Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Off-Earth ethics (featuring Erika Nesvold)

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Off-Earth ethics (featuring Erika Nesvold) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: The year is nineteen seventy. Mario Eskimia had been working
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: with Donald Lovitt, otherwise known as Porky, in the Arctic
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: for over a month, and he was pretty fed up
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: with Porky at this point. Porky had the bad habit
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of getting drunk and wielding butcher cleavers while stealing his
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: crewmate's wine, clearly behavior that would be frowned upon in
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: just about any culture. So this had happened yet again,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and Eskima got all fired up and grabbed his rifle
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and went to confront Porky. Porky was indeed enjoying a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: cocktail with the stolen wine, and he was enjoying that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: cocktail with the station manager, a man named Benny Lightsey.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Eskimia was arguing with Lightsee about what should be done
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: about the whole Porky situation when his rifle accidentally went.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Off, killing Lights.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: This actually ended up becoming a fairly famous case in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the world of law because it provided some precedent for
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: what happens when you're outside of the jurisdiction of other nations.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So what happens when you're on a mobile piece of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: ice in the Arctic Ocean what court do you get
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: tried in? And who decides what happens? Well, in this case,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it was fairly straightforward because both men were United States citizens,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: so the case was tried in the US and Eskimia
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: was ultimately acquitted. What happens if you have a Martian
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: settlement and Mario Eskimia is from the United States, for example,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and Benny Lightsey is from Russia for example?
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: What happens on Mars?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Who oversees the court case, who decides what the punishment
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: should be, and what punishment is fair in a harsh
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: environment millions of miles from the home planet. Well to
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: answer some of these questions today, we're talking to doctor
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Erica Nesvold. Her book Off Earth tackles questions about law,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: social justice, and ethics in space.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Daniel and kelly Is Extraordinary Universe.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm excited
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: for other people to go into space. And welcome to
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: the podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I'm a parasitologist, and I think
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: it would be great for other people to settle space,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: depending on how it gets done, I have qualifications.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: And so on today's episode, we're going to be digging
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: into the details of what questions we have to ask
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: before we settle space and how we handle it once
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: we get there, including tricky questions like who gets to
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: make space law on what happens when you break it,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: which makes me wonder, Kelly. Down here on Earth, people
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: are always breaking laws, you know, jaywalking or parking illegally
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: or whatever. So my questioning to you today is, what
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: is the most serious law you've ever broken?
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, on air here, not under oath, but on air.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Well, you know, I feel like
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: those things are the same. I have to be honest.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I think that the most trouble I almost got in
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: it was Thanksgiving and my three year old had been
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: screaming in the car on the ride home from Ohio
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in the slushy snow rain combo for like hours, like
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: literally hours, and I went from a sixty five to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a forty five zone and I didn't realize I had
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: gone from a sixty five to a forty five zone.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't see the forty five sign because I had
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: no brain lift at that point. And if you go
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: over twenty then you get your license taken away.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So the police officer he walked up to the car
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and he heard the screaming and he went.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, like, maybe he's also a parent.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And all I know is that the ticket said I
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: had gone nineteen over oh, which meant I got to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: keep my license. And I was more care about driving
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: when my kiddo was screaming after that. So basically I
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: am a whimp and I have not done too many dangerous, scary,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: illegal things in my lifetime.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: But what about you? Okay, of course it's going to
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: be your turn now, No.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I need to fall up on your story. Does that
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: mean that you can commit any felony you want? But
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: if there's a screaming baby, they'll downgrade it to a misdemeanor.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: They're like murder one, No, but her kid was crying,
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: so we'll just call it manslaughter.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: You know, I haven't done the appropriate experimental like design
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to test that hypothesis. I mean I can imagine it
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: going the other way. Sometimes baby screaming just make people angry.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I could imagine, you know, somebody being like, no, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: want to write you a ticket for an extra five
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: miles an hour. Because I'm just not happy it's hearing
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this baby screaming. So I wouldn't want to risk it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: But what do you think, Well, I've planned on that. Actually,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: maybe the greatest crime I've committed that I haven't been
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: caught for is importing illegal cheeses. You know, we used
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: to go back and forth discern all the time when
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: our kids were young, and we would come back from
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: friends and they'd be our favorite cheeses and we'd want
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: to have them, and so we've packed them in our
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: suitcase even though they're illegal to import. And our plan
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: was always if we get searched, you know, just rely
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: on our toddlers to cry and scream and to get
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: us out of it. So I'm glad to hear that
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: works sometimes. That's great what I forgot.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I also committed dairy related crime.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I was in Norway during the butter shortage that happened
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a while ago. It was like some import roles and
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: there wasn't enough butter, and so me and the folks
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: that I was working with, we snuck across the border
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: to Sweden and bought a bunch of butter and smuggled
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: it back across for our dinner. I also have engaged
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: in dairy related crimes.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I did not realize today's podcast was going to be
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: about international dairy smuggling, but there we go.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: There you go. It may or may not come up again,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: or maybe that was just.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Us And maybe in the future of folks in space
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: settlements are going to be smuggling cheeses and butters from
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: one habitat to another.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Those are going to be some stinky cheeses if you're
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: taking them from Earth and they've got a six month
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: transit though, but some people are into that. But these
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: are some sort of complicated situations. If somebody is committing
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: crimes on Mars, what's the right court for that to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: be tried in? And what happens if you have people
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: from different countries even now, like it's complicated when you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: have people committing crimes against one another and they're from
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: different countries, especially if they're in a place like Antarctica
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: that's supposed to, you know, belong to no nation. But
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that's just the tip of the ethical iceberg for stuff
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: that needs to get dealt with. And so today we've
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: got this amazing guest who can talk about loads of
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: different ethical problems associated with why we go to space,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: how many people we send to space.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: There's just a lot to think about.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: That's right, and so these are really fun questions that
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: we do need to think about before we build out
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: humanity's future into space. But before we hear from an
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: expert who's thought a lot about this and written an
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: excellent book on the topic. We were curious what tricky topics
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: the person on the street anticipated we might run into
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: when we decide to settle space.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: I think the ethical problems of all the bodies were
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: going to harm exposing to space environments. I think probably
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: the ethics of international law are going to be really bad.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: They're already bad on the oceans. So space is just
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: space ocean, but worse. I mean, there's just the ongoing
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: problem which is not new to space, but space worse
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: where we take actions that have huge implications for like
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: way later human generations, you know, and we're not always
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: doing right by people to generations down the road, much
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: less one hundred.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Generations down the road.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: And so I would really hope that we're thinking at
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: least one hundred gen down the road when we do
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: space stuff.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: The allocation of resources, who do.
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: You say first, if there's a disaster, be it like
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: during Space Traveler, once you actually land on the planet
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: they're aiming for, Like, do you prioritize your engineers and
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: scientists to people who can actually pet things running?
• 7:47
  Speaker 6: Do you protire to your children the women who you
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: plan to have children with, you know? Do you just
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: draw straws and help for the best? Another one, what
• 7:57
  Speaker 6: do you do if you run into any indigenous people
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: you get there? And also when do people become what
• 8:03
  Speaker 6: we consider indigenous?
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: You know, like if somebody landed on the planet fifty
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: or one hundred years before, did they have a bare
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: claim despite whatever government have decleared on the way there?
• 8:15
  Speaker 7: The value of.
• 8:16
  Speaker 6: Human lives and the cost benefits out of exploring space.
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: One I think has to do with economic class, and
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: I think the disparity between poor and rich, for example,
• 8:32
  Speaker 7: would be even greater than it is based on decisions
• 8:36
  Speaker 7: of who gets to settle in these new colonies. Would
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: it be considered a consequence in sending the poor out
• 8:44
  Speaker 7: there or would it be considered a benefit and the
• 8:47
  Speaker 7: rich would go out there? Either way, I think would
• 8:49
  Speaker 7: disparity would be great and huge. I also think it
• 8:54
  Speaker 7: would cause political tensions as well between countries over who
• 9:02
  Speaker 7: gets to colonize these new areas in space.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: So, Kelly, who did you ask these questions of?
