OTish - Decolonizing Mars: Are We Thinking About Space Exploration All Wrong?

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https://gizmodo.com/decolonizing-mars-are-we-thinking-about-space-explorat-1830348568

Decolonizing Mars: Are We Thinking About Space Exploration All Wrong?
Mars' Bonneville Crater
Photo: NASA/JPL/Cornell University

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

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Interplanetary travel is pitched to us as a good thing. Explorers will
visit other planets, which settlers will then colonize. But colonization
on our own planet led to the genocide and displacement of cultures and
people, economic inequity, and the destruction of environments. What
lessons from Earth’s colonialist tragedies can we apply to our
interplanetary future?

Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos pour money into their space
exploration projects—some of which really do seek to establish Martian
colonies. But before they use taxpayer money to dive deeper headfirst
into these pursuits, a group of thinkers are asking for a second look at
how we approach the idea of space exploration and resettlement on other
planets. Particularly, who gets to go, who will be in control, how new
resources will be obtained and distributed, and the very language we use
when talking about “exploration,” “discovery,” and “colonization.”

Lucianne Walkowicz, the NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology,
hosted an event in September to bring these ideas to the public called
“Becoming Interplanetary: What Living on Earth Can Teach Us about Living
on Mars.” We chatted with her, as well as event panelists Enongo
Lumumba-Kasongo and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, about what decolonizing
Mars means to them. This is just a small snippet of the broader
conversation that includes well-known scientists, artists, and science
fiction writers.

Image: NASA. provided by X-Arc, which is a top 10 finalist in the
3D-Printed Habitat Challenge Phase: 3 Level 1 competition.
Lucianne Walkowicz is the NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology
and an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium. She organized the
Decolonizing Mars unconference, as well as the public discussion, as a
part of her broader research into space colonization.

Gizmodo: What sparked your interest in this topic?

Lucianne Walkowicz: In my work, I’ve been thinking about issues around
how we talk about going to Mars, and plans that people make for what
they want to do when they get there—whether it’s living on Mars, doing
scientific research and trying to figure out its history, or corporate
interest in mining or resource extraction of any kind.

There are a variety of scientific reasons why human presence might make
certain investigations easier on Mars. But I’m disturbed by the way
people talk about going to Mars as if the planet is ours... When we talk
about terraforming, that’s a planetary-scale strip mining operation. If
you transform a planetary environment, even if you think you know how to
do it, that represents a total alteration of the chemistry and physics
of the planet, which means you may erase the history of life that might
be there.

It’s been troubling to me to hear people erasing what’s going on here on
our own planet both from an environmental standpoint and an indigenous
rights standpoint when they talk about going to other planets.

Private-public partnership isn’t a new thing. It’s baked into the
history of space exploration.
Gizmodo: What does a Decolonized Mars look like?

Lucianne Walkowicz: I can’t give you an example of what a decolonized
Mars looks like, but it starts by having multidisciplinary conversations
about the things that happen here on Earth. I often give examples of
Standing Rock as an Earth-based example of interests colliding, where
you have indigenous people opposing a large-scale project that, much
like space exploration, features cooperation between private industry
and the government...

Private-public partnership isn’t a new thing. It’s baked into the
history of space exploration. Today, a lot of the rhetoric about new
space companies is that people have the impression that the billionaires
at the helms are dumping their own money into it, which might be true in
part, but they’re also contractors getting money from federal
governments to fund what they’re doing. It’s harmful for them to imply
that they’re not working with public funds.

There’s a matter of inclusion—space exploration is something that we all
take part in. That’s true of public missions and not private companies.
Their aims are often different from what people think about. We have to
think about the way we talk about who goes to space—who’s included in
the conversation in who’s not. One of the fundamental things to do is
just include [those normally left out of these discussions] in the
conversation in a real way, such that they’re actually listened to.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics at the
University of New Hampshire who studies spacetime’s origins and the
stuff that fills it. She appeared on a panel alongside Brenda J. Child,
Brian Nord, and Ashley Shew.

Gizmodo: What does decolonizing Mars mean to you?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: I’m trying to think carefully about what our
relationship to Mars should be, and whether we can avoid reproducing
deeply entrenched colonial behaviors as we seek to better understand our
Solar System. This includes thinking about why our language for
developing understandings of environments that are new to us tends to
still be colonial: “colonizing Mars” and “exploring” and “developing,”
for example. These are deeply fraught terms that have traditionally
referred to problematic behaviors by imperialists with those that we
would call “indigenous” and “people of color” often on the receiving end
of violent activities.

