Speaker 1: The year is nineteen seventy. Mario Eskimia had been working
Speaker 1: with Donald Lovitt, otherwise known as Porky, in the Arctic
Speaker 1: for over a month, and he was pretty fed up
Speaker 1: with Porky at this point. Porky had the bad habit
Speaker 1: of getting drunk and wielding butcher cleavers while stealing his
Speaker 1: crewmate's wine, clearly behavior that would be frowned upon in
Speaker 1: just about any culture. So this had happened yet again,
Speaker 1: and Eskima got all fired up and grabbed his rifle
Speaker 1: and went to confront Porky. Porky was indeed enjoying a
Speaker 1: cocktail with the stolen wine, and he was enjoying that
Speaker 1: cocktail with the station manager, a man named Benny Lightsey.
Speaker 1: Eskimia was arguing with Lightsee about what should be done
Speaker 1: about the whole Porky situation when his rifle accidentally went.
Speaker 2: Off, killing Lights.
Speaker 1: This actually ended up becoming a fairly famous case in
Speaker 1: the world of law because it provided some precedent for
Speaker 1: what happens when you're outside of the jurisdiction of other nations.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you're on a mobile piece of
Speaker 1: ice in the Arctic Ocean what court do you get
Speaker 1: tried in? And who decides what happens? Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: it was fairly straightforward because both men were United States citizens,
Speaker 1: so the case was tried in the US and Eskimia
Speaker 1: was ultimately acquitted. What happens if you have a Martian
Speaker 1: settlement and Mario Eskimia is from the United States, for example,
Speaker 1: and Benny Lightsey is from Russia for example?
Speaker 2: What happens on Mars?
Speaker 1: Who oversees the court case, who decides what the punishment
Speaker 1: should be, and what punishment is fair in a harsh
Speaker 1: environment millions of miles from the home planet. Well to
Speaker 1: answer some of these questions today, we're talking to doctor
Speaker 1: Erica Nesvold. Her book Off Earth tackles questions about law,
Speaker 1: social justice, and ethics in space.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Daniel and kelly Is Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm excited
Speaker 3: for other people to go into space. And welcome to
Speaker 3: the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I'm a parasitologist, and I think
Speaker 1: it would be great for other people to settle space,
Speaker 1: depending on how it gets done, I have qualifications.
Speaker 3: And so on today's episode, we're going to be digging
Speaker 3: into the details of what questions we have to ask
Speaker 3: before we settle space and how we handle it once
Speaker 3: we get there, including tricky questions like who gets to
Speaker 3: make space law on what happens when you break it,
Speaker 3: which makes me wonder, Kelly. Down here on Earth, people
Speaker 3: are always breaking laws, you know, jaywalking or parking illegally
Speaker 3: or whatever. So my questioning to you today is, what
Speaker 3: is the most serious law you've ever broken?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Wow, on air here, not under oath, but on air.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Well, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: those things are the same. I have to be honest.
Speaker 1: I think that the most trouble I almost got in
Speaker 1: it was Thanksgiving and my three year old had been
Speaker 1: screaming in the car on the ride home from Ohio
Speaker 1: in the slushy snow rain combo for like hours, like
Speaker 1: literally hours, and I went from a sixty five to
Speaker 1: a forty five zone and I didn't realize I had
Speaker 1: gone from a sixty five to a forty five zone.
Speaker 1: I didn't see the forty five sign because I had
Speaker 1: no brain lift at that point. And if you go
Speaker 1: over twenty then you get your license taken away.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So the police officer he walked up to the car
Speaker 1: and he heard the screaming and he went.
Speaker 2: Oh, like, maybe he's also a parent.
Speaker 1: And all I know is that the ticket said I
Speaker 1: had gone nineteen over oh, which meant I got to
Speaker 1: keep my license. And I was more care about driving
Speaker 1: when my kiddo was screaming after that. So basically I
Speaker 1: am a whimp and I have not done too many dangerous, scary,
Speaker 1: illegal things in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: But what about you? Okay, of course it's going to
Speaker 2: be your turn now, No.
Speaker 3: I need to fall up on your story. Does that
Speaker 3: mean that you can commit any felony you want? But
Speaker 3: if there's a screaming baby, they'll downgrade it to a misdemeanor.
Speaker 3: They're like murder one, No, but her kid was crying,
Speaker 3: so we'll just call it manslaughter.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't done the appropriate experimental like design
Speaker 1: to test that hypothesis. I mean I can imagine it
Speaker 1: going the other way. Sometimes baby screaming just make people angry.
Speaker 1: I could imagine, you know, somebody being like, no, I
Speaker 1: want to write you a ticket for an extra five
Speaker 1: miles an hour. Because I'm just not happy it's hearing
Speaker 1: this baby screaming. So I wouldn't want to risk it.
Speaker 3: But what do you think, Well, I've planned on that. Actually,
Speaker 3: maybe the greatest crime I've committed that I haven't been
Speaker 3: caught for is importing illegal cheeses. You know, we used
Speaker 3: to go back and forth discern all the time when
Speaker 3: our kids were young, and we would come back from
Speaker 3: friends and they'd be our favorite cheeses and we'd want
Speaker 3: to have them, and so we've packed them in our
Speaker 3: suitcase even though they're illegal to import. And our plan
Speaker 3: was always if we get searched, you know, just rely
Speaker 3: on our toddlers to cry and scream and to get
Speaker 3: us out of it. So I'm glad to hear that
Speaker 3: works sometimes. That's great what I forgot.
Speaker 2: I also committed dairy related crime.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I was in Norway during the butter shortage that happened
Speaker 1: a while ago. It was like some import roles and
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough butter, and so me and the folks
Speaker 1: that I was working with, we snuck across the border
Speaker 1: to Sweden and bought a bunch of butter and smuggled
Speaker 1: it back across for our dinner. I also have engaged
Speaker 1: in dairy related crimes.
Speaker 3: I did not realize today's podcast was going to be
Speaker 3: about international dairy smuggling, but there we go.
Speaker 2: There you go. It may or may not come up again,
Speaker 2: or maybe that was just.
Speaker 3: Us And maybe in the future of folks in space
Speaker 3: settlements are going to be smuggling cheeses and butters from
Speaker 3: one habitat to another.
Speaker 1: Those are going to be some stinky cheeses if you're
Speaker 1: taking them from Earth and they've got a six month
Speaker 1: transit though, but some people are into that. But these
Speaker 1: are some sort of complicated situations. If somebody is committing
Speaker 1: crimes on Mars, what's the right court for that to
Speaker 1: be tried in? And what happens if you have people
Speaker 1: from different countries even now, like it's complicated when you
Speaker 1: have people committing crimes against one another and they're from
Speaker 1: different countries, especially if they're in a place like Antarctica
Speaker 1: that's supposed to, you know, belong to no nation. But
Speaker 1: that's just the tip of the ethical iceberg for stuff
Speaker 1: that needs to get dealt with. And so today we've
Speaker 1: got this amazing guest who can talk about loads of
Speaker 1: different ethical problems associated with why we go to space,
Speaker 1: how many people we send to space.
Speaker 2: There's just a lot to think about.
Speaker 3: That's right, and so these are really fun questions that
Speaker 3: we do need to think about before we build out
Speaker 3: humanity's future into space. But before we hear from an
Speaker 3: expert who's thought a lot about this and written an
Speaker 3: excellent book on the topic. We were curious what tricky topics
Speaker 3: the person on the street anticipated we might run into
Speaker 3: when we decide to settle space.
Speaker 4: I think the ethical problems of all the bodies were
Speaker 4: going to harm exposing to space environments. I think probably
Speaker 4: the ethics of international law are going to be really bad.
Speaker 4: They're already bad on the oceans. So space is just
Speaker 4: space ocean, but worse. I mean, there's just the ongoing
Speaker 4: problem which is not new to space, but space worse
Speaker 4: where we take actions that have huge implications for like
Speaker 4: way later human generations, you know, and we're not always
Speaker 4: doing right by people to generations down the road, much
Speaker 4: less one hundred.
Speaker 2: Generations down the road.
Speaker 4: And so I would really hope that we're thinking at
Speaker 4: least one hundred gen down the road when we do
Speaker 4: space stuff.
