NASA’s
announcement of the crew of Artemis II, a mission to circle the moon in advance of a lunar landing, has sparked interest and excitement among people on Earth. The prospect of returning to the moon has burnished the space agency’s reputation and has created a new focus on the dreams of space entrepreneurs such as SpaceX’s
Elon Musk
and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos to colonize space and exploit its natural and energy resources for the benefit of all humankind.
However, the excitement is not universal. Vox
offers an interview
with Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of religion and science at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. The prospect of humankind spreading out across the solar system to gain its wealth “makes her want to throw up.”
HIS ONLY SON’S
BOX OFFICE BOOM IS A HOPEFUL SIGN FOR A NATION IN SPIRITUAL NEED
Rubenstein thinks the desire by many to expand human civilization into space is motivated by religion, a faith-based, 21st-century version of “manifest destiny.” For several reasons, many not clear or coherent, she thinks this is a bad thing.
Rubenstein’s main objection to humans mining the moon for resources or building colonies on Mars is she thinks other worlds have “rights,” much as human beings do. How inanimate matter can have rights is something that she does not coherently explain.
Rubenstein dwells a great deal on the European settlement of the Americas and the harm it wrought upon native people. When she is told that no native people exist anywhere in the solar system besides Earth, she has a strange answer. “For the Bawaka People, when people die, they’re actually carried up into the Milky Way alongside the stars. So they’re really concerned that if we mine there, we’re actually doing damage to the habitation of the ancestors. And planetary bodies are often said to be sacred or to be divinities themselves. So, from different perspectives, it’s not just a foregone conclusion that there is nothing out there.”
These beliefs may be sincere, but they are not supported by science or international law. It’s a strange argument to make for someone who has a serious problem with Christianity, which she thinks is imperative for expanding human civilization out to space.
Rubenstein thinks Christianity condemns people to suffer during life in hopes of a blissful afterlife. In fact, Christian believers strive to succor the poor and the sick. Organizations such as Mercy Ships, Catholic Charities, and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse are just a few examples of Christian charities that help alleviate suffering in this life.
Rubenstein also makes the false assertion that “Boca Chica, Texas, for example, has been absolutely destroyed” by the activities of SpaceX’s Starbase. In fact, SpaceX is engaged with the Federal Aviation Administration to take measures to preserve the wetlands of South Texas while performing launch operations.
She also raises the specter of fights over extraterrestrial resources between space-faring nations. Rubenstein seems not to have heard of the
Artemis Accords
, an effort to define the rules of space exploration and economic development, thus avoiding such conflict.
Capitalism, another thing Rubenstein has been scornful of, has been one of the greatest forces for good in human history.
As the Heritage Foundation points out
, capitalism has fostered prosperity, freedom, and equality. As it has been on Earth, so it will be in space.
The effort to expand human civilization to space is not being conducted at the expense of the poor and marginalized, as Rubenstein asserts, but for their benefit. Efforts to mine the moon for helium-3, which could be used as fuel for clean-burning fusion power plants, or creating solar power panels from lunar material for space-based solar power stations, would be solutions to the problem of climate change. Far from abandoning the Earth, the economic development of space will benefit our home planet in ways that are almost beyond evaluation.
Besides, if the West turns away from space, China, which cares little for human rights, not to speak of the rights of inanimate objects, will forge ahead. A Chinese-dominated space frontier is not a future that anyone should want.
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Mark Whittington, who frequently writes about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration titled
Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?
as well as
The Moon, Mars and Beyond
, and, most recently,
Why is America Going Back to the Moon?
He blogs at
Curmudgeons Corner.