Gizmodo: Do you think that we’ve been thinking about Mars exploration
wrong, and why?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: I also want us to consider that as we interact
with Mars, we may be precluding certain futures. Perhaps life hasn’t
developed there yet. Perhaps life may develop in future. Will our
interactions with Mars preclude that possibility? Do we have the right
to make that choice for the ecosystem? Europeans and non-Indigenous,
non-Black Americans have traditionally thought they could do whatever
they wanted in an environment that is new to them. Thinking about Mars
is a chance to think carefully about where this attitude has gotten us.
So far, technological “advancement” has brought us many things,
including potentially catastrophic global warming. Global warming is a
technological development.

I want us to move away from the idea of “exploration” and “discovery”
and toward understanding environments as “new to us.” Columbus wasn’t
the first to “discover” or “explore” the Americas. He was just a
European who didn’t understand a place that was new to him.

“I want us to move away from the idea of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery’
and toward understanding environments as ‘new to us.’”

Gizmodo: What do the ideals behind decolonizing Mars say about science
and space exploration as a whole? Who holds the power, and how can that
change?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: Decolonization in the Martian context requires
asking questions about who is entitled to what land. Can we be trusted
to be in balance with Mars if we refuse to be in balance with Earth? Can
we be trusted to be equitable in our dealings with each other in a
Martian context if the U.S. and Canadian governments continue to attack
indigenous sovereignty, violate indigenous lands, and engage in
genocidal activities against indigenous people?

I think the answer is no. I think we need to clean up our mess before we
start making a new mess somewhere else. It’s hard for me to say “we”
because I don’t think my values are represented by how scientists have
handled themselves in the past, and as an Afro-Caribbean and
Afro-American person, I’m a descendant of people who didn’t have a
choice about coming to the Americas. But I am a member of the scientific
community and right now, it seems that on the whole the scientific
community has not done the work of asking itself about deeply entrenched
notions about who science is for, how science is done, and how it can
and should impact the environment.

I’m worried about this. Our terrestrial ecosystem is making very clear
to us that our old way of doing things has pushed us to the brink of
extinction. What has happened recently with the Thirty Meter Telescope
and Maunakea makes clear to me that we have a long way to go before
science’s approach to new activities and environments isn’t painfully
entangled with colonial ideals.

Image: NASA. Image provided by SEArch+/ Apis Cor, which is a top 10
finalist in the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge Phase: 3 Level 1 competition.
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo is an underground rapper working under the name
Sammus, a former teacher, and a Ph.D student at Cornell University
living in Philadelphia. She appeared on a panel titled “Alternative
Futurisms” alongside D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Willi Lempert, and Ytasha
Womack.

Gizmodo: What does decolonizing Mars mean to you?

Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo: Colonization is a term to refer to human
processes—these very brutal movements of people to take lands from other
people, but it’s also a biological term. So, how we conceptualize our
movement into other spaces has meaning.

Another thing that came out of our discussions was thinking about bodies
and people in less utilitarian ways. As we start to think about what it
would look like to exist on a different planet, the conversation is
framed around who should go because they’d be the most useful or provide
this or that service. It’s rooted in a capitalist way of thinking about
people and bodies.

Some have already thought deeply about what it might mean to move
through a new terrain with a different perspective—I’m thinking about
Afrofuturism. I was part of a panel discussion that spoke about
speculative fiction and what role it can play when thinking about new
spaces and exploration. We have to push for not just representation, but
a genuine understanding of other world views. I think it can happen
through the proliferation of these stories, and recognizing that people
of color aren’t absent from these discussions and have a perspective
they can bring.

A lot of my work has been in response to a bleak future. But partially
through this experience, it’s reaffirmed that there’s transformative
power in envisioning a positive future—one that I’m actually involved
in.... Those who have the power to shape these landscapes have a lens
for what counts as a proper society. Afrofuturism plays a role in these
conversations.

Gizmodo: How has thinking about these issues changed your views here on
Earth?

Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo: In a Martian context, thinking practically,
there’s a population transported from one place to another. As you build
a new ecosystem, everyone has to think about what’s important and what’s
not. Every person who’s a part has some relationship with the
environment and the crew. I think on Earth, in the face of the
soul-crushing news that constantly bombards us, it feels like what we do
doesn’t matter. [Sitting on a panel about decolonizing Mars] was a
reminder to me that even in my particular community, whether it’s me and
my neighbors or me and other artists, there are things I can do.