Speaker 3: The allocation of resources, who do.
Speaker 5: You say first, if there's a disaster, be it like
Speaker 5: during Space Traveler, once you actually land on the planet
Speaker 5: they're aiming for, Like, do you prioritize your engineers and
Speaker 5: scientists to people who can actually pet things running?
Speaker 6: Do you protire to your children the women who you
Speaker 6: plan to have children with, you know? Do you just
Speaker 6: draw straws and help for the best? Another one, what
Speaker 6: do you do if you run into any indigenous people
Speaker 6: you get there? And also when do people become what
Speaker 6: we consider indigenous?
Speaker 5: You know, like if somebody landed on the planet fifty
Speaker 5: or one hundred years before, did they have a bare
Speaker 5: claim despite whatever government have decleared on the way there?
Speaker 7: The value of.
Speaker 6: Human lives and the cost benefits out of exploring space.
Speaker 7: One I think has to do with economic class, and
Speaker 7: I think the disparity between poor and rich, for example,
Speaker 7: would be even greater than it is based on decisions
Speaker 7: of who gets to settle in these new colonies. Would
Speaker 7: it be considered a consequence in sending the poor out
Speaker 7: there or would it be considered a benefit and the
Speaker 7: rich would go out there? Either way, I think would
Speaker 7: disparity would be great and huge. I also think it
Speaker 7: would cause political tensions as well between countries over who
Speaker 7: gets to colonize these new areas in space.
Speaker 3: So, Kelly, who did you ask these questions of?
Speaker 1: I asked these questions of friends of mine on Facebook?
Speaker 1: I asked who wants to answer some anonymous questions for me?
Speaker 1: And then I texted them the question and they left
Speaker 1: me a voicemail with the answer.
Speaker 3: Definitely a scientific sample for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these are all Kelly's social network answers. None
Speaker 1: of them cited my book though, so they can't be
Speaker 1: that quote. But no, no, no, I thought these were
Speaker 1: all great and interesting answers.
Speaker 2: What did you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think these are pretty well informed. They would
Speaker 3: be better informed if they'd read your excellent book, of course,
Speaker 3: but they give us a good preview for what kind
Speaker 3: of things people are thinking about, what kind of tricky
Speaker 3: questions there are when humanity decides to move into the stars.
Speaker 1: And if you would like us to expand out past
Speaker 1: Kelly's social network, please feel free to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us at questions at danielant Kelly dot org.
Speaker 3: We'll send you the questions for future episodes, and you
Speaker 3: can hear your voice on the We.
Speaker 1: Would love to have your voice featured on the show.
Speaker 1: All right, so, without further ado, show, we invite Erica
Speaker 1: onto the show.
Speaker 3: Let's do it all right, here we go.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Erica Nesvold. She is
Speaker 1: an astrophysicist and a developer for Universe Sandbox, which she
Speaker 1: calls astronomy educational software masquerading as a video game I'm in.
Speaker 5: She made a.
Speaker 1: Podcast called Making New Worlds where she interviewed a bunch
Speaker 1: of experts from a variety of different backgrounds about questions
Speaker 1: related to ethics and justice in space, and expanded those
Speaker 1: conversations into a book called Off Earth Ethical Questions and
Speaker 1: Quandaries for Living in Outer Space. She also, because apparently
Speaker 1: she can do everything, co founded a nonprofit called the
Speaker 1: Just Space Alliance, which advocates for a more inclusive and
Speaker 1: ethical future in space while also striving to make the
Speaker 1: world more just and equitable back here on Earth today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being on.
Speaker 8: The show, Erica, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It's good to be chatting with you again. We've met
Speaker 1: irl once, which was super fun. It was fun, Yes,
Speaker 1: talking about how people should maybe take birth in space
Speaker 1: a little bit more seriously, or that was the part
Speaker 1: that I remembered most strongly.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's start with ethics around going to space
Speaker 1: at all. So when I was getting involved in this literature,
Speaker 1: I found a lot of arguments that weren't super convincing.
Speaker 1: So let's start with some of the arguments that you
Speaker 1: think are least convincing, and then work our way up
Speaker 1: to the argument that you think is the most convincing
Speaker 1: for why we should be settling space.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean this is sort of where I got
Speaker 8: into these questions in the first place. I always been
Speaker 8: a big fan of space and even a big fan
Speaker 8: of human space expiation and settlement, and so I've been
Speaker 8: sort of steeped in these space settlement advocacy rhetoric since
Speaker 8: I was a kid. And then I started really digging
Speaker 8: into it and thinking about whether I agree with all
Speaker 8: of these arguments, and I started off my book really
Speaker 8: digging into them because they come in a few different flavors.
Speaker 8: There's the people who say that we need to go
Speaker 8: to space so that we don't have all of our
Speaker 8: eggs in one back. We need to become a multiplanetary
Speaker 8: species because our planet where we all live is potentially
Speaker 8: a weak point. It's fragile. We've seen species get wiped
Speaker 8: out here before through the dinosaurs and various different climate changes,
Speaker 8: and we're more and more aware all the time of
Speaker 8: all of the different things that could kill off all
Speaker 8: the humans, most of which rely on the humans being
Speaker 8: all in the same place. So if we go to
Speaker 8: different planets and spread out, then we've got to backup
Speaker 8: if Earth's biosphere collapses. And to me, I find that
Speaker 8: one to be the most convincing argument. Unfortunately, it's also
Speaker 8: a very powerful emotional argument, because then if you have
Speaker 8: any sort of pushback against either space settlement as a
Speaker 8: whole or specific parts of space settlement, or if you
Speaker 8: just say, for example, maybe we should slow down space
Speaker 8: settlement and think about what we're doing here, the opposition
Speaker 8: to that tends to be, oh, do you want all
Speaker 8: humans to die?
Speaker 5: Then?
Speaker 8: So that sort of false dichotomy where your criticisms are
Speaker 8: on one side and on the other side is the
Speaker 8: extinction of the human race. It makes it hard to
Speaker 8: have reasonable conversations. But then beyond that, there's some more
Speaker 8: interesting and also very emotional arguments. People who argue that
Speaker 8: we have to expand always and continuously without stopping, because
Speaker 8: otherwise our culture or our scientific knowledge. If we stop growing,
Speaker 8: that collapses, We stagnate, we stop knowing how to invent
Speaker 8: new things, we stop knowing how to do art. And
Speaker 8: that's the problem with pop music these days, is not
Speaker 8: enough expansion. And not only is this just a very
Speaker 8: common and often recycled argument you hear between generations a
Speaker 8: lot about what's wrong with the kids these days, but
Speaker 8: this is also the kind of argument that you've seen
Speaker 8: throughout history, especially in the US. There's an argument that
Speaker 8: once the frontier of European settlement reached the west coast
Speaker 8: of the US and the frontier in a way, that
Speaker 8: America somehow became less of itself because our culture had
Speaker 8: been built on having a frontier, and so we have
Speaker 8: to find this new frontier out in space. I don't
Speaker 8: find that one particularly convincing for a number of reasons.
Speaker 8: I also think that the idea that we need to
Speaker 8: always expand continuously or something bad will happen leads us
Speaker 8: to making bad decisions, trying to grow too fast, trying
Speaker 8: to consume too fast, and that we should in fact
Speaker 8: be learning how to balance how to live sustainably with
Speaker 8: our environment. And there's plenty of cultures who are more
Speaker 8: focused on that, So maybe we should amplify their voices.
Speaker 3: You don't think we need space cowboys to stay who
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 8: I mean, I don't have a problem with the esthetic.
Speaker 3: Space cowboy rhinestones on the spaceship kind of thing.
Speaker 8: Listen, you're just selling on it. The more you talk
Speaker 8: about What.
Speaker 1: I love about those arguments, though, is that the people
Speaker 1: who are making those stagnation arguments, and I'll just go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that I do have Rubbert Zubert in
Speaker 1: mind right now, are also the ones who are like, well,
Speaker 1: now is the time because SpaceX is dropping the cost
Speaker 1: of launching the space and it's like all of this
Speaker 1: amazing technological growth, and like how AI is helping us?