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I asked these questions of friends of mine on Facebook?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I asked who wants to answer some anonymous questions for me?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: And then I texted them the question and they left
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: me a voicemail with the answer.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Definitely a scientific sample for sure.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these are all Kelly's social network answers. None
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: of them cited my book though, so they can't be
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that quote. But no, no, no, I thought these were
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: all great and interesting answers.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: What did you think?
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I think these are pretty well informed. They would
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: be better informed if they'd read your excellent book, of course,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: but they give us a good preview for what kind
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: of things people are thinking about, what kind of tricky
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: questions there are when humanity decides to move into the stars.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And if you would like us to expand out past
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Kelly's social network, please feel free to get in touch
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: with us at questions at danielant Kelly dot org.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: We'll send you the questions for future episodes, and you
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: can hear your voice on the We.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Would love to have your voice featured on the show.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: All right, so, without further ado, show, we invite Erica
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: onto the show.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Let's do it all right, here we go.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we have doctor Erica Nesvold. She is
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: an astrophysicist and a developer for Universe Sandbox, which she
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: calls astronomy educational software masquerading as a video game I'm in.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: She made a.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Podcast called Making New Worlds where she interviewed a bunch
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: of experts from a variety of different backgrounds about questions
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: related to ethics and justice in space, and expanded those
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: conversations into a book called Off Earth Ethical Questions and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Quandaries for Living in Outer Space. She also, because apparently
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: she can do everything, co founded a nonprofit called the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Just Space Alliance, which advocates for a more inclusive and
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: ethical future in space while also striving to make the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: world more just and equitable back here on Earth today.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being on.
• 10:57
  Speaker 8: The show, Erica, Thank you for having me.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It's good to be chatting with you again. We've met
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: irl once, which was super fun. It was fun, Yes,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: talking about how people should maybe take birth in space
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit more seriously, or that was the part
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that I remembered most strongly.
• 11:12
  Speaker 8: That's right.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's start with ethics around going to space
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: at all. So when I was getting involved in this literature,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I found a lot of arguments that weren't super convincing.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So let's start with some of the arguments that you
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: think are least convincing, and then work our way up
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to the argument that you think is the most convincing
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: for why we should be settling space.
• 11:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean this is sort of where I got
• 11:32
  Speaker 8: into these questions in the first place. I always been
• 11:34
  Speaker 8: a big fan of space and even a big fan
• 11:37
  Speaker 8: of human space expiation and settlement, and so I've been
• 11:40
  Speaker 8: sort of steeped in these space settlement advocacy rhetoric since
• 11:44
  Speaker 8: I was a kid. And then I started really digging
• 11:46
  Speaker 8: into it and thinking about whether I agree with all
• 11:48
  Speaker 8: of these arguments, and I started off my book really
• 11:51
  Speaker 8: digging into them because they come in a few different flavors.
• 11:54
  Speaker 8: There's the people who say that we need to go
• 11:57
  Speaker 8: to space so that we don't have all of our
• 11:59
  Speaker 8: eggs in one back. We need to become a multiplanetary
• 12:01
  Speaker 8: species because our planet where we all live is potentially
• 12:05
  Speaker 8: a weak point. It's fragile. We've seen species get wiped
• 12:08
  Speaker 8: out here before through the dinosaurs and various different climate changes,
• 12:13
  Speaker 8: and we're more and more aware all the time of
• 12:15
  Speaker 8: all of the different things that could kill off all
• 12:17
  Speaker 8: the humans, most of which rely on the humans being
• 12:20
  Speaker 8: all in the same place. So if we go to
• 12:22
  Speaker 8: different planets and spread out, then we've got to backup
• 12:25
  Speaker 8: if Earth's biosphere collapses. And to me, I find that
• 12:29
  Speaker 8: one to be the most convincing argument. Unfortunately, it's also
• 12:32
  Speaker 8: a very powerful emotional argument, because then if you have
• 12:36
  Speaker 8: any sort of pushback against either space settlement as a
• 12:39
  Speaker 8: whole or specific parts of space settlement, or if you
• 12:43
  Speaker 8: just say, for example, maybe we should slow down space
• 12:45
  Speaker 8: settlement and think about what we're doing here, the opposition
• 12:48
  Speaker 8: to that tends to be, oh, do you want all
• 12:49
  Speaker 8: humans to die?
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: Then?
• 12:51
  Speaker 8: So that sort of false dichotomy where your criticisms are
• 12:54
  Speaker 8: on one side and on the other side is the
• 12:56
  Speaker 8: extinction of the human race. It makes it hard to
• 12:58
  Speaker 8: have reasonable conversations. But then beyond that, there's some more
• 13:02
  Speaker 8: interesting and also very emotional arguments. People who argue that
• 13:06
  Speaker 8: we have to expand always and continuously without stopping, because
• 13:10
  Speaker 8: otherwise our culture or our scientific knowledge. If we stop growing,
• 13:14
  Speaker 8: that collapses, We stagnate, we stop knowing how to invent
• 13:17
  Speaker 8: new things, we stop knowing how to do art. And
• 13:20
  Speaker 8: that's the problem with pop music these days, is not
• 13:23
  Speaker 8: enough expansion. And not only is this just a very
• 13:27
  Speaker 8: common and often recycled argument you hear between generations a
• 13:32
  Speaker 8: lot about what's wrong with the kids these days, but
• 13:34
  Speaker 8: this is also the kind of argument that you've seen
• 13:37
  Speaker 8: throughout history, especially in the US. There's an argument that
• 13:40
  Speaker 8: once the frontier of European settlement reached the west coast
• 13:44
  Speaker 8: of the US and the frontier in a way, that
• 13:45
  Speaker 8: America somehow became less of itself because our culture had
• 13:49
  Speaker 8: been built on having a frontier, and so we have
• 13:51
  Speaker 8: to find this new frontier out in space. I don't
• 13:54
  Speaker 8: find that one particularly convincing for a number of reasons.
• 13:57
  Speaker 8: I also think that the idea that we need to
• 14:00
  Speaker 8: always expand continuously or something bad will happen leads us
• 14:04
  Speaker 8: to making bad decisions, trying to grow too fast, trying
• 14:06
  Speaker 8: to consume too fast, and that we should in fact
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: be learning how to balance how to live sustainably with
• 14:12
  Speaker 8: our environment. And there's plenty of cultures who are more
• 14:14
  Speaker 8: focused on that, So maybe we should amplify their voices.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: You don't think we need space cowboys to stay who
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: we are.
• 14:21
  Speaker 8: I mean, I don't have a problem with the esthetic.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Space cowboy rhinestones on the spaceship kind of thing.
• 14:27
  Speaker 8: Listen, you're just selling on it. The more you talk
• 14:29
  Speaker 8: about What.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: I love about those arguments, though, is that the people
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: who are making those stagnation arguments, and I'll just go
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: ahead and say that I do have Rubbert Zubert in
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: mind right now, are also the ones who are like, well,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: now is the time because SpaceX is dropping the cost
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of launching the space and it's like all of this
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: amazing technological growth, and like how AI is helping us?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Is what's getting us there? And so where is the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: stagnation that they're talking about anyway?
• 14:53
  Speaker 8: Okay, no, no, that's fair. I mean the problem here,
• 14:55
  Speaker 8: and the problem with a lot of these arguments is
• 14:56
  Speaker 8: even if you have people off living on the space
• 14:58
  Speaker 8: frontier somewhere, there's still more some of us are going
• 15:00
  Speaker 8: to be living on Earth needing to learn how to
• 15:02
  Speaker 8: live sustainably with the Earth. So we have to figure
• 15:04
  Speaker 8: out that part anyway. So then another big one that
• 15:07
  Speaker 8: you see a lot, especially and really strong space settlement
• 15:10
  Speaker 8: advocates is the idea that it's our destiny, that it's
• 15:13
  Speaker 8: not just fulfilling our biological or psychological or whatever drive
• 15:17
  Speaker 8: to go out and explore and expand, but it's somehow inevitable,
• 15:21
  Speaker 8: and if we try to stop ourselves, we're working against nature.
• 15:24
  Speaker 8: This is a to me, a much less strong argument.
