Project Vision 21

While we dedicate all our attention to new videos, all our concern to the "Likes," and all our anxiety to the results of our favorite team (in whatever sport it may be), the new space exploration seems dangerously to recreate the colonial and exploitative imperialism that has prevailed in the world for the past half-millennium.

For decades, experts in the field have warned that, beyond the undeniable scientific curiosity and the impressive advances in technoscience, the clear geopolitical ambitions of the countries participating in space exploration reveal the potential for a new era of exploitation and colonization, this time in space.

We are exporting beyond Earth the same behaviors and attitudes that have led humanity to its current precarious situation of constant conflicts on an increasingly degraded planet.

In this context, Dr. Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a philosopher specializing in science and religion at Wesleyan University, has repeatedly pointed out the undeniable parallels between the imperialism of the Modern Age (which, instead of ending, now seems to be moving beyond Earth's atmosphere) and the current tasks of space exploration.

In her book Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race, Rubenstein argues that, unlike what happened between the 15th and 19th centuries, the new imperialism uses "high forms of technology," previously unimaginable, framed in a kind of "quasi-religious" rhetoric with ideas like "cosmic destiny" or "salvation of humanity."

Moreover, there is mention of a long list of "natural resources" that could be "extracted" from asteroids, and there is talk of "colonizing" the Moon or Mars, creating a "new world" there.

If anyone doubts the existence of this rhetoric, it is enough to mention that numerous movies and TV series focus precisely on presenting and propagating this vision, which resembles more the conquest by force, commerce, or religion presented by Asimov in the Foundation trilogy than the almost utopian vision of Roddenberry's Star Trek.

Be that as it may, the recent (literally) launch of corporate space exploration, aside from leaving astronauts stranded in space or taking celebrities on joyrides, raises serious questions about sidelining science in favor of profits, disputes over rights and properties in space, and new forms of injustice and exploitation.

For his part, Dr. Bleddyn E. Bowen, an expert in international relations at the University of Leicester, asserts in his book Original Sin: Power, Technology, and War in Outer Space that the space race is based on an "astropolitics" whose essential element is "the military capability to have global influence," without regard for human beings.

Bowen argues that space has been a military domain since the beginning of the Space Age. He contends that the militarization of space is not a recent development, but has been an integral part of space activities since their inception after WWII.

Taking the imperialist and colonial mindset of modernity into space is merely transporting those ideas to a new location. But, as the end of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) says, "life never improves for those who merely change geography without changing their habits."