Speaker 1: Is what's getting us there? And so where is the
Speaker 1: stagnation that they're talking about anyway?
Speaker 8: Okay, no, no, that's fair. I mean the problem here,
Speaker 8: and the problem with a lot of these arguments is
Speaker 8: even if you have people off living on the space
Speaker 8: frontier somewhere, there's still more some of us are going
Speaker 8: to be living on Earth needing to learn how to
Speaker 8: live sustainably with the Earth. So we have to figure
Speaker 8: out that part anyway. So then another big one that
Speaker 8: you see a lot, especially and really strong space settlement
Speaker 8: advocates is the idea that it's our destiny, that it's
Speaker 8: not just fulfilling our biological or psychological or whatever drive
Speaker 8: to go out and explore and expand, but it's somehow inevitable,
Speaker 8: and if we try to stop ourselves, we're working against nature.
Speaker 8: This is a to me, a much less strong argument.
Speaker 8: Tends to go with very poetic language, so it's appealing,
Speaker 8: you know, emotionally in that sense, and you hear this
Speaker 8: the most and the more flowery marketing talk. But I
Speaker 8: don't think it's a good rational argument. And often when
Speaker 8: I'm talking to space settlement advocates, I try to point
Speaker 8: that out to them. I'm like, listen, you've got a
Speaker 8: great little, you know, video that you've put together with
Speaker 8: stirring music and images of space vistas and talk about
Speaker 8: how it's humanity's destiny. But that's actually not the best
Speaker 8: way to sell it to people who aren't sure. You
Speaker 8: need to explain how space settlement's going to benefit everyone,
Speaker 8: including the people back on Earth, and you can't use
Speaker 8: this sort of argument from nature, because even if it
Speaker 8: were true that we have some sort of innate drive
Speaker 8: to expand and explore, which, as far as I understand,
Speaker 8: the science is still out on that. We don't just
Speaker 8: do things because our genetics tell us to like you
Speaker 8: and so have evolved past that and we have to
Speaker 8: think about our decisions instead of just saying, oh, well,
Speaker 8: you know, it's our innate drive, so we don't need
Speaker 8: to examine this plane at all.
Speaker 3: Well, can I jump in and speak up for that
Speaker 3: irrational motivation because that's the one that resonates the most
Speaker 3: with me, and rational or not, Like, I want to
Speaker 3: know what's out there in the universe. I want us
Speaker 3: to explore the edges of the galaxy. I want us
Speaker 3: to figure out how to go from galaxy to galaxy.
Speaker 3: And it seems to me like step one of that
Speaker 3: dream is to go from planet to planet, right, And
Speaker 3: so my desire doesn't come from like a genetic disposition
Speaker 3: to conquer every square inch of land on every surface,
Speaker 3: but just to know how the universe works, Like I
Speaker 3: feel like it would be a shame for us to
Speaker 3: be trapped on this rock for ever, and I don't
Speaker 3: know how it's going to happen, but eventually has to
Speaker 3: happen if we're going to figure stuff out. Maybe that's irrational,
Speaker 3: but can't irrational motivations drive our decision sometimes? I mean,
Speaker 3: my whole research program is probably useless and impractical and
Speaker 3: therefore irrational. Does that mean that we shouldn't do art
Speaker 3: and culture and stuff like that?
Speaker 8: To be honest, I have the exact same drive. I
Speaker 8: also would love to be out there and want us
Speaker 8: to be exploring and want us to poke around and
Speaker 8: see what's going on, And that certainly motivates me as
Speaker 8: a scientist. And there's nothing wrong with emotional motivations. Let
Speaker 8: me say it that way instead of irrational. The key here,
Speaker 8: I think is not to try to use an emotional
Speaker 8: argument as if it's a rational argument, I think. And
Speaker 8: the other key I think is it's important to identify
Speaker 8: when there's multiple motivations going on, especially if your individual
Speaker 8: motivation is maybe different from the organization's argument that they're
Speaker 8: poting forward. I think a lot of people are very
Speaker 8: driven by these emotional feelings that they want to be
Speaker 8: out there, they want to see humanity out there, and
Speaker 8: then they go off and try to cook up a
Speaker 8: good marketing case for it that doesn't acknowledge that they're
Speaker 8: being driven emotionally, I think we need both.
Speaker 3: And let me be clear, I don't want to be
Speaker 3: out there. I want humanity to be out there, but
Speaker 3: I'm staying here on Earth like I'm a total wimp.
Speaker 3: There's no way you're getting me in the spaceship.
Speaker 8: And the other important thing, like I'm not trying to
Speaker 8: say some arguments count and some don't. I think it's
Speaker 8: just really important to figure out what your motivations are,
Speaker 8: not just because then you can decide, like the binary
Speaker 8: yes or no, should you do this? But our motivations
Speaker 8: will drive our decision making in every aspect of our planning,
Speaker 8: and so it's important to be very self aware of
Speaker 8: that and aware of the people that you're working with
Speaker 8: so that you don't end up having an obstacle in
Speaker 8: your decision making because you didn't realize one of you
Speaker 8: is trying to make a trillion dollars from space mining
Speaker 8: and the other one just wants to retire in space.
Speaker 8: That's going to lead to some different decision making.
Speaker 3: Well, I think most people probably feel like space exploration
Speaker 3: is overall good, and maybe there's different motivations. And I
Speaker 3: totally agree with you that we should be upfront about
Speaker 3: what they are, But I feel like the context for
Speaker 3: understanding which these arguments are good or bad or where
Speaker 3: they come from is that there are arguments on the
Speaker 3: other side, right, that there are reasons to not just
Speaker 3: rush headlong into space exploration. And that might come as
Speaker 3: a surprise to some folks, Like what's an argument for
Speaker 3: not settling space? What's an example of a reason why
Speaker 3: we should not be building colonies on Mars Organmede.
Speaker 8: That's a very important question, and I actually think that
Speaker 8: all of these arguments for space have their opposite argument.
Speaker 8: So one argument for space settlement of space expression that
Speaker 8: I didn't list is just that we could make money
Speaker 8: doing it. But it also costs an enormous amount of
Speaker 8: money to do any of these projects, especially the ones
Speaker 8: that are being proposed for the future. And so you know,
Speaker 8: from a very pragmatic financial perspective, we can say, as
Speaker 8: a species, as humanity, or as individual investors, is it
Speaker 8: worth the huge amount of time and money that we
Speaker 8: need to invest. Will we get that back or will
Speaker 8: we just kind of be pouring it down the drain
Speaker 8: and then a few rockets will explode in the industry
Speaker 8: will collapse. That's a decision.
Speaker 3: Should we be building more elementary schools or funding space explorations.
Speaker 8: Yeah, is there something else we could be putting that
Speaker 8: money and brain power into on Earth that would help
Speaker 8: better ensure that humanity is going to survive, better ensure
Speaker 8: that people on Earth will have better lives.
Speaker 3: More parasitology grants, for example, exactly.
Speaker 8: The most important.
Speaker 2: That's right. I'm glad we all agree.
Speaker 8: And on the existential risk idea, the idea that if
Speaker 8: we don't escape the planet, then our species risks being
Speaker 8: killed off, has its reverse argument as well. There are
Speaker 8: people Daniel Dudney is one of them. If he wrote
Speaker 8: a book called Dark Skies in the past few years
Speaker 8: who argues that trying to settle space will increase the
Speaker 8: risk that we will kill ourselves off. Because he makes
Speaker 8: this political science argument that more activity in space will
Speaker 8: mean more nations arguing with each other about what's happening
Speaker 8: in space, and more weapons in space, potentially weapons of
Speaker 8: mass destruction. We could destabilize the global balance and end
Speaker 8: up in a nuclear war that would kill us off
Speaker 8: because we tried to leave the Earth, and so there
Speaker 8: are risks. There are risks that going to space could
Speaker 8: lead to nuclear war. There's also just risks that the
Speaker 8: opportunity cost, we could be spending that money elsewhere. There's
Speaker 8: risks that if we do it too fast without deliberate thought,
Speaker 8: that will just make a mess of things, and that
Speaker 8: maybe it would be better for everyone in space and
Speaker 8: on Earth if we took it a little slower. And
Speaker 8: so I've heard all these arguments, and I think it's
Speaker 8: really important. Even if you're someone like me who thinks
Speaker 8: I'm pro space settlement, I think it's it's important to
Speaker 8: listen to all these arguments, including the people who say no,
Speaker 8: we're not ready to go to space, because they tend
Speaker 8: to have the best and most observant criticisms of the plans,
Speaker 8: so they can poke holes in your big plans, which
Speaker 8: is important.