• 15:26
  Speaker 8: Tends to go with very poetic language, so it's appealing,
• 15:29
  Speaker 8: you know, emotionally in that sense, and you hear this
• 15:32
  Speaker 8: the most and the more flowery marketing talk. But I
• 15:34
  Speaker 8: don't think it's a good rational argument. And often when
• 15:38
  Speaker 8: I'm talking to space settlement advocates, I try to point
• 15:40
  Speaker 8: that out to them. I'm like, listen, you've got a
• 15:42
  Speaker 8: great little, you know, video that you've put together with
• 15:45
  Speaker 8: stirring music and images of space vistas and talk about
• 15:49
  Speaker 8: how it's humanity's destiny. But that's actually not the best
• 15:52
  Speaker 8: way to sell it to people who aren't sure. You
• 15:54
  Speaker 8: need to explain how space settlement's going to benefit everyone,
• 15:58
  Speaker 8: including the people back on Earth, and you can't use
• 16:01
  Speaker 8: this sort of argument from nature, because even if it
• 16:04
  Speaker 8: were true that we have some sort of innate drive
• 16:06
  Speaker 8: to expand and explore, which, as far as I understand,
• 16:09
  Speaker 8: the science is still out on that. We don't just
• 16:12
  Speaker 8: do things because our genetics tell us to like you
• 16:15
  Speaker 8: and so have evolved past that and we have to
• 16:17
  Speaker 8: think about our decisions instead of just saying, oh, well,
• 16:20
  Speaker 8: you know, it's our innate drive, so we don't need
• 16:22
  Speaker 8: to examine this plane at all.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Well, can I jump in and speak up for that
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: irrational motivation because that's the one that resonates the most
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: with me, and rational or not, Like, I want to
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: know what's out there in the universe. I want us
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: to explore the edges of the galaxy. I want us
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to go from galaxy to galaxy.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: And it seems to me like step one of that
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: dream is to go from planet to planet, right, And
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: so my desire doesn't come from like a genetic disposition
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: to conquer every square inch of land on every surface,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: but just to know how the universe works, Like I
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: feel like it would be a shame for us to
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: be trapped on this rock for ever, and I don't
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: know how it's going to happen, but eventually has to
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: happen if we're going to figure stuff out. Maybe that's irrational,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: but can't irrational motivations drive our decision sometimes? I mean,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: my whole research program is probably useless and impractical and
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: therefore irrational. Does that mean that we shouldn't do art
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: and culture and stuff like that?
• 17:19
  Speaker 8: To be honest, I have the exact same drive. I
• 17:21
  Speaker 8: also would love to be out there and want us
• 17:23
  Speaker 8: to be exploring and want us to poke around and
• 17:25
  Speaker 8: see what's going on, And that certainly motivates me as
• 17:28
  Speaker 8: a scientist. And there's nothing wrong with emotional motivations. Let
• 17:31
  Speaker 8: me say it that way instead of irrational. The key here,
• 17:33
  Speaker 8: I think is not to try to use an emotional
• 17:36
  Speaker 8: argument as if it's a rational argument, I think. And
• 17:41
  Speaker 8: the other key I think is it's important to identify
• 17:43
  Speaker 8: when there's multiple motivations going on, especially if your individual
• 17:47
  Speaker 8: motivation is maybe different from the organization's argument that they're
• 17:51
  Speaker 8: poting forward. I think a lot of people are very
• 17:53
  Speaker 8: driven by these emotional feelings that they want to be
• 17:56
  Speaker 8: out there, they want to see humanity out there, and
• 17:58
  Speaker 8: then they go off and try to cook up a
• 18:00
  Speaker 8: good marketing case for it that doesn't acknowledge that they're
• 18:02
  Speaker 8: being driven emotionally, I think we need both.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: And let me be clear, I don't want to be
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: out there. I want humanity to be out there, but
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: I'm staying here on Earth like I'm a total wimp.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: There's no way you're getting me in the spaceship.
• 18:14
  Speaker 8: And the other important thing, like I'm not trying to
• 18:16
  Speaker 8: say some arguments count and some don't. I think it's
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: just really important to figure out what your motivations are,
• 18:22
  Speaker 8: not just because then you can decide, like the binary
• 18:25
  Speaker 8: yes or no, should you do this? But our motivations
• 18:27
  Speaker 8: will drive our decision making in every aspect of our planning,
• 18:31
  Speaker 8: and so it's important to be very self aware of
• 18:33
  Speaker 8: that and aware of the people that you're working with
• 18:35
  Speaker 8: so that you don't end up having an obstacle in
• 18:38
  Speaker 8: your decision making because you didn't realize one of you
• 18:40
  Speaker 8: is trying to make a trillion dollars from space mining
• 18:43
  Speaker 8: and the other one just wants to retire in space.
• 18:45
  Speaker 8: That's going to lead to some different decision making.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I think most people probably feel like space exploration
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: is overall good, and maybe there's different motivations. And I
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: totally agree with you that we should be upfront about
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: what they are, But I feel like the context for
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: understanding which these arguments are good or bad or where
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: they come from is that there are arguments on the
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: other side, right, that there are reasons to not just
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: rush headlong into space exploration. And that might come as
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: a surprise to some folks, Like what's an argument for
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: not settling space? What's an example of a reason why
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: we should not be building colonies on Mars Organmede.
• 19:21
  Speaker 8: That's a very important question, and I actually think that
• 19:24
  Speaker 8: all of these arguments for space have their opposite argument.
• 19:28
  Speaker 8: So one argument for space settlement of space expression that
• 19:30
  Speaker 8: I didn't list is just that we could make money
• 19:32
  Speaker 8: doing it. But it also costs an enormous amount of
• 19:35
  Speaker 8: money to do any of these projects, especially the ones
• 19:38
  Speaker 8: that are being proposed for the future. And so you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 8: from a very pragmatic financial perspective, we can say, as
• 19:45
  Speaker 8: a species, as humanity, or as individual investors, is it
• 19:49
  Speaker 8: worth the huge amount of time and money that we
• 19:51
  Speaker 8: need to invest. Will we get that back or will
• 19:54
  Speaker 8: we just kind of be pouring it down the drain
• 19:56
  Speaker 8: and then a few rockets will explode in the industry
• 19:58
  Speaker 8: will collapse. That's a decision.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Should we be building more elementary schools or funding space explorations.
• 20:04
  Speaker 8: Yeah, is there something else we could be putting that
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: money and brain power into on Earth that would help
• 20:11
  Speaker 8: better ensure that humanity is going to survive, better ensure
• 20:14
  Speaker 8: that people on Earth will have better lives.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: More parasitology grants, for example, exactly.
• 20:19
  Speaker 8: The most important.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: That's right. I'm glad we all agree.
• 20:23
  Speaker 8: And on the existential risk idea, the idea that if
• 20:25
  Speaker 8: we don't escape the planet, then our species risks being
• 20:28
  Speaker 8: killed off, has its reverse argument as well. There are
• 20:31
  Speaker 8: people Daniel Dudney is one of them. If he wrote
• 20:34
  Speaker 8: a book called Dark Skies in the past few years
• 20:35
  Speaker 8: who argues that trying to settle space will increase the
• 20:39
  Speaker 8: risk that we will kill ourselves off. Because he makes
• 20:42
  Speaker 8: this political science argument that more activity in space will
• 20:47
  Speaker 8: mean more nations arguing with each other about what's happening
• 20:51
  Speaker 8: in space, and more weapons in space, potentially weapons of
• 20:55
  Speaker 8: mass destruction. We could destabilize the global balance and end
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: up in a nuclear war that would kill us off
• 21:00
  Speaker 8: because we tried to leave the Earth, and so there
• 21:03
  Speaker 8: are risks. There are risks that going to space could
• 21:07
  Speaker 8: lead to nuclear war. There's also just risks that the
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: opportunity cost, we could be spending that money elsewhere. There's
• 21:13
  Speaker 8: risks that if we do it too fast without deliberate thought,
• 21:16
  Speaker 8: that will just make a mess of things, and that
• 21:19
  Speaker 8: maybe it would be better for everyone in space and
• 21:21
  Speaker 8: on Earth if we took it a little slower. And
• 21:23
  Speaker 8: so I've heard all these arguments, and I think it's
• 21:25
  Speaker 8: really important. Even if you're someone like me who thinks
• 21:28
  Speaker 8: I'm pro space settlement, I think it's it's important to
• 21:31
  Speaker 8: listen to all these arguments, including the people who say no,
• 21:33
  Speaker 8: we're not ready to go to space, because they tend
• 21:35
  Speaker 8: to have the best and most observant criticisms of the plans,
• 21:39
  Speaker 8: so they can poke holes in your big plans, which
• 21:41
  Speaker 8: is important.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Well, that makes sense as much as I'm, for example,
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: an advocate of exploring the universe and potentially meeting aliens.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Is also the risk that if you advertise your location
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: to meet aliens, they're like, oh, why don't we come
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: and kill you and eat you or nuq from orbit.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: So yeah, absolutely there are risks.
