Earth Space, Planetary Geopolitics, and World Governments

Contrary to expansionist views, space around Earth, dominated by its gravitational attraction, is part of the planet, its astrosphere. While solar space is vast, the practical geography of Earth space is small because effective distances are so small. Analogies with terrestrial oceans and frontiers are very misleading. Space activities have amplified, not reduced, global closure. The applied propositions of geopolitics indicate the superiority of Clarke-Sagan over von Braun programs for achieving security. The deployment of ballistic missile space weapons has increased the probability of catastrophic nuclear war. Escaping nuclear vulnerability with a vast orbital Earth Net is unlikely to be successful. Orbital space is an axial region with integral tendencies, but realizing planetary military dominance is unlikely. Building Orbita of large orbital civil infrastructures will probably require or produce hierarchical world government. Anticipations of Earth identity-formation remain unrealized. Information satellites support a repressive planetary panopticon, but intensive expansion in microspace enables continued growth.

Superpower Restraints, Planetary Security, and Earth Identity

A third, often-overlooked, space agenda, the Clarke-Sagan and Whole Earth Security programs, aims to close the gap between the territorial state system and technologies and spaces of planetary scope without world government. It extends into space environmentalist, arms control, and globalist approaches. Its ladder includes superpower arms control, space cooperation and satellites for information, science, and Earth habitability. It supports strengthening the Outer Space Treaty, currently under assault. It fears space debris degrading orbital space. It anticipates viewing Earth from space will help support terrapolitan Whole Earth political identities, supplanting parochial nationalities. Its advocates debate asteroid deflection dilemmas, some fearing intentional bombardment, others proposing international planetary defense consortia. How can the great debate between the Clarke-Sagan and von Braun programs be resolved? Clarke and Sagan, uniquely among prominent space expansionists, prioritized nuclear arms control but also embraced Tsiolkovskian visions, posing the question: Are their criticisms of the von Braun military programs applicable to solar space expansion?

Technological Imaginaries, Feasibilities, Syndromes, and Catastrophes

Space expansionism, science fiction, and space developments are intimately linked. SF from Verne, Wells, and others inspires space expansionists, and SF is shaped by space discoveries. SF makes space expansionism seem plausible but is often unbound by scientific possibility. An assessment of building block, life-engineering, and transformative technologies reveals that large-scale space activities are becoming more feasible, but creating enclosed ecologies, geo-engineering and terraforming remain doubtful. Anticipating the consequences of new technologies (technology assessment) remains difficult. Technology governance is plagued by recalcitrant syndromes. Theorists of catastrophic and existential risk view space colonization as necessary to escape a long list of possible major calamities (including hostile artificial superintelligence and misused genetic engineering for improved humans, called transhumanism). Human survival increasingly depends on competent futurism and social capacities to steer technology with reversals, regulations, and relinquishments, but these are difficult to establish and maintain. Can vital arrangements of restraint survive large-scale space expansion?

New Heavens, New Earth

Humans have always attributed enormous importance to occurrences in the heavens. Over the past several centuries modern astronomy has revealed a cosmos of staggering size, filled with trillions of worlds. Its vacuum, weightlessness, lethal radiations, and fantastic speeds make space harshly inhospitable to human life. To access orbital space requires velocities some thirty-four times as fast as jet aircraft, climbing out of steep gravity wells. Of the many bodies mapped by science in this solar system, asteroids are most practically important because they sometimes collide with great violence, profoundly shaping Earth’s deep history. As knowledge of the cosmos has grown, anticipations of nearby intelligent life have dramatically shrunk. The Space Age has also witnessed a far-reaching revolution in understanding the Earth System. Marked by complexity, chaos, and emergence, life on Earth is incompletely understood and inventoried and much less subject to human control than previously assumed, reducing the feasibility of expansionist visions.

Conclusion

Tsiolkovsky’s famous statement of humanity being in its “cradle” unintentionally points to humanity’s infantile approach to space and technogenic threats. Illusions and errors afflict space expansionism. Space activities have made nuclear war more likely. Space colonization poses catastrophic and existential threats and will produce a hierarchic world government. An Earth-oriented space program, heavy on restraints, is needed. Not Off Planet Earth measures must join the environmentalist Not On Planet Earth list, making a double NOPE agenda. Space and nuclear arms control is necessary. The Outer Space Treaty should be strengthened. Large orbital infrastructures should be avoided. Only an international consortium should alter asteroid orbits. Space cooperation, Earth-monitoring, and science should be expanded. Most important, the goal of space colonization should be abandoned. Manias of the moment, privatization and space tourism, are trivial pursuits. Protecting Oasis Earth must be humanity’s prime vocation. Human survival requires rejection of seductive but perilous technological visions.