Speaker 3: Well, that makes sense as much as I'm, for example,
Speaker 3: an advocate of exploring the universe and potentially meeting aliens.
Speaker 3: Is also the risk that if you advertise your location
Speaker 3: to meet aliens, they're like, oh, why don't we come
Speaker 3: and kill you and eat you or nuq from orbit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, absolutely there are risks.
Speaker 8: There well, and even scientists. I'm a scientist too, I'm
Speaker 8: motivated by no and stuff. But we have plenty of history,
Speaker 8: especially in non astronomy fields of examples where learning stuff
Speaker 8: and being able to build new stuff led us to
Speaker 8: cause a lot of harm from the discoveries and the
Speaker 8: technologies made, which to me isn't an argument to not
Speaker 8: do science, but it's an argument to think about all
Speaker 8: the ethics and human rights stuff at the same time
Speaker 8: that we're doing the science and technology.
Speaker 1: The rockets that took us to the Moon are the
Speaker 1: same rockets that we're being dropped on England during World
Speaker 1: War two and are puplicated historically exactly.
Speaker 3: So we're not saying, hey, space is bad, our exploration
Speaker 3: is bad. We're saying there's nuance here. We should understand
Speaker 3: the motivation of our arguments. We should acknowledge that there
Speaker 3: are two sides of this, and we should proceed carefully
Speaker 3: rather than just rushing headlong into it and launching stuff
Speaker 3: because we can.
Speaker 8: That is my arch Other arguments exist.
Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable to assume that probably this stuff
Speaker 1: is going to move forward at some point no matter
Speaker 1: what the argument is. Right now, most of the people
Speaker 1: who have been to space are highly trained, highly fit
Speaker 1: astronauts which were picked by governments or super rich people,
Speaker 1: or the people picked by super rich people as space
Speaker 1: tourism kind of opens up. Right now, the sieve seems
Speaker 1: to be like money or being you know, cream of
Speaker 1: the crop intellectual, physical, But presumably settlements at some point
Speaker 1: are going to be just the rest of us, people
Speaker 1: like me who would never get it, who could never
Speaker 1: afford it, and could never like get picked by NASA.
Speaker 1: So when that stage comes, what are the important things
Speaker 1: that we need to think about for who is going
Speaker 1: to be there in the first settlement and how we
Speaker 1: pick these people?
Speaker 2: And it sounds complicated.
Speaker 8: Yeah, deciding who even gets to go to space is
Speaker 8: a problem we do with now. As you said, the
Speaker 8: increase in private spaceflight really felt like a huge opening
Speaker 8: of the field because suddenly you just have to be
Speaker 8: a fit military test pilot or picked by NASA. Now
Speaker 8: we have this whole other set of people who get
Speaker 8: to go to space, who don't necessarily need to meet
Speaker 8: the fitness requirements. But this new pool not necessarily that
Speaker 8: big either, as you point out, it's still pretty limited,
Speaker 8: and we can think about how we'd want to keep
Speaker 8: expanding that, and we can think about, well, so the
Speaker 8: people we've picked so far have been for specific purposes.
Speaker 8: NASA is trying to accomplish certain missions, mostly science exploration,
Speaker 8: technology testing. They pick people who can do that. The
Speaker 8: private space flight people have their own motivations. In this stage,
Speaker 8: it seems to be just raw raw space exploration is good.
Speaker 8: Let's send the first whatever person to space on private
Speaker 8: space flight. That's great. But if we were going to
Speaker 8: build a space settlement that we wanted it to last,
Speaker 8: then that leads to bigger questions. That's much different than
Speaker 8: what NASA is trying to do, and so we have
Speaker 8: to ask questions like, maybe we don't need the strict
Speaker 8: physical and medical requirements because people are going to age
Speaker 8: and get sick and injured in space, so we'll have
Speaker 8: to deal with that anyway. Maybe we need to think
Speaker 8: about reproductive fitness if we want to have reproduction in
Speaker 8: space and perpetuated space colony with multiple generations. But then
Speaker 8: asking prospective space settlers about their fertility and their interest
Speaker 8: in having children. That goes against a lot of our
Speaker 8: ethics and our arguments for inclusivity today, and that leads
Speaker 8: to a lot of murky questions as well. And then
Speaker 8: there's just who do you pick? Do you pick a
Speaker 8: bunch of astrophysicists I'm in a fan of that plant,
Speaker 8: but I also would like to be living on Mars
Speaker 8: with maybe some dentists and plumbers and teachers for the
Speaker 8: kids and artists as well. And so all of these
Speaker 8: questions get us back to questions about, well, what kind
Speaker 8: of person do we actually value in society which has
Speaker 8: this dark other side of what kind of person don't
Speaker 8: revalue in society? And do we want to intentionally exclude them?
Speaker 8: What kind of a were creating a dystopia here? Accidentally?
Speaker 8: There's tons of questions like that.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting how this stuff is decided. I feel
Speaker 3: like a lot of times in brand new technologies, we
Speaker 3: have decisions being made mostly government right funding agencies because
Speaker 3: there isn't initially a commercial return, but eventually things get
Speaker 3: picked up by private industry, and then decisions are being
Speaker 3: made basically because of capitalism. Right, So where do you
Speaker 3: think we are there and how should we be making
Speaker 3: these decisions? Should we let capitalism decide basically who gets
Speaker 3: to go live on Mars? Or should we have like
Speaker 3: you know, table of experts and government advisors figuring this
Speaker 3: stuff out for the benefit of society as a whole.
Speaker 3: Would it happen if it's led by the government, like,
Speaker 3: at some point it needs to become capitalism driven, I
Speaker 3: feel like, but I don't really know anything about it.
Speaker 3: Tell me what's your thoughts about that transition for space settlement.
Speaker 8: There's definitely a lot of arguments right now that capitalism
Speaker 8: is the only way to get us into space because
Speaker 8: you need that sort of incentive to innovate and to
Speaker 8: take risks, and government didn't have it, which is why
Speaker 8: we're not all living in space right now, so capitalism
Speaker 8: is the way to do it. I think that those
Speaker 8: arguments are so popular right now because capitalism is what's
Speaker 8: driving current space exploration, along with the existing government. They
Speaker 8: haven't gone away, but I'm not convinced that they're going
Speaker 8: to finish the job. I'm not convinced that capitalism is
Speaker 8: going to be what gets us into space. And I
Speaker 8: think it's possible that generations from now, what finally gets
Speaker 8: us a permanent space settlement is going to be some
Speaker 8: other political and economic system, and by then they'll be saying, well,
Speaker 8: you know, communism is the only way we could have
Speaker 8: done this, and this is why we need a tyrannical government.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: They could have their own argument for why their system
Speaker 8: is perfect. And the interesting thing is that each of
Speaker 8: these systems is going to come up with a different
Speaker 8: way to pick who gets to go live in space.