• 21:56
  Speaker 8: There well, and even scientists. I'm a scientist too, I'm
• 21:58
  Speaker 8: motivated by no and stuff. But we have plenty of history,
• 22:02
  Speaker 8: especially in non astronomy fields of examples where learning stuff
• 22:06
  Speaker 8: and being able to build new stuff led us to
• 22:08
  Speaker 8: cause a lot of harm from the discoveries and the
• 22:10
  Speaker 8: technologies made, which to me isn't an argument to not
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: do science, but it's an argument to think about all
• 22:16
  Speaker 8: the ethics and human rights stuff at the same time
• 22:19
  Speaker 8: that we're doing the science and technology.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: The rockets that took us to the Moon are the
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: same rockets that we're being dropped on England during World
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: War two and are puplicated historically exactly.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: So we're not saying, hey, space is bad, our exploration
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: is bad. We're saying there's nuance here. We should understand
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: the motivation of our arguments. We should acknowledge that there
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: are two sides of this, and we should proceed carefully
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: rather than just rushing headlong into it and launching stuff
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: because we can.
• 22:45
  Speaker 8: That is my arch Other arguments exist.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable to assume that probably this stuff
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: is going to move forward at some point no matter
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: what the argument is. Right now, most of the people
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: who have been to space are highly trained, highly fit
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: astronauts which were picked by governments or super rich people,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: or the people picked by super rich people as space
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: tourism kind of opens up. Right now, the sieve seems
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to be like money or being you know, cream of
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the crop intellectual, physical, But presumably settlements at some point
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: are going to be just the rest of us, people
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like me who would never get it, who could never
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: afford it, and could never like get picked by NASA.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So when that stage comes, what are the important things
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: that we need to think about for who is going
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: to be there in the first settlement and how we
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: pick these people?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: And it sounds complicated.
• 23:51
  Speaker 8: Yeah, deciding who even gets to go to space is
• 23:53
  Speaker 8: a problem we do with now. As you said, the
• 23:55
  Speaker 8: increase in private spaceflight really felt like a huge opening
• 23:58
  Speaker 8: of the field because suddenly you just have to be
• 24:00
  Speaker 8: a fit military test pilot or picked by NASA. Now
• 24:03
  Speaker 8: we have this whole other set of people who get
• 24:05
  Speaker 8: to go to space, who don't necessarily need to meet
• 24:07
  Speaker 8: the fitness requirements. But this new pool not necessarily that
• 24:11
  Speaker 8: big either, as you point out, it's still pretty limited,
• 24:14
  Speaker 8: and we can think about how we'd want to keep
• 24:16
  Speaker 8: expanding that, and we can think about, well, so the
• 24:20
  Speaker 8: people we've picked so far have been for specific purposes.
• 24:22
  Speaker 8: NASA is trying to accomplish certain missions, mostly science exploration,
• 24:25
  Speaker 8: technology testing. They pick people who can do that. The
• 24:29
  Speaker 8: private space flight people have their own motivations. In this stage,
• 24:32
  Speaker 8: it seems to be just raw raw space exploration is good.
• 24:35
  Speaker 8: Let's send the first whatever person to space on private
• 24:38
  Speaker 8: space flight. That's great. But if we were going to
• 24:40
  Speaker 8: build a space settlement that we wanted it to last,
• 24:43
  Speaker 8: then that leads to bigger questions. That's much different than
• 24:46
  Speaker 8: what NASA is trying to do, and so we have
• 24:48
  Speaker 8: to ask questions like, maybe we don't need the strict
• 24:51
  Speaker 8: physical and medical requirements because people are going to age
• 24:55
  Speaker 8: and get sick and injured in space, so we'll have
• 24:57
  Speaker 8: to deal with that anyway. Maybe we need to think
• 24:59
  Speaker 8: about reproductive fitness if we want to have reproduction in
• 25:03
  Speaker 8: space and perpetuated space colony with multiple generations. But then
• 25:07
  Speaker 8: asking prospective space settlers about their fertility and their interest
• 25:11
  Speaker 8: in having children. That goes against a lot of our
• 25:13
  Speaker 8: ethics and our arguments for inclusivity today, and that leads
• 25:18
  Speaker 8: to a lot of murky questions as well. And then
• 25:20
  Speaker 8: there's just who do you pick? Do you pick a
• 25:22
  Speaker 8: bunch of astrophysicists I'm in a fan of that plant,
• 25:25
  Speaker 8: but I also would like to be living on Mars
• 25:27
  Speaker 8: with maybe some dentists and plumbers and teachers for the
• 25:30
  Speaker 8: kids and artists as well. And so all of these
• 25:34
  Speaker 8: questions get us back to questions about, well, what kind
• 25:37
  Speaker 8: of person do we actually value in society which has
• 25:40
  Speaker 8: this dark other side of what kind of person don't
• 25:42
  Speaker 8: revalue in society? And do we want to intentionally exclude them?
• 25:45
  Speaker 8: What kind of a were creating a dystopia here? Accidentally?
• 25:49
  Speaker 8: There's tons of questions like that.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: It's really interesting how this stuff is decided. I feel
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: like a lot of times in brand new technologies, we
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: have decisions being made mostly government right funding agencies because
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: there isn't initially a commercial return, but eventually things get
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: picked up by private industry, and then decisions are being
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: made basically because of capitalism. Right, So where do you
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: think we are there and how should we be making
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: these decisions? Should we let capitalism decide basically who gets
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: to go live on Mars? Or should we have like
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: you know, table of experts and government advisors figuring this
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: stuff out for the benefit of society as a whole.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Would it happen if it's led by the government, like,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: at some point it needs to become capitalism driven, I
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: feel like, but I don't really know anything about it.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Tell me what's your thoughts about that transition for space settlement.
• 26:40
  Speaker 8: There's definitely a lot of arguments right now that capitalism
• 26:42
  Speaker 8: is the only way to get us into space because
• 26:44
  Speaker 8: you need that sort of incentive to innovate and to
• 26:46
  Speaker 8: take risks, and government didn't have it, which is why
• 26:49
  Speaker 8: we're not all living in space right now, so capitalism
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: is the way to do it. I think that those
• 26:53
  Speaker 8: arguments are so popular right now because capitalism is what's
• 26:56
  Speaker 8: driving current space exploration, along with the existing government. They
• 27:00
  Speaker 8: haven't gone away, but I'm not convinced that they're going
• 27:03
  Speaker 8: to finish the job. I'm not convinced that capitalism is
• 27:06
  Speaker 8: going to be what gets us into space. And I
• 27:08
  Speaker 8: think it's possible that generations from now, what finally gets
• 27:11
  Speaker 8: us a permanent space settlement is going to be some
• 27:13
  Speaker 8: other political and economic system, and by then they'll be saying, well,
• 27:17
  Speaker 8: you know, communism is the only way we could have
• 27:18
  Speaker 8: done this, and this is why we need a tyrannical government.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 27:21
  Speaker 8: They could have their own argument for why their system
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: is perfect. And the interesting thing is that each of
• 27:26
  Speaker 8: these systems is going to come up with a different
• 27:28
  Speaker 8: way to pick who gets to go live in space.
