s Eye Observatory, United States.

As to IAWN activities, in early March of this year, Fast reported, a joint Romanian-Spanish observing team reported the discovery of an asteroid, designated 2023 DZ2, that would make a close approach to Earth – half the distance between Earth and the Moon – on March 25. Observers determined that 2023 DZ2 posed no risk of impact with Earth. But this close approach provided a good opportunity for IAWN members to conduct a rapid-response characterization campaign. The window for observing this close approach was March 20-27. Observers aimed to collect data on the size, shape, albedo, composition, and rotation period of 2023 DZ2. Over 40 observers from dozens of countries participated in the campaign and shared the data they collected. A paper on their observations will be forthcoming.

This may not be the most exciting blog post, but I think it’s important to note that planetary defense is a global endeavor and that national and international space agencies and asteroid observers around the world are all working on it. Some gaps in observing capability exist, primarily on the continent of Africa. But I know that IAWN is working to recruit African observers and observatories. (IAWN will be meeting later this month.) For what I think is the first time, the biennial Planetary Defense Conference, held in Vienna this year, hosted representatives from African nations. It’s a start.

Artemis and ethics: the workshop report

As I blogged about in April, I participated in a workshop organized by NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) to address ethical issues relating to NASA’s Artemis back-to-the-Moon plan. A report on the workshop has just been published.

The workshop had 55 participants. I may have been the only participant who thinks we should not be sending people to the Moon or Mars, or anywhere else beyond Earth orbit. (And I said so at the workshop.) IMHO, it’s unethical. As to NASA officials’ claims that the agency is sending people back to the Moon, and, presumably on to Mars, for the benefit of humankind, these officials have not provided evidence of how the human exploration of space benefits all of humankind. We asked NASA officials at the workshop, and we did not receive an answer. As I’ve said before, human exploration primarily benefits the aerospace industry.

A key question identified at the workshop was this: “How should NASA work to the “benefit of all [humankind],” which is part of its mandate under the original Space Act that created NASA? Who is included in that statement and how should they be involved? How can NASA know who benefits from Artemis?”

The report states, “As NASA plans and implements its Artemis and additional Moon to Mars activities, it will set precedents in spaceflight for decades to come. Including ethical and social considerations in Artemis planning will improve the likelihood that the future we create is one where humanity collectively wants to live.”

As I said at the workshop, NASA should have asked taxpayers about the ethics, the value, of sending people back to the Moon (and on to Mars) before it proceeded with this plan. But it didn’t. Public opinion surveys have shown that sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars is not a high priority for taxpayers. At least some people at NASA are considering how to proceed. But I don’t think they’re the people who are running the Artemis program.

Bhavya Lal was the head of NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy when this workshop was conceived and conducted. I know Lal. I know she was supportive of the effort. She’s left NASA, and has just been replaced by Charity Weeden, whom I don’t know. Lal is a scientist – and was head of President Biden’s NASA transition team. Weeden appears to be a technologist. Will OTPS, under Weeden, be supportive of, and seek funding for, participatory technology assessment? We’ll have to wait and see how this change in command shakes out at OTPS.

The workshop report notes, “A wide range of stakeholders have called for NASA to address ethical and societal issues, notable examples being the U.S. National Academies’ recent Planetary Science and Astrobiology decadal survey and the U.S. National Science and Technology Council’s cislunar strategy.”

Yes, indeed. This is good news. But, will government agencies – NASA, the Department of Defense, etc. – heed these directives? Governmental entities will need to engage with humanistic scholars and social scientists in order to do this work. As many participants at this workshop indicated, we’d like to be engaged in this work. But we can’t afford to work for free. I’m lucky to be adequately funded, by NASA grant, but this is not the case for everybody else, especially early-career scholars, who have the freshest ideas about how to move forward in space exploration.

More from the report:

• “How do we ensure that the values we bring to space are those we want as the basis of future exploration? The principles and goals that organizations use in their practices represent the values that are most likely to shape new engineered systems. It can be difficult to identify these values, especially those held by non-space actors.”
• “Defining sustainability on the Moon is a complex challenge, as sustainability discussions in a terrestrial context, with questions of balancing conservation against societal needs, do not necessarily apply. The workshop also cited environmental impacts of space activities (including launches) on Earth.”
•  “Participants identified cultural sensitivities surrounding payloads and activities on the Moon, which is viewed as sacred by many cultures worldwide.”
• “Cultural challenges toward engineering versus reflection. NASA and other space organizations have a culture that often prioritizes moving forward efficiently versus more careful reflection and public engagement. Getting space practitioners to focus on long-term societal impacts, versus narrower scientific or technical problems, requires an attempt at culture change.”

The report notes, “Many NASA staff lacked a framework to engage on these ethical issues, and some social science and humanities scholars lacked context for how decisions are made internally at NASA. A recommendation from some participants was to increase cross-pollination between the social scientists and NASA Headquarters personnel.” As I said above, we’re ready to engage, but not for free. I’d also say that the social scientists and humanistic scholars who participated in the workshop didn’t so much lack context for how decisions are made. We lack information, and therefore insight.