Speaker 8: So for now, maybe it's well, whoever can pay, whoever
Speaker 8: can pay for a ticket on a SpaceX passenger starliner
Speaker 8: to Mars gets to go. We don't care whether their
Speaker 8: dentists or not. We don't care that maybe it'll be
Speaker 8: a bunch of particularly wealthy people and none of them
Speaker 8: know how to farm, for example, and that could lead
Speaker 8: to its own troubles. This is the sort of thing
Speaker 8: we've seen historically happen on Earth. If you had a
Speaker 8: bunch of rich colonists and nobody who knows how to
Speaker 8: do the work. That causes a lot of problems, or
Speaker 8: it could end up we swing back towards some sort
Speaker 8: of international government efforts, and they take a long time
Speaker 8: to decide who to send, and they have a lot
Speaker 8: of arguments and committees about it, and they try to
Speaker 8: balance everything fairly. And there's other risks with that as well,
Speaker 8: and including the fact that maybe that goes slower than
Speaker 8: doing it in a capitalist way. So notice here that
Speaker 8: I'm not saying here's the correct way for it. I'm
Speaker 8: saying this is another example of how your motivation will
Speaker 8: drive the choices that you make. It could come down to,
Speaker 8: we've developed all the technology, but haven't invested in a
Speaker 8: space settlement yet. But now the asteroid's coming and we
Speaker 8: have to evacuate some amount of people to perpetuate the
Speaker 8: human species. And then you have all sorts of what
Speaker 8: we call lifeboat ethics Titanic level, like the ship disaster
Speaker 8: Titanic level, with decisions about who we put on the
Speaker 8: lifeboat and what's fair, who do we save, how do
Speaker 8: we make sure that it's enough dentists, whatnot, and so
Speaker 8: that would cause a whole different set of decisions.
Speaker 3: I love the dentists are your standard like pretty use
Speaker 3: but not very exciting kind of categories.
Speaker 8: It's really important to me. The dentists are in space.
Speaker 3: We love you dentists. It's important. But I want to
Speaker 3: follow up on the historical comments you made about what
Speaker 3: we've learned, Like clearly we've done this kind of stuff
Speaker 3: in the past. You know, we gave away land to
Speaker 3: people to encourage them to move west, or we stole
Speaker 3: land and then gave it to people, and even further back,
Speaker 3: kings and queens funded expeditions to the New World because
Speaker 3: they thought there were returns there. What have we learned
Speaker 3: from our many mistakes and successes in the past.
Speaker 8: Some of us have learned from over stays is the
Speaker 8: key I think the benefit we have in thinking about
Speaker 8: expanding human civilization into space. We have all these case
Speaker 8: studies to look at lessons learned over the history of
Speaker 8: the human species, and the benefit we have is that
Speaker 8: we have all of human history to learn from. So
Speaker 8: to me, it's a waste when we don't do that.
Speaker 8: And at the moment, I can say from experience that scientists,
Speaker 8: at least in the US, don't get a lot of
Speaker 8: education in history beyond you know, basic grade school level.
Speaker 8: We tend to just beyond it and think it's irrelevant.
Speaker 8: But now we're trying to, you know, reinvent colonial sized societies,
Speaker 8: and without having a reference, we're just going to repeat
Speaker 8: all the same mistakes. That's my concern, and this is
Speaker 8: part of what got me going with the podcast I created.
Speaker 8: I decided maybe I should talk to actual colonial historians
Speaker 8: and ask them their thoughts, and you know, I should
Speaker 8: read up because as an American, this is mostly the
Speaker 8: colonial history that I think about. So there's examples in
Speaker 8: the colonization of North America, places like Jamestown, which is
Speaker 8: a colony that failed a bunch before it finally stuck.
Speaker 8: And the historians I read this, a lot went wrong
Speaker 8: with Jamestown. One of the issues is that they had
Speaker 8: a lot of more well off colonists and not a
Speaker 8: lot of laborers to do the work, and so they
Speaker 8: struggled to do the basic work. They struggled to satisfy
Speaker 8: the company that sent them. The company wanted them to
Speaker 8: make stuff for them to sell, cut lumber, et cetera.
Speaker 8: Didn't give them enough time to build their farms and such.
Speaker 8: That's something you can imagining happening in a space settlement.
Speaker 8: All sorts of lessons that we can learn from the
Speaker 8: pass and not just to North America but around the world.
Speaker 8: And it's just important that we bothered to do that
Speaker 8: because it's going to save us so much time and
Speaker 8: pain to at least recognize what could go wrong before
Speaker 8: we repeat the same path in space.
Speaker 1: What do you think are the most relevant historical analog So,
Speaker 1: like you know, Daniel mentioned settling of the West, and
Speaker 1: I have read people who would love to see like
Speaker 1: a space Homestead Act sort of thing. I read a
Speaker 1: bunch of that literature and then I decided, well, this
Speaker 1: isn't going to be a big part of a city
Speaker 1: on Mars because Antarctica and the deep seabed are more analogous.
Speaker 1: But what do you think, And of course, if you
Speaker 1: talk to a lot of space settlement people, they'll tell
Speaker 1: you that the Outer Space Treaty is going to get
Speaker 1: thrown out the window and we can have a Homestead Act.
Speaker 1: So what do you think is the most interesting to
Speaker 1: study historically as it relates to settlement.
Speaker 8: I think there's two big categories of it. One, I
Speaker 8: think we should be looking at the Western countries colonization
Speaker 8: of as much of the world as they could grab,
Speaker 8: and the history of that, what they tried, what went
Speaker 8: well and what didn't, and in particularly what went well
Speaker 8: for them and didn't, but all also what went well
Speaker 8: and didn't for the less powerful people in those societies,
Speaker 8: obviously the indigenous people.
Speaker 2: Over time?
Speaker 8: What is colonization with that particular attitude of colonization, What
Speaker 8: does that do to the environment, What does that do
Speaker 8: for future generations, what does that do for marginalized labor workforces?
Speaker 8: And how can we not go that way in the future.
Speaker 8: I think it's also really crucial, and I don't think
Speaker 8: there's enough of this yet. And talks about space ethics,
Speaker 8: I think it's really crucial that we learn from the
Speaker 8: parts of human history where humans migrated and expanded into
Speaker 8: places where no humans were living yet much earlier than colonization,
Speaker 8: learn how that went well and didn't because Western people
Speaker 8: didn't invent moving to a new place and building a
Speaker 8: new community there, They just did it once everyone already
Speaker 8: had inhabited those places and decided to do it all
Speaker 8: over again to grab their resources. And so learning more from,
Speaker 8: for example, indigenous cultures that expanded across North America, South America,
Speaker 8: Australia and how they learned to coexist in a new, desolate, isolated,
Speaker 8: harsh environment, and how not only just the practical how
Speaker 8: did they interact with the environments, but how their cultures
Speaker 8: developed around sustainability or settling conflicts within their communities and
Speaker 8: with other communities. I think that's all really valuable because
Speaker 8: they have had communities and societies in these places for
Speaker 8: tens of thousands of years, much longer than postcolonization era
Speaker 8: has consisted. And I think there's so much we can
Speaker 8: learn from how that worked, and to just present an
Speaker 8: alternative to colonization, because a lot of times, if you say,
Speaker 8: maybe we don't want to use this wild West colonization
Speaker 8: model in space, Westerns kind of shrug and go, okay, well,
Speaker 8: you know, so you want me to not go to space,
Speaker 8: there are actually other options here.
Speaker 1: So I've read a bunch of astronaut memoirs, and reading
Speaker 1: those memoirs makes it very clear to me that astronauts
Speaker 1: are humans too, and that humans I know, right, and
Speaker 1: that humans go to space and they come back and
Speaker 1: still do bad human things sometimes, which makes me wonder
Speaker 1: what is governance and crime and punishment and stuff like
Speaker 1: that going to look like on a Martian settlement. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts who's going to be in control in
Speaker 1: an early settlement when a crime happens, and what should
Speaker 1: we do about that stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: I think this is another question that hasn't been studied
Speaker 8: enough except by the reliable science fiction writers. We've been
Speaker 8: thinking about this stuff for ages. We think a lot
Speaker 8: about how we're going to survive in space and the
Speaker 8: legal stuff about you know, the Homestead Act, who gets
Speaker 8: to own mars et cetera. But I don't think we've
Speaker 8: thought enough about the idea that, you know, hell is
Speaker 8: other people, right, and so maybe our biggest dangers in
Speaker 8: space will be the people that we go up there with.