• 27:31
  Speaker 8: So for now, maybe it's well, whoever can pay, whoever
• 27:34
  Speaker 8: can pay for a ticket on a SpaceX passenger starliner
• 27:38
  Speaker 8: to Mars gets to go. We don't care whether their
• 27:41
  Speaker 8: dentists or not. We don't care that maybe it'll be
• 27:45
  Speaker 8: a bunch of particularly wealthy people and none of them
• 27:47
  Speaker 8: know how to farm, for example, and that could lead
• 27:50
  Speaker 8: to its own troubles. This is the sort of thing
• 27:51
  Speaker 8: we've seen historically happen on Earth. If you had a
• 27:54
  Speaker 8: bunch of rich colonists and nobody who knows how to
• 27:56
  Speaker 8: do the work. That causes a lot of problems, or
• 27:59
  Speaker 8: it could end up we swing back towards some sort
• 28:01
  Speaker 8: of international government efforts, and they take a long time
• 28:05
  Speaker 8: to decide who to send, and they have a lot
• 28:07
  Speaker 8: of arguments and committees about it, and they try to
• 28:09
  Speaker 8: balance everything fairly. And there's other risks with that as well,
• 28:14
  Speaker 8: and including the fact that maybe that goes slower than
• 28:17
  Speaker 8: doing it in a capitalist way. So notice here that
• 28:19
  Speaker 8: I'm not saying here's the correct way for it. I'm
• 28:21
  Speaker 8: saying this is another example of how your motivation will
• 28:24
  Speaker 8: drive the choices that you make. It could come down to,
• 28:28
  Speaker 8: we've developed all the technology, but haven't invested in a
• 28:31
  Speaker 8: space settlement yet. But now the asteroid's coming and we
• 28:34
  Speaker 8: have to evacuate some amount of people to perpetuate the
• 28:37
  Speaker 8: human species. And then you have all sorts of what
• 28:40
  Speaker 8: we call lifeboat ethics Titanic level, like the ship disaster
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: Titanic level, with decisions about who we put on the
• 28:47
  Speaker 8: lifeboat and what's fair, who do we save, how do
• 28:50
  Speaker 8: we make sure that it's enough dentists, whatnot, and so
• 28:53
  Speaker 8: that would cause a whole different set of decisions.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I love the dentists are your standard like pretty use
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: but not very exciting kind of categories.
• 29:02
  Speaker 8: It's really important to me. The dentists are in space.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: We love you dentists. It's important. But I want to
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: follow up on the historical comments you made about what
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: we've learned, Like clearly we've done this kind of stuff
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: in the past. You know, we gave away land to
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: people to encourage them to move west, or we stole
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: land and then gave it to people, and even further back,
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: kings and queens funded expeditions to the New World because
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: they thought there were returns there. What have we learned
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: from our many mistakes and successes in the past.
• 29:31
  Speaker 8: Some of us have learned from over stays is the
• 29:34
  Speaker 8: key I think the benefit we have in thinking about
• 29:37
  Speaker 8: expanding human civilization into space. We have all these case
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: studies to look at lessons learned over the history of
• 29:43
  Speaker 8: the human species, and the benefit we have is that
• 29:45
  Speaker 8: we have all of human history to learn from. So
• 29:47
  Speaker 8: to me, it's a waste when we don't do that.
• 29:50
  Speaker 8: And at the moment, I can say from experience that scientists,
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: at least in the US, don't get a lot of
• 29:55
  Speaker 8: education in history beyond you know, basic grade school level.
• 29:59
  Speaker 8: We tend to just beyond it and think it's irrelevant.
• 30:01
  Speaker 8: But now we're trying to, you know, reinvent colonial sized societies,
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: and without having a reference, we're just going to repeat
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: all the same mistakes. That's my concern, and this is
• 30:11
  Speaker 8: part of what got me going with the podcast I created.
• 30:13
  Speaker 8: I decided maybe I should talk to actual colonial historians
• 30:17
  Speaker 8: and ask them their thoughts, and you know, I should
• 30:19
  Speaker 8: read up because as an American, this is mostly the
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: colonial history that I think about. So there's examples in
• 30:25
  Speaker 8: the colonization of North America, places like Jamestown, which is
• 30:28
  Speaker 8: a colony that failed a bunch before it finally stuck.
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: And the historians I read this, a lot went wrong
• 30:35
  Speaker 8: with Jamestown. One of the issues is that they had
• 30:37
  Speaker 8: a lot of more well off colonists and not a
• 30:41
  Speaker 8: lot of laborers to do the work, and so they
• 30:43
  Speaker 8: struggled to do the basic work. They struggled to satisfy
• 30:46
  Speaker 8: the company that sent them. The company wanted them to
• 30:49
  Speaker 8: make stuff for them to sell, cut lumber, et cetera.
• 30:52
  Speaker 8: Didn't give them enough time to build their farms and such.
• 30:54
  Speaker 8: That's something you can imagining happening in a space settlement.
• 30:58
  Speaker 8: All sorts of lessons that we can learn from the
• 31:00
  Speaker 8: pass and not just to North America but around the world.
• 31:02
  Speaker 8: And it's just important that we bothered to do that
• 31:04
  Speaker 8: because it's going to save us so much time and
• 31:06
  Speaker 8: pain to at least recognize what could go wrong before
• 31:10
  Speaker 8: we repeat the same path in space.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: What do you think are the most relevant historical analog So,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: like you know, Daniel mentioned settling of the West, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I have read people who would love to see like
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a space Homestead Act sort of thing. I read a
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: bunch of that literature and then I decided, well, this
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be a big part of a city
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: on Mars because Antarctica and the deep seabed are more analogous.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: But what do you think, And of course, if you
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: talk to a lot of space settlement people, they'll tell
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you that the Outer Space Treaty is going to get
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: thrown out the window and we can have a Homestead Act.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So what do you think is the most interesting to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: study historically as it relates to settlement.
• 31:42
  Speaker 8: I think there's two big categories of it. One, I
• 31:44
  Speaker 8: think we should be looking at the Western countries colonization
• 31:49
  Speaker 8: of as much of the world as they could grab,
• 31:50
  Speaker 8: and the history of that, what they tried, what went
• 31:54
  Speaker 8: well and what didn't, and in particularly what went well
• 31:57
  Speaker 8: for them and didn't, but all also what went well
• 32:01
  Speaker 8: and didn't for the less powerful people in those societies,
• 32:03
  Speaker 8: obviously the indigenous people.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Over time?
• 32:06
  Speaker 8: What is colonization with that particular attitude of colonization, What
• 32:09
  Speaker 8: does that do to the environment, What does that do
• 32:11
  Speaker 8: for future generations, what does that do for marginalized labor workforces?
• 32:15
  Speaker 8: And how can we not go that way in the future.
• 32:18
  Speaker 8: I think it's also really crucial, and I don't think
• 32:20
  Speaker 8: there's enough of this yet. And talks about space ethics,
• 32:23
  Speaker 8: I think it's really crucial that we learn from the
• 32:26
  Speaker 8: parts of human history where humans migrated and expanded into
• 32:29
  Speaker 8: places where no humans were living yet much earlier than colonization,
• 32:33
  Speaker 8: learn how that went well and didn't because Western people
• 32:37
  Speaker 8: didn't invent moving to a new place and building a
• 32:39
  Speaker 8: new community there, They just did it once everyone already
• 32:43
  Speaker 8: had inhabited those places and decided to do it all
• 32:45
  Speaker 8: over again to grab their resources. And so learning more from,
• 32:49
  Speaker 8: for example, indigenous cultures that expanded across North America, South America,
• 32:53
  Speaker 8: Australia and how they learned to coexist in a new, desolate, isolated,
• 33:00
  Speaker 8: harsh environment, and how not only just the practical how
• 33:05
  Speaker 8: did they interact with the environments, but how their cultures
• 33:07
  Speaker 8: developed around sustainability or settling conflicts within their communities and
• 33:12
  Speaker 8: with other communities. I think that's all really valuable because
• 33:15
  Speaker 8: they have had communities and societies in these places for
• 33:19
  Speaker 8: tens of thousands of years, much longer than postcolonization era
• 33:23
  Speaker 8: has consisted. And I think there's so much we can
• 33:25
  Speaker 8: learn from how that worked, and to just present an
• 33:28
  Speaker 8: alternative to colonization, because a lot of times, if you say,
• 33:31
  Speaker 8: maybe we don't want to use this wild West colonization
• 33:34
  Speaker 8: model in space, Westerns kind of shrug and go, okay, well,
• 33:37
  Speaker 8: you know, so you want me to not go to space,
• 33:40
  Speaker 8: there are actually other options here.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: So I've read a bunch of astronaut memoirs, and reading
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: those memoirs makes it very clear to me that astronauts
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: are humans too, and that humans I know, right, and
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that humans go to space and they come back and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: still do bad human things sometimes, which makes me wonder
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: what is governance and crime and punishment and stuff like
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that going to look like on a Martian settlement. What
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: are your thoughts who's going to be in control in
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: an early settlement when a crime happens, and what should
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: we do about that stuff?
