Environmental Geopolitics and Outer Space

ABSTRACT

The cultural, legal, budgetary, infrastructural, and logistical processes through which the contemporary space race unfolds have measurable environmental footprints on Earth and in outer space. The question of where these footprints fall is arbitrated by larger questions of geopolitical power and vulnerability, which means that human engagement with outer space is also a question of environmental justice. On Earth, environmental (in)justice unfolds on multiple scales: local and stratospheric emissions from space launches, the placement of outer space related infrastructure in so-called peripheral places, and the role of power in determining whether the use of such infrastructure aids socio-environmentally constructive or destructive practices. Beyond Earth, the environmental geopolitics are likewise multiscalar, manifesting in contemporary pollution issues such as orbital debris and conservation debates such as planetary protection protocols. The environmental geopolitics of Earth and outer space are inextricably linked by the spatial politics of privilege and the imposition of sacrifice – among people, places, and institutions. This paper explores the concept of outer space environments through classical, critical, environmental, and feminist geopolitical theories.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks three anonymous reviewers and the editors at Geopolitics for their in-depth engagement with this manuscript; to the participants at the Outer Space sessions at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in 2015 – 2018, to Danny Bednar, Rory Rowan, Casey Lynch, Julie Saperstein, Oliver Dunnett, Andrew Maclaren, and Kate Sammler for their comments on early versions of this article, and to Avery Hall for research assistance. Funding support for workshops and conference travel provided by the Boston University Career Development Professorship.

Notes

1. Outer space scholars have utilized the lenses of anthropology (Battaglia 2017; Messeri 2016; Olson 2018; Valentine 2012) the anthropocene (Bertoni 2016; Boes 2014; Latour 2015; Olson and Messeri 2015; Salazar 2017a), environmental humanities (Aronowsky 2017; Helmreich 2017; Messeri 2017; Praet and Salazar 2017; Salazar 2017b), the production of nature (Beery 2016b), science and technology studies (Gabrys 2016; Jasanoff 2004), and cultural landscape approaches to outer space (Gorman 2005).

2. This mirrors moves in other domains of feminist geopolitical inquiry to examine domestic violence and contemporary international warfare in relation to each other, challenging the “big”/”little” distinction as it plays out between “big” domains of warfare and “little” spaces of intimate partner violence (Pain 2014; Pain and Staeheli 2014).

3. There is some interest in developing Green propellants (Bombelli et al. 2003; Gohardani et al. 2014).

4. Environmental justice literature is replete with illustrative cases (Auyero and Swistun 2009; Brown et al. 2003; Bullard 1996). As for noise pollution, there is currently no standard environmental assessment methodology to evaluate the impact of launch vehicles and sites (Sizov 2017), despite abundant research on the social and environmental impacts of aircraft noise pollution on humans and other animals (Ellis, Ellis, and Mindell 1991; Richardson et al. 1995; Yankaskas 2013).

5. The Moon is approximately four hundred thousand kilometers away from Earth. Although it is also in Earth’s orbits, its influence on satellites and launch trajectories is less immediate than the material between lower Earth and Geostationary orbits.

6. For race and gender analyses of human engagement with outer space, see, inter alia: Bell and Parker (2009), Bryld and Lykke (2000), Dick and Launius (2007), Dickens and Ormrod (2016), Horner et al. (2015), Jennings and Baker (2000), Kilgore and Douglas (2003), Lathers (2012), Litfin (1997), Llinares (2011), Messeri (2017), McQuaid (2007), Penley (1997), Pesterfield (2016), Sage (2009), Shetterly (2016), Valentine (2012), and Weitekamp (2004).