Speaker 8: And that's the extreme argument for it. There's also just
Speaker 8: the more minor. You know, what if you just have
Speaker 8: a disagreement with a neighbor over something, whose turn it
Speaker 8: is to take out the trash, or you stole my
Speaker 8: space suit, whatnot? What do we do about it? And
Speaker 8: here on Earth we have laws, we have legal systems,
Speaker 8: we have various different ways to address calm, but we
Speaker 8: need something in space. We can't just assume that everyone
Speaker 8: will just perfectly get along. But it's unclear about how
Speaker 8: a lot of that's going to work. The Outer Space
Speaker 8: Treaty says people in space have to follow the laws
Speaker 8: of their countries back home. That sort of handles the
Speaker 8: issue of whose laws do we follow, But it's going
Speaker 8: to get more complicated as people are living more long term,
Speaker 8: especially if we move farther and farther away where it
Speaker 8: takes a long time to call back to Earth. You know,
Speaker 8: unless you've brought a judge and lawyers with you, you're going
Speaker 8: to have to settle your disagreements where you are. And
Speaker 8: then there's the bigger question, Okay, what happens if you
Speaker 8: decide that someone is guilty of whatever you've decided as
Speaker 8: a crime in your space settlement, what do you do
Speaker 8: with them? And when I ask people this, their knee
Speaker 8: jerk reaction is to say throw them out the airlock,
Speaker 8: because that is what all the movies do. But if
Speaker 8: you push a little farther, you can usually get people
Speaker 8: to agree that maybe not every crime should carry capital punishment.
Speaker 8: And then the next thing that they usually say, well,
Speaker 8: we'll put them in space prison. But that also is tricky.
Speaker 8: We don't have space prisons yet. We would have to
Speaker 8: build them. That's going to take a lot of time, effort, money,
Speaker 8: space like literal room, especially if we're doing something like
Speaker 8: digging underground tunnels to live on Mars or something a
Speaker 8: lot to dig another tunnel. You have to feed them
Speaker 8: and give them air and radiation protection and water and
Speaker 8: heat power. Someone has to guard them. Maybe you've removed
Speaker 8: that person from the labor pool and maybe you don't
Speaker 8: have a lot of labor to go around. Is this
Speaker 8: actually what we want to do? And usually at that
Speaker 8: point in the conversation, they say, Okay, well, what's the alternative,
Speaker 8: because this is another case where Americans in particular don't
Speaker 8: really know of any other way to handle crime because
Speaker 8: we're a very prison focused culture. But again, there's so
Speaker 8: many examples on Earth of ways that especially small communities
Speaker 8: address behavior that's not desired. I called that in their communities,
Speaker 8: and in a way that makes sure that the victim
Speaker 8: of a crime feels safe and is made whole, the
Speaker 8: person who committed the crime is unlikely to do it again,
Speaker 8: and that the community is as a whole feel safe.
Speaker 8: And there's ways to do that without building up person.
Speaker 8: And so that's what I've been encouraging, so that we
Speaker 8: try to think about that ahead of time, because no
Speaker 8: matter what we come up with, we need to come
Speaker 8: up with it ahead of time. We don't want to
Speaker 8: wait till the last minute here and then have to
Speaker 8: decide under duress, because I think that'll probably lead to
Speaker 8: unpleasant outcomes for everyone involved.
Speaker 2: Everyone out at airlock.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's clean. I guess it always looks
Speaker 8: really dramatic in the movies. I get the appeal, but
Speaker 8: that's a quick way to kill everyone off, and that's
Speaker 8: not usually the goal of a space settlement.
Speaker 3: And again, if business is involved, are we giving businesses
Speaker 3: the right to set laws in territories they control? You know,
Speaker 3: that might make sense, but I feel a little weird
Speaker 3: about giving Elon Musk right to execute whoever he thinks
Speaker 3: is not, you know, following his laws.
Speaker 8: Yeah, everything I was talking about were examples of two
Speaker 8: people in the community sort of hurting each other. There's
Speaker 8: also the protections you might need to protect an individual
Speaker 8: from the community. And that might mean there's an oppressed
Speaker 8: group and the government of the space settlement is oppressing
Speaker 8: a minority group, for example, how do we protect those people?
Speaker 8: It might mean it's a labor workforce that's getting exploited
Speaker 8: by the company that runs the space settlement. What can
Speaker 8: they do about it? You can't really quit and go
Speaker 8: home when you're in a space settlement. It's really probably
Speaker 8: going to be a lot harder to go on strike
Speaker 8: or protest if you're in a place where the government
Speaker 8: or the employer can just turn down the oxygen and
Speaker 8: make you all go to sleep. And so there's that
Speaker 8: kind of levels of legal protection needed as well.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about writing about punishment for a
Speaker 1: city on Mars, and we didn't end up deciding to
Speaker 1: tackle it, but we did read about how you get
Speaker 1: people in line in communal settings, and like the hutterrightes
Speaker 1: that's a religious group. They're very insular. They do trade
Speaker 1: with the outside world, but they have a very elaborate
Speaker 1: like shunning procedure people who don't follow the rules, where
Speaker 1: if you're an adult who's not following the rules, sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to like sleep in the children house as
Speaker 1: a way of just sort of like showing your temporary demotion.
Speaker 1: And in a community where like if you get kicked out,
Speaker 1: you no longer get to see maybe your parents, or
Speaker 1: your kids, or your wife. Shunning is a very good
Speaker 1: method of punishment that doesn't require a prison, and it
Speaker 1: usually is coupled with almost immediately when they repent and
Speaker 1: stop doing it, you open your arms and welcome them
Speaker 1: back in, because otherwise, how psychologically awful would it be
Speaker 1: to be stuck in a community where everybody is shunning
Speaker 1: you and treating you awfully. Do you have like other
Speaker 1: examples of how it works in other communities.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think you make a good point there that
Speaker 8: leaving open the door for redemption and to rejoining the community.
Speaker 8: Is going to be super vital, because yeah, otherwise the
Speaker 8: person just can't fit back in and you've lost them,
Speaker 8: whether you're throwing them out an air locker or just
Speaker 8: locking them up forever. One of the examples I was
Speaker 8: given during my podcast was about a community in Ethiopia,
Speaker 8: and I'm not Ethiopians, so it'll be difficult for me
Speaker 8: to describe its completely accurately, but she told a beautiful
Speaker 8: story about how when someone in the community harms someone else,
Speaker 8: everyone gathers them together under a great tree, and individually,
Speaker 8: each member of the community goes to this person and
Speaker 8: it says, do you remember when I broke my leg
Speaker 8: and you help me bring the crops in? Do you
Speaker 8: remember when I was sick and you brought me medicine?
Speaker 8: And reminds the person of how they are a member
Speaker 8: of the community, a valued member of the community, and
Speaker 8: that they are still accepted, but that they've done harm
Speaker 8: and here's how you can address this harm and be
Speaker 8: welcome back in, which is the sort of thing again
Speaker 8: as an American, as a Westerner, just sounds too good
Speaker 8: to be true, like it can't possibly work, But there
Speaker 8: is a lot of work being done in the US
Speaker 8: in particular on what's called restorative justice, which is this
Speaker 8: idea that you can figure out ways to make sure
Speaker 8: the victim feel safe and is made whole, and make
Speaker 8: sure that the perpetrator acknowledges and addresses what they've done
Speaker 8: without prison. It's just so hard to describe what that
Speaker 8: looks like in very simple terms because it usually takes effort,
Speaker 8: it takes conversation. The community itself needs to help facilitate
Speaker 8: that conversation, and it looks different for every crime, in
Speaker 8: every interaction, and so it's much more complicated than just saying, well,
Speaker 8: lock them up, but it tends to have better outcomes,
Speaker 8: and there's a lot of research being done on that
Speaker 8: in the US right now. I think some of this
Speaker 8: will get easier in a small community. I think a
Speaker 8: lot of it is related to culture, and it's hard
Speaker 8: to predict how a culture of a space settlement is
Speaker 8: going to evolve away from the culture we have today.
Speaker 8: Being isolated and being so interdependent on other humans, I
Speaker 8: think will make things like shunning be a bigger threat
Speaker 8: and help people not engage in harmful behavior to others.
Speaker 8: But I don't know. These sci fi authors have imagined
Speaker 8: it going the other way and have it make us
Speaker 8: worse people, or make it more likely that some tyrant
Speaker 8: will take over and keep everyone online. It's not clear
Speaker 8: yet how it's going to go.
Speaker 3: Well, what's the sort of worst crime that's been committed
Speaker 3: in space so far?