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 34:14
  Speaker 8: I think this is another question that hasn't been studied
• 34:16
  Speaker 8: enough except by the reliable science fiction writers. We've been
• 34:20
  Speaker 8: thinking about this stuff for ages. We think a lot
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: about how we're going to survive in space and the
• 34:25
  Speaker 8: legal stuff about you know, the Homestead Act, who gets
• 34:27
  Speaker 8: to own mars et cetera. But I don't think we've
• 34:30
  Speaker 8: thought enough about the idea that, you know, hell is
• 34:32
  Speaker 8: other people, right, and so maybe our biggest dangers in
• 34:36
  Speaker 8: space will be the people that we go up there with.
• 34:38
  Speaker 8: And that's the extreme argument for it. There's also just
• 34:42
  Speaker 8: the more minor. You know, what if you just have
• 34:44
  Speaker 8: a disagreement with a neighbor over something, whose turn it
• 34:48
  Speaker 8: is to take out the trash, or you stole my
• 34:51
  Speaker 8: space suit, whatnot? What do we do about it? And
• 34:54
  Speaker 8: here on Earth we have laws, we have legal systems,
• 34:56
  Speaker 8: we have various different ways to address calm, but we
• 35:01
  Speaker 8: need something in space. We can't just assume that everyone
• 35:03
  Speaker 8: will just perfectly get along. But it's unclear about how
• 35:07
  Speaker 8: a lot of that's going to work. The Outer Space
• 35:08
  Speaker 8: Treaty says people in space have to follow the laws
• 35:11
  Speaker 8: of their countries back home. That sort of handles the
• 35:14
  Speaker 8: issue of whose laws do we follow, But it's going
• 35:17
  Speaker 8: to get more complicated as people are living more long term,
• 35:20
  Speaker 8: especially if we move farther and farther away where it
• 35:22
  Speaker 8: takes a long time to call back to Earth. You know,
• 35:25
  Speaker 8: unless you've brought a judge and lawyers with you, you're going
• 35:27
  Speaker 8: to have to settle your disagreements where you are. And
• 35:30
  Speaker 8: then there's the bigger question, Okay, what happens if you
• 35:33
  Speaker 8: decide that someone is guilty of whatever you've decided as
• 35:35
  Speaker 8: a crime in your space settlement, what do you do
• 35:38
  Speaker 8: with them? And when I ask people this, their knee
• 35:42
  Speaker 8: jerk reaction is to say throw them out the airlock,
• 35:45
  Speaker 8: because that is what all the movies do. But if
• 35:50
  Speaker 8: you push a little farther, you can usually get people
• 35:52
  Speaker 8: to agree that maybe not every crime should carry capital punishment.
• 35:57
  Speaker 8: And then the next thing that they usually say, well,
• 36:00
  Speaker 8: we'll put them in space prison. But that also is tricky.
• 36:04
  Speaker 8: We don't have space prisons yet. We would have to
• 36:06
  Speaker 8: build them. That's going to take a lot of time, effort, money,
• 36:11
  Speaker 8: space like literal room, especially if we're doing something like
• 36:15
  Speaker 8: digging underground tunnels to live on Mars or something a
• 36:18
  Speaker 8: lot to dig another tunnel. You have to feed them
• 36:21
  Speaker 8: and give them air and radiation protection and water and
• 36:25
  Speaker 8: heat power. Someone has to guard them. Maybe you've removed
• 36:28
  Speaker 8: that person from the labor pool and maybe you don't
• 36:31
  Speaker 8: have a lot of labor to go around. Is this
• 36:34
  Speaker 8: actually what we want to do? And usually at that
• 36:36
  Speaker 8: point in the conversation, they say, Okay, well, what's the alternative,
• 36:39
  Speaker 8: because this is another case where Americans in particular don't
• 36:42
  Speaker 8: really know of any other way to handle crime because
• 36:45
  Speaker 8: we're a very prison focused culture. But again, there's so
• 36:49
  Speaker 8: many examples on Earth of ways that especially small communities
• 36:54
  Speaker 8: address behavior that's not desired. I called that in their communities,
• 36:59
  Speaker 8: and in a way that makes sure that the victim
• 37:02
  Speaker 8: of a crime feels safe and is made whole, the
• 37:05
  Speaker 8: person who committed the crime is unlikely to do it again,
• 37:09
  Speaker 8: and that the community is as a whole feel safe.
• 37:11
  Speaker 8: And there's ways to do that without building up person.
• 37:14
  Speaker 8: And so that's what I've been encouraging, so that we
• 37:16
  Speaker 8: try to think about that ahead of time, because no
• 37:19
  Speaker 8: matter what we come up with, we need to come
• 37:20
  Speaker 8: up with it ahead of time. We don't want to
• 37:21
  Speaker 8: wait till the last minute here and then have to
• 37:24
  Speaker 8: decide under duress, because I think that'll probably lead to
• 37:28
  Speaker 8: unpleasant outcomes for everyone involved.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Everyone out at airlock.
• 37:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's clean. I guess it always looks
• 37:35
  Speaker 8: really dramatic in the movies. I get the appeal, but
• 37:38
  Speaker 8: that's a quick way to kill everyone off, and that's
• 37:40
  Speaker 8: not usually the goal of a space settlement.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And again, if business is involved, are we giving businesses
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: the right to set laws in territories they control? You know,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: that might make sense, but I feel a little weird
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: about giving Elon Musk right to execute whoever he thinks
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: is not, you know, following his laws.
• 37:59
  Speaker 8: Yeah, everything I was talking about were examples of two
• 38:02
  Speaker 8: people in the community sort of hurting each other. There's
• 38:05
  Speaker 8: also the protections you might need to protect an individual
• 38:07
  Speaker 8: from the community. And that might mean there's an oppressed
• 38:11
  Speaker 8: group and the government of the space settlement is oppressing
• 38:14
  Speaker 8: a minority group, for example, how do we protect those people?
• 38:16
  Speaker 8: It might mean it's a labor workforce that's getting exploited
• 38:19
  Speaker 8: by the company that runs the space settlement. What can
• 38:22
  Speaker 8: they do about it? You can't really quit and go
• 38:24
  Speaker 8: home when you're in a space settlement. It's really probably
• 38:28
  Speaker 8: going to be a lot harder to go on strike
• 38:30
  Speaker 8: or protest if you're in a place where the government
• 38:33
  Speaker 8: or the employer can just turn down the oxygen and
• 38:36
  Speaker 8: make you all go to sleep. And so there's that
• 38:38
  Speaker 8: kind of levels of legal protection needed as well.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: So I was thinking about writing about punishment for a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: city on Mars, and we didn't end up deciding to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: tackle it, but we did read about how you get
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: people in line in communal settings, and like the hutterrightes
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: that's a religious group. They're very insular. They do trade
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: with the outside world, but they have a very elaborate
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: like shunning procedure people who don't follow the rules, where
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: if you're an adult who's not following the rules, sometimes
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: you have to like sleep in the children house as
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: a way of just sort of like showing your temporary demotion.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And in a community where like if you get kicked out,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: you no longer get to see maybe your parents, or
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: your kids, or your wife. Shunning is a very good
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: method of punishment that doesn't require a prison, and it
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: usually is coupled with almost immediately when they repent and
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: stop doing it, you open your arms and welcome them
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: back in, because otherwise, how psychologically awful would it be
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: to be stuck in a community where everybody is shunning
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: you and treating you awfully. Do you have like other
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: examples of how it works in other communities.