Absolute Weapons, Lightning Wars, and Ultimate Positions

The initial development of large rockets was driven by military rivalry. The von Braun programs of military space expansionism are a ladder of projects starting with bombardment and culminating in planetary dominance, each considered in detail in this chapter. Ballistic missiles hurling nuclear weapons at intercontinental distances are commonly not considered space weapons but inherently are because they employ the frictionless vacuum of space to achieve their distinctive high speed. This means humanity’s largest and most consequential space program is hiding in plain sight, an unknown known. Information satellite force multipliers increase the potency of other weapons. There are many ways to destroy satellites, and an antisatellite race is starting. Shooting down ballistic missiles remains largely impossible, despite vast expenditures. Wrapping orbital space with hundreds of satellite battle stations, an “Earth Net,” might roll back the nuclear revolution and establish planetary hegemony. Visionary astro-Archimedeans propose stationing nuclear weapons in deep space, and using asteroids as planetoid bombs.

Questions, Debates, and Frameworks

No general assessment of space activities, actual and prospective, exists. Space thinking falls into three broad competing programs: military, habitat, and planetary security expansionisms. Habitat expansionism is most ambitious, with cosmic scope, but largely unrealized. Military and planetary security approaches are opposites, each partially realized, and focused (so far) on near-Earth space. Space-political questions are entangled in seven great debates about contemporary Planetary Earth. Will accelerating technology produce utopia or oblivion? Should world government replace international anarchy? Can new frontiers escape closure, or must a steady state emerge? Who will control global information systems? Are freedom, democracy, and capitalism still viable? Will humanity be replaced by superhumans or advanced computers? Which understanding of the relations between technology, politics, and humanity is superior? What happens in space will decisively shape outcomes of these debates. Space arguments rely heavily on claims about geography, geopolitics, and geohistory, which provide a focus for comprehensive and even-handed assessment. An ancient story about the astronomer Thales captures the overall argument.

The Promise of Space Revisited

Across the twentieth century, an international network of thinkers has created an astounding vision of human movement into the cosmos. Everything done in space was first anticipated by these space expansionists, but only tiny parts of their vision have been realized. Space expansionism is the ideology of the global pro-space movement and offers a Big History narrative of the human past, present, and future, centered on technological advance and habitat enlargement. Advocates claim that their projects to build large orbital infrastructures, colonize celestial bodies, and alter asteroidal orbits can solve global energy and resource problems and ensure humanity’s survival from major Earth disasters. But the actual and prospective consequences of their projects are far darker then recognized. Space activities have increased the probability of nuclear war. Space colonization is likely to result in human extinction and should be avoided.

Geography, Geopolitics, and Geohistory

Expansionist anticipations rest on claims about geography, geopolitics, and geohistory but are error-filled, slanted, and misleading. Geography errors arise from confusing physical with practical geography. Earth-space analogies frequently suggest misleading similarities while hiding actual dissimilarities. Ascentionism, the deep-seated human tendency to view elevations as improvements, makes space expansions seem desirable. Geopolitics analyzes the relations between politics, particularly violence and security, and geography and technology. Geopolitics maps proclivities, not inevitabilities, and indicates which political arrangements are necessary, feasible, and likely. The main ideas of geopolitics are summarized and boiled down to twelve propositions. The main geopolitical factor, violence interdependence, measures capacities of actors to inflict damage upon one another. When violence interdependence is intense, actors can readily destroy one another, and security requires ending anarchy and establishing governments, which vary from republican to hierarchical. Geopolitics also offers propositions about special places, consolidation tendencies, and frontiers. Earth geohistory, across Archipelago, Global, and Planetary Earths, supports geopolitical claims.

Solar Space, Island Earth, and the Ends of Humanity

Solar colonization, occurring in four stages, faces daunting obstacles and is unlikely soon. A colony able to preserve humanity from Earth disasters is likely to be politically independent. Analogies with successful terrestrial expansions are significantly misleading. The applied propositions of geopolitics predict a solar anarchy primed for large-scale wars. The Solar Archipelago will be geopolitically malefic, combining the worst features of Archipelago and Planetary Earths. Because of the immense violence potentials of asteroidal bombardment, violence interdependence will remain intense despite large effective distances. Asteroid-island analogies hide asteroid movement, collisions, and movability. Establishing a common government will be necessary but nearly impossible. Space polities will become very different, making mutual restraints difficult. Biological species radiation will make interplanetary war xenocidal. Protecting militarily disadvantaged Island Earth will require hierarchical world government. Sustaining restraints on artificial superintelligence and bioengineering will be very difficult. Because solar space colonization probably will cause human extinction (astrocide), it should be avoided.