Speaker 8: I don't think off the top of my head. Kelly
Speaker 8: can help me hear that there has been anything officially
Speaker 8: considered a legal crime committed in space so far. There
Speaker 8: is often pointed to an event with the Skylab crew
Speaker 8: that was at the time by the newspapers called a
Speaker 8: strike a protest. It was said that the crew was
Speaker 8: mad at NASA and churned off the radio and said
Speaker 8: they weren't going to work for the day. That's not
Speaker 8: actually how it went down. It was much less dramatic
Speaker 8: than that. It wasn't a mutiny, for example, And I
Speaker 8: think so far it's been mostly professional disagreements at that level.
Speaker 1: I think there was one astronaut whose partner I think
Speaker 1: they had like broken up, and she went into her
Speaker 1: banking accounts.
Speaker 8: Oh, that's right, from space, from.
Speaker 1: Space, and so it was like a small law that
Speaker 1: was broken in space. Well, it feels small to me
Speaker 1: relative to murder, but a smaller law that was broken
Speaker 1: in space.
Speaker 2: And then there was an.
Speaker 1: International incident where one of the soyez is so these
Speaker 1: are like the vehicles that bring people from Russia or
Speaker 1: Kazakhstan to the International Space Station, was found to have
Speaker 1: a hole thrilled in the side.
Speaker 8: Of it, a tiny damage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1: It wasn't clear if that was because a technician who
Speaker 1: was building this drilled the whole and then was like ah, crud,
Speaker 1: and then like patched it poorly and the patch fell
Speaker 1: off in space. But Russia was saying that it was
Speaker 1: one of the astronauts on the US side who was
Speaker 1: having a mental health crisis and wanted to go home,
Speaker 1: so they drilled a hole to try to push an
Speaker 1: emergency return.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I don't think that was proven though, that's right.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it wasn't and all of the US astronauts
Speaker 1: are like, no, absolutely, that's not what.
Speaker 2: It was happening.
Speaker 1: But I think what's interesting about that is, you know,
Speaker 1: the International Space Station has multiple nations represented, and depending
Speaker 1: on which module you're in, there's different jurisdictions and depending
Speaker 1: on what country the astronauts came from, and in the end,
Speaker 1: they kind of weren't really able to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do about it. And so I think if anything
Speaker 1: more serious happened, I don't know what they would do
Speaker 1: or how that would be dealt with. It gets complicated,
Speaker 1: I think when you've got multiple nations together.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I also think the space agencies are incentivized not
Speaker 8: to talk about stories like this. I mean, they're going
Speaker 8: to report it, especially you know in the US, but
Speaker 8: the news is going to get their hands on it
Speaker 8: and probably blow it out of proportion. But it's not
Speaker 8: like NASA wants to get out the idea that this
Speaker 8: kind of happening in space. I'm not saying they're covering
Speaker 8: up crimes. There's a lot of things about astronaut privacy
Speaker 8: that NASA really keeps more private. There have been some
Speaker 8: cases in analog situations. So they do these experiments down
Speaker 8: on Earth where they seal people up in a small
Speaker 8: habitat for a certain amount of time to test crew
Speaker 8: dynamics and also things like can they recycle their food
Speaker 8: and things like that, Or they go out to isolated
Speaker 8: place like the Antarctic or the Arctic and live in
Speaker 8: an isolated environment for a while to ten they're on Mars.
Speaker 8: There have been cases there where there's been interpersonal conflict
Speaker 8: and to the level of sexual harassment and conflicts like that,
Speaker 8: and so I don't think there's any reason to assume
Speaker 8: that kind of behavior won't happen in space as well.
Speaker 1: I do love your point that we need to figure
Speaker 1: out what our plan is ahead of time. I was
Speaker 1: reading about naval punishment and like, they didn't have space
Speaker 1: on the ship for a prison, and they didn't want
Speaker 1: to have a member of the crew not working and
Speaker 1: then maybe another member of the crew watching them not
Speaker 1: work and making sure they don't And so the flogging
Speaker 1: was there answer, Like if you hit someone, you beat
Speaker 1: them quickly, then they can return right back to work,
Speaker 1: and it's a severe, immediate punishment. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's important for us to decide which one of these
Speaker 1: things do we want to be trying when we move
Speaker 1: out into space, and which punishment regime do we want
Speaker 1: to take with us.
Speaker 3: I just want to say that flogging works really well
Speaker 3: in my research group as the motivations for.
Speaker 1: We have a book on our shelf called In Defense
Speaker 1: of Flogging. It's an economists take on why it's an
Speaker 1: efficient punishment system where maybe you'd rather get flogged than
Speaker 1: spend five years in prison, or thrown out or thrown
Speaker 1: out the airlock. So anyway, lots of options for punishment.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about babies in space.
Speaker 2: All right, Space babies erica ethical or not.
Speaker 8: I find space babies to be the cruelest creatures. The
Speaker 8: idea of having babies in space is obviously a fascinating one,
Speaker 8: and it's also crucial to the whole idea of having
Speaker 8: a permanent space settlement. You can't have a space settlement
Speaker 8: stand on its own if you have to keep shipping
Speaker 8: humans from Earth. So the question of whether we can
Speaker 8: produce more humans in space is both an important one,
Speaker 8: both scientifically and ethically. So the scientific part is the
Speaker 8: tough one. We don't actually know if humans can have
Speaker 8: babies in space. We don't know that about any stage
Speaker 8: of the process, about conceiving, about growing a fetus in
Speaker 8: utero in a healthy way. We don't know how harder
Speaker 8: or easy delivering a baby would work in space. And
Speaker 8: we don't know if children can grow in a healthy
Speaker 8: way in the absence of, for example, Earth's gravitational field,
Speaker 8: or if all this radiation exposure you get in space
Speaker 8: is going to cause problems all along the way. So
Speaker 8: tons of interesting scientific questions there, but we also don't
Speaker 8: know how to even ethically study those questions because most
Speaker 8: bioethicists and medical researchers will tell you it's very ethically
Speaker 8: murky to perform science experiments on pregnant people and fetuses,
Speaker 8: especially the fetuses that can't consent. So it's tricky, and
Speaker 8: I think that there's a good chance that the ethicist
Speaker 8: will be arguing about this while some space tourists are
Speaker 8: just making it happen someday, and we're going to end
Speaker 8: up with this experiment happening unmonitored and unprotected. So it
Speaker 8: could be that we can't do it. It could be
Speaker 8: the humans can't reproduce in space. That's going to put
Speaker 8: a big damper on people's plans for conquering the universe,
Speaker 8: and we will have to reanalyze all of our plans
Speaker 8: for space settlement. It's also possible there's some middle ground
Speaker 8: here where we'll be able to do it, but maybe
Speaker 8: it'll be a lot more difficult, maybe it'd be less likely.
Speaker 8: Maybe we'll need some sort of extra technology help, like
Speaker 8: artificial gravity or radiation shielding or artificial wounds, which could
Speaker 8: turn into a thing where wealthy space settlers can afford
Speaker 8: to have children, or you have to get special permit
Speaker 8: from the space government to use the artificial womb and
Speaker 8: have babies, which could cause a lot of issues. And
Speaker 8: maybe it'll be super easy and will be superfertile in
Speaker 8: space and have babies everywhere, which will lead to other problems,
Speaker 8: like maybe we have an overpopulated space settlement and we
Speaker 8: have to figure out what to do about that, and
Speaker 8: boy do we have examples of that on Earth, and
Speaker 8: how it has led to government trying to control fertility
Speaker 8: and punishing people for having too many children or forcing
Speaker 8: them to be sterilized so that they can't have more children.
Speaker 8: Often throughout history this has in particular led to people
Speaker 8: deciding to limit other groups' fertilities, but only for certain people.
Speaker 8: We want to limit population growth, but only for these
Speaker 8: people we don't think should be reproducing, and that's just
Speaker 8: eugenics and leads to all sorts of other really terrible
Speaker 8: outcomes that could happen in space. And in space we
Speaker 8: could go the other way around too and have underpopulation
Speaker 8: and have questions about whether we can force people to
Speaker 8: have children which also has a few parallels throughout history
Speaker 8: as well, and leads to things like outlawing abortion, birth control,
Speaker 8: knowing about contraception, and things like that.