• 39:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I think you make a good point there that
• 39:39
  Speaker 8: leaving open the door for redemption and to rejoining the community.
• 39:41
  Speaker 8: Is going to be super vital, because yeah, otherwise the
• 39:44
  Speaker 8: person just can't fit back in and you've lost them,
• 39:46
  Speaker 8: whether you're throwing them out an air locker or just
• 39:48
  Speaker 8: locking them up forever. One of the examples I was
• 39:50
  Speaker 8: given during my podcast was about a community in Ethiopia,
• 39:54
  Speaker 8: and I'm not Ethiopians, so it'll be difficult for me
• 39:57
  Speaker 8: to describe its completely accurately, but she told a beautiful
• 39:59
  Speaker 8: story about how when someone in the community harms someone else,
• 40:02
  Speaker 8: everyone gathers them together under a great tree, and individually,
• 40:05
  Speaker 8: each member of the community goes to this person and
• 40:07
  Speaker 8: it says, do you remember when I broke my leg
• 40:09
  Speaker 8: and you help me bring the crops in? Do you
• 40:10
  Speaker 8: remember when I was sick and you brought me medicine?
• 40:12
  Speaker 8: And reminds the person of how they are a member
• 40:14
  Speaker 8: of the community, a valued member of the community, and
• 40:17
  Speaker 8: that they are still accepted, but that they've done harm
• 40:20
  Speaker 8: and here's how you can address this harm and be
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: welcome back in, which is the sort of thing again
• 40:24
  Speaker 8: as an American, as a Westerner, just sounds too good
• 40:28
  Speaker 8: to be true, like it can't possibly work, But there
• 40:32
  Speaker 8: is a lot of work being done in the US
• 40:34
  Speaker 8: in particular on what's called restorative justice, which is this
• 40:37
  Speaker 8: idea that you can figure out ways to make sure
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: the victim feel safe and is made whole, and make
• 40:42
  Speaker 8: sure that the perpetrator acknowledges and addresses what they've done
• 40:46
  Speaker 8: without prison. It's just so hard to describe what that
• 40:49
  Speaker 8: looks like in very simple terms because it usually takes effort,
• 40:53
  Speaker 8: it takes conversation. The community itself needs to help facilitate
• 40:57
  Speaker 8: that conversation, and it looks different for every crime, in
• 41:00
  Speaker 8: every interaction, and so it's much more complicated than just saying, well,
• 41:06
  Speaker 8: lock them up, but it tends to have better outcomes,
• 41:09
  Speaker 8: and there's a lot of research being done on that
• 41:11
  Speaker 8: in the US right now. I think some of this
• 41:12
  Speaker 8: will get easier in a small community. I think a
• 41:15
  Speaker 8: lot of it is related to culture, and it's hard
• 41:18
  Speaker 8: to predict how a culture of a space settlement is
• 41:22
  Speaker 8: going to evolve away from the culture we have today.
• 41:25
  Speaker 8: Being isolated and being so interdependent on other humans, I
• 41:28
  Speaker 8: think will make things like shunning be a bigger threat
• 41:32
  Speaker 8: and help people not engage in harmful behavior to others.
• 41:35
  Speaker 8: But I don't know. These sci fi authors have imagined
• 41:37
  Speaker 8: it going the other way and have it make us
• 41:39
  Speaker 8: worse people, or make it more likely that some tyrant
• 41:42
  Speaker 8: will take over and keep everyone online. It's not clear
• 41:44
  Speaker 8: yet how it's going to go.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Well, what's the sort of worst crime that's been committed
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: in space so far?
• 41:49
  Speaker 8: I don't think off the top of my head. Kelly
• 41:53
  Speaker 8: can help me hear that there has been anything officially
• 41:56
  Speaker 8: considered a legal crime committed in space so far. There
• 42:00
  Speaker 8: is often pointed to an event with the Skylab crew
• 42:04
  Speaker 8: that was at the time by the newspapers called a
• 42:07
  Speaker 8: strike a protest. It was said that the crew was
• 42:09
  Speaker 8: mad at NASA and churned off the radio and said
• 42:12
  Speaker 8: they weren't going to work for the day. That's not
• 42:13
  Speaker 8: actually how it went down. It was much less dramatic
• 42:16
  Speaker 8: than that. It wasn't a mutiny, for example, And I
• 42:19
  Speaker 8: think so far it's been mostly professional disagreements at that level.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I think there was one astronaut whose partner I think
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: they had like broken up, and she went into her
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: banking accounts.
• 42:33
  Speaker 8: Oh, that's right, from space, from.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Space, and so it was like a small law that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: was broken in space. Well, it feels small to me
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: relative to murder, but a smaller law that was broken
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: in space.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: And then there was an.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: International incident where one of the soyez is so these
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: are like the vehicles that bring people from Russia or
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Kazakhstan to the International Space Station, was found to have
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: a hole thrilled in the side.
• 42:54
  Speaker 8: Of it, a tiny damage.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't clear if that was because a technician who
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: was building this drilled the whole and then was like ah, crud,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and then like patched it poorly and the patch fell
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: off in space. But Russia was saying that it was
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: one of the astronauts on the US side who was
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: having a mental health crisis and wanted to go home,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: so they drilled a hole to try to push an
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: emergency return.
• 43:15
  Speaker 8: Yeah. I don't think that was proven though, that's right.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, it wasn't and all of the US astronauts
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: are like, no, absolutely, that's not what.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: It was happening.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: But I think what's interesting about that is, you know,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the International Space Station has multiple nations represented, and depending
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: on which module you're in, there's different jurisdictions and depending
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: on what country the astronauts came from, and in the end,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: they kind of weren't really able to figure out what
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: to do about it. And so I think if anything
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: more serious happened, I don't know what they would do
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: or how that would be dealt with. It gets complicated,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I think when you've got multiple nations together.
• 43:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah. I also think the space agencies are incentivized not
• 43:49
  Speaker 8: to talk about stories like this. I mean, they're going
• 43:51
  Speaker 8: to report it, especially you know in the US, but
• 43:53
  Speaker 8: the news is going to get their hands on it
• 43:54
  Speaker 8: and probably blow it out of proportion. But it's not
• 43:57
  Speaker 8: like NASA wants to get out the idea that this
• 43:59
  Speaker 8: kind of happening in space. I'm not saying they're covering
• 44:01
  Speaker 8: up crimes. There's a lot of things about astronaut privacy
• 44:04
  Speaker 8: that NASA really keeps more private. There have been some
• 44:08
  Speaker 8: cases in analog situations. So they do these experiments down
• 44:13
  Speaker 8: on Earth where they seal people up in a small
• 44:16
  Speaker 8: habitat for a certain amount of time to test crew
• 44:19
  Speaker 8: dynamics and also things like can they recycle their food
• 44:22
  Speaker 8: and things like that, Or they go out to isolated
• 44:24
  Speaker 8: place like the Antarctic or the Arctic and live in
• 44:27
  Speaker 8: an isolated environment for a while to ten they're on Mars.
• 44:29
  Speaker 8: There have been cases there where there's been interpersonal conflict
• 44:32
  Speaker 8: and to the level of sexual harassment and conflicts like that,
• 44:35
  Speaker 8: and so I don't think there's any reason to assume
• 44:38
  Speaker 8: that kind of behavior won't happen in space as well.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I do love your point that we need to figure
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: out what our plan is ahead of time. I was
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: reading about naval punishment and like, they didn't have space
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: on the ship for a prison, and they didn't want
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: to have a member of the crew not working and
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: then maybe another member of the crew watching them not
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: work and making sure they don't And so the flogging
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: was there answer, Like if you hit someone, you beat
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: them quickly, then they can return right back to work,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: and it's a severe, immediate punishment. And so I think
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: it's important for us to decide which one of these
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: things do we want to be trying when we move
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: out into space, and which punishment regime do we want
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: to take with us.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: I just want to say that flogging works really well
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: in my research group as the motivations for.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: We have a book on our shelf called In Defense
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: of Flogging. It's an economists take on why it's an
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: efficient punishment system where maybe you'd rather get flogged than
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: spend five years in prison, or thrown out or thrown
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: out the airlock. So anyway, lots of options for punishment.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Let's take a break, and when we come back, we're
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: going to talk about babies in space.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: All right, Space babies erica ethical or not.