Speaker 3: It feels to me like space is sort of putting
Speaker 3: a spotlight on what's already kind of a tricky question,
Speaker 3: you know, about is it ethical to have kids? We
Speaker 3: try to avoid ever restricting people from having kids, but
Speaker 3: you could also always just ask questions, like some people
Speaker 3: in their living conditions, should they be having kids? You know,
Speaker 3: if I want to like set up camp near a volcano,
Speaker 3: is it ethical for me to have kids, knowing that
Speaker 3: the kids could be like bathed in lava one day
Speaker 3: as they sleep. Nobody tells me I can't have kids
Speaker 3: or I shouldn't have kids. Lots of people out there
Speaker 3: are terrible parents, but nobody like gave them an exam
Speaker 3: and says, hey, are you going to be a reasonable parent.
Speaker 3: Why shouldn't we just apply the same like lass a
Speaker 3: fair thing to space and say, hey, you're going to
Speaker 3: have kids in space. Maybe they won't just take correctly,
Speaker 3: maybe they'll get cancer, maybe they'll end up nine feet tall.
Speaker 3: It's on you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, if you think about what we owe to the children,
Speaker 8: like what rights do they have here? That does have
Speaker 8: interesting questions. Maybe we're making them more at risk for
Speaker 8: radiation induced illness, like you mentioned with your lava example.
Speaker 8: Maybe they can grow and be healthy and have healthy
Speaker 8: lives on Mars, but because they're growing in a lower
Speaker 8: gravity environment, they can't ever return to Earth because they'll
Speaker 8: collapse and die. Is there something unethical about that? Are
Speaker 8: we somehow taking away their birthright to go back to
Speaker 8: the planet that they evolved on or will they not
Speaker 8: care because they're not from Earth and they're too cool
Speaker 8: for Earth And it's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: I mean, Kelly's decided to have her kids in Virginia.
Speaker 3: Now they have to tell people they're from Virginia. Not
Speaker 3: to overcome that their whole life when they could have
Speaker 3: grown up in California. How do you deal with that, Kelly?
Speaker 1: It's beautiful here and I think they're very happy, and
Speaker 1: I feel bad for your California kids.
Speaker 3: Well, clearly they're brainwashed. Propaganda is everywhere, but there.
Speaker 8: Are exemples of this on Earth where people have to
Speaker 8: make the really tough decision about whether to become refugees
Speaker 8: certain parts of the world. Are they going to decide
Speaker 8: to take their kids on this really dangerous journey, like
Speaker 8: a rocket trip to a new place they've never seen before,
Speaker 8: where potentially they're never going to be able to return
Speaker 8: to their home country. That's a similar decision, and on
Speaker 8: Earth we let parents make that decision. They have to
Speaker 8: make that decision for their kids if their kids can't
Speaker 8: make it, and generally what we hope is that the
Speaker 8: parents are working in the best interest of the kids.
Speaker 8: In those cases, it's usually because the kids are at
Speaker 8: risk if they stay where they are. It's sort of
Speaker 8: a different idea. We're talking about space because at the moment,
Speaker 8: there's no asteroid headed for the Earth. So most people
Speaker 8: who want to go raise kids in space, it's just
Speaker 8: because they want to, not because they necessarily know that
Speaker 8: it's going to give their kids a better life. But
Speaker 8: you're right, we have a bit more of a hands
Speaker 8: off attitude here on Earth, and we let people raise
Speaker 8: their kids how they want, but not completely. There's plenty
Speaker 8: of limitations that the state puts on what people do
Speaker 8: with their kids different ways. In different places in the US,
Speaker 8: they're required to have an education sometimes that's better monitored
Speaker 8: than in other places, and in other places around the world,
Speaker 8: there's more restrictions on whether you can or can't make
Speaker 8: decisions about your own ability to have kids. And this
Speaker 8: all comes back to the balance between someone's own bodily
Speaker 8: autonomy that they should be able to decide what happens
Speaker 8: with their body or not, versus what society needs or
Speaker 8: wants from them, which when it comes to population level,
Speaker 8: stuff is affected by whether people are having kids round.
Speaker 1: So we've kind of scratched the surface of the many
Speaker 1: interesting ethical questions that you brought up in your book.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it can feel sort of overwhelming and helpless to
Speaker 1: think about all of this stuff. What are some options
Speaker 1: for things that we can do now to try to
Speaker 1: make sure that we do settle space when we get
Speaker 1: there to that point that we do it in an
Speaker 1: ethical and just way.
Speaker 8: Well, just having these conversations at all is super important,
Speaker 8: because the alternative of just giving it a go and
Speaker 8: seeing what happens, I think, is not the best choice.
Speaker 8: So any level of conversations, more.
Speaker 3: Conversation, launch baby launch.
Speaker 8: At any level of conversation is good. Encouraging people to
Speaker 8: have these conversations at the decision maker level is very important.
Speaker 8: Reading Kelly's book, I think purchasing and reading Kelly's.
Speaker 2: Book is super important with yours.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely by books about this topic, and as an individual,
Speaker 8: I think definitely trying to learn more about history if
Speaker 8: you're interested in space is very important. It's not immediately
Speaker 8: obvious that should be the case, but as we've talked about,
Speaker 8: there's plenty of examples from history, and not just the
Speaker 8: history of your part of the world. I think North Americans,
Speaker 8: like myself, focused a little too much on the history
Speaker 8: of North American colonization, but again, all of human history
Speaker 8: to learn from. Let's do that. I think anyone who's
Speaker 8: working anywhere near space, whether you're in an astronomy department
Speaker 8: at university, or you're working for a space startup, or
Speaker 8: you're working in government regulation, there's plenty of ways you
Speaker 8: can work towards making your company more ethical, making them
Speaker 8: make the right decisions. But I also think it's really
Speaker 8: important to look at your organization and see if it
Speaker 8: does it embody the kind of values you want to
Speaker 8: see in a space settlement. Is there a labor being exploited,
Speaker 8: are there people being marginalized, or is everyone being treated well?
Speaker 8: Because whatever values we have in our society today is
Speaker 8: what's going to get pushed forward into space in the future.
Speaker 8: So the better we can treat each other now on Earth,
Speaker 8: the easier it'll be to transfer those norms into space.
Speaker 8: And that's just as important as building a good legal
Speaker 8: system or safe technologies, is to make sure that the
Speaker 8: values we want to see in our descendants in the
Speaker 8: future are what we're actually actively working towards for ourselves. Now,
Speaker 8: we can't just wait and say, well, they'll figure it out,
Speaker 8: they'll be better in space. We don't need to do
Speaker 8: that hard work. We have to do it for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: see space settlement in their minds as some sort of
Speaker 3: utopia where we go there and we don't bring any
Speaker 3: of the problems we have here, and that we somehow
Speaker 3: all magically get along. But we all know that we're
Speaker 3: going to make the same mistakes. Somebody's going to invent
Speaker 3: white chocolate even if we don't bring it with us, right, Like,
Speaker 3: this is just who we are as humans. We I
Speaker 3: agree with you. We need to acknowledge that and face
Speaker 3: those and figure some of this stuff out before it happens.
Speaker 8: That's right. Space is only a blank slate till we
Speaker 8: show up.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: So if folks want to stay in touch with Erica,
Speaker 1: they can go to Erica nesvuld dot com. That's E
Speaker 1: R I KA ne E s v O l d
Speaker 1: dot com and you can sign up for her newsletter
Speaker 1: to stay up to date on Erica updates. Absolutely well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the show, Erica.
Speaker 1: It was I was going to say a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but maybe space ethics isn't always supposed to be fun.
Speaker 1: But it was certainly very informative and I enjoyed talking
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 8: I had a great time talking about you think.
Speaker 3: And I think the takeaway message is not we shouldn't
Speaker 3: settle space, so that we can't settle space, but then
Speaker 3: we have to do it thoughtfully and carefully. We shouldn't
Speaker 3: just rush into it and do it because it seems fun, right,
Speaker 3: So we don't have to feel like we're being pessimist
Speaker 3: about it. We're just being thoughtful.
Speaker 8: That's right. And we'll leave the white chocolate behind.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That is the right note to end on.
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