• 45:59
  Speaker 8: I find space babies to be the cruelest creatures. The
• 46:05
  Speaker 8: idea of having babies in space is obviously a fascinating one,
• 46:09
  Speaker 8: and it's also crucial to the whole idea of having
• 46:12
  Speaker 8: a permanent space settlement. You can't have a space settlement
• 46:15
  Speaker 8: stand on its own if you have to keep shipping
• 46:18
  Speaker 8: humans from Earth. So the question of whether we can
• 46:24
  Speaker 8: produce more humans in space is both an important one,
• 46:27
  Speaker 8: both scientifically and ethically. So the scientific part is the
• 46:31
  Speaker 8: tough one. We don't actually know if humans can have
• 46:34
  Speaker 8: babies in space. We don't know that about any stage
• 46:37
  Speaker 8: of the process, about conceiving, about growing a fetus in
• 46:40
  Speaker 8: utero in a healthy way. We don't know how harder
• 46:44
  Speaker 8: or easy delivering a baby would work in space. And
• 46:47
  Speaker 8: we don't know if children can grow in a healthy
• 46:49
  Speaker 8: way in the absence of, for example, Earth's gravitational field,
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: or if all this radiation exposure you get in space
• 46:56
  Speaker 8: is going to cause problems all along the way. So
• 46:58
  Speaker 8: tons of interesting scientific questions there, but we also don't
• 47:02
  Speaker 8: know how to even ethically study those questions because most
• 47:07
  Speaker 8: bioethicists and medical researchers will tell you it's very ethically
• 47:10
  Speaker 8: murky to perform science experiments on pregnant people and fetuses,
• 47:14
  Speaker 8: especially the fetuses that can't consent. So it's tricky, and
• 47:19
  Speaker 8: I think that there's a good chance that the ethicist
• 47:22
  Speaker 8: will be arguing about this while some space tourists are
• 47:26
  Speaker 8: just making it happen someday, and we're going to end
• 47:29
  Speaker 8: up with this experiment happening unmonitored and unprotected. So it
• 47:33
  Speaker 8: could be that we can't do it. It could be
• 47:35
  Speaker 8: the humans can't reproduce in space. That's going to put
• 47:37
  Speaker 8: a big damper on people's plans for conquering the universe,
• 47:40
  Speaker 8: and we will have to reanalyze all of our plans
• 47:43
  Speaker 8: for space settlement. It's also possible there's some middle ground
• 47:46
  Speaker 8: here where we'll be able to do it, but maybe
• 47:48
  Speaker 8: it'll be a lot more difficult, maybe it'd be less likely.
• 47:50
  Speaker 8: Maybe we'll need some sort of extra technology help, like
• 47:54
  Speaker 8: artificial gravity or radiation shielding or artificial wounds, which could
• 47:58
  Speaker 8: turn into a thing where wealthy space settlers can afford
• 48:02
  Speaker 8: to have children, or you have to get special permit
• 48:06
  Speaker 8: from the space government to use the artificial womb and
• 48:09
  Speaker 8: have babies, which could cause a lot of issues. And
• 48:11
  Speaker 8: maybe it'll be super easy and will be superfertile in
• 48:14
  Speaker 8: space and have babies everywhere, which will lead to other problems,
• 48:17
  Speaker 8: like maybe we have an overpopulated space settlement and we
• 48:21
  Speaker 8: have to figure out what to do about that, and
• 48:23
  Speaker 8: boy do we have examples of that on Earth, and
• 48:26
  Speaker 8: how it has led to government trying to control fertility
• 48:30
  Speaker 8: and punishing people for having too many children or forcing
• 48:34
  Speaker 8: them to be sterilized so that they can't have more children.
• 48:37
  Speaker 8: Often throughout history this has in particular led to people
• 48:42
  Speaker 8: deciding to limit other groups' fertilities, but only for certain people.
• 48:46
  Speaker 8: We want to limit population growth, but only for these
• 48:49
  Speaker 8: people we don't think should be reproducing, and that's just
• 48:52
  Speaker 8: eugenics and leads to all sorts of other really terrible
• 48:55
  Speaker 8: outcomes that could happen in space. And in space we
• 48:58
  Speaker 8: could go the other way around too and have underpopulation
• 49:02
  Speaker 8: and have questions about whether we can force people to
• 49:04
  Speaker 8: have children which also has a few parallels throughout history
• 49:08
  Speaker 8: as well, and leads to things like outlawing abortion, birth control,
• 49:13
  Speaker 8: knowing about contraception, and things like that.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: It feels to me like space is sort of putting
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: a spotlight on what's already kind of a tricky question,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: you know, about is it ethical to have kids? We
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: try to avoid ever restricting people from having kids, but
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: you could also always just ask questions, like some people
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: in their living conditions, should they be having kids? You know,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: if I want to like set up camp near a volcano,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: is it ethical for me to have kids, knowing that
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: the kids could be like bathed in lava one day
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: as they sleep. Nobody tells me I can't have kids
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: or I shouldn't have kids. Lots of people out there
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: are terrible parents, but nobody like gave them an exam
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: and says, hey, are you going to be a reasonable parent.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: Why shouldn't we just apply the same like lass a
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: fair thing to space and say, hey, you're going to
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: have kids in space. Maybe they won't just take correctly,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: maybe they'll get cancer, maybe they'll end up nine feet tall.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: It's on you.
• 50:06
  Speaker 8: Yeah, if you think about what we owe to the children,
• 50:10
  Speaker 8: like what rights do they have here? That does have
• 50:13
  Speaker 8: interesting questions. Maybe we're making them more at risk for
• 50:16
  Speaker 8: radiation induced illness, like you mentioned with your lava example.
• 50:19
  Speaker 8: Maybe they can grow and be healthy and have healthy
• 50:22
  Speaker 8: lives on Mars, but because they're growing in a lower
• 50:24
  Speaker 8: gravity environment, they can't ever return to Earth because they'll
• 50:28
  Speaker 8: collapse and die. Is there something unethical about that? Are
• 50:31
  Speaker 8: we somehow taking away their birthright to go back to
• 50:33
  Speaker 8: the planet that they evolved on or will they not
• 50:36
  Speaker 8: care because they're not from Earth and they're too cool
• 50:38
  Speaker 8: for Earth And it's not a big deal.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, Kelly's decided to have her kids in Virginia.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: Now they have to tell people they're from Virginia. Not
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: to overcome that their whole life when they could have
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: grown up in California. How do you deal with that, Kelly?
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful here and I think they're very happy, and
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I feel bad for your California kids.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: Well, clearly they're brainwashed. Propaganda is everywhere, but there.
• 50:59
  Speaker 8: Are exemples of this on Earth where people have to
• 51:02
  Speaker 8: make the really tough decision about whether to become refugees
• 51:05
  Speaker 8: certain parts of the world. Are they going to decide
• 51:07
  Speaker 8: to take their kids on this really dangerous journey, like
• 51:09
  Speaker 8: a rocket trip to a new place they've never seen before,
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: where potentially they're never going to be able to return
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: to their home country. That's a similar decision, and on
• 51:17
  Speaker 8: Earth we let parents make that decision. They have to
• 51:20
  Speaker 8: make that decision for their kids if their kids can't
• 51:22
  Speaker 8: make it, and generally what we hope is that the
• 51:25
  Speaker 8: parents are working in the best interest of the kids.
• 51:27
  Speaker 8: In those cases, it's usually because the kids are at
• 51:29
  Speaker 8: risk if they stay where they are. It's sort of
• 51:32
  Speaker 8: a different idea. We're talking about space because at the moment,
• 51:35
  Speaker 8: there's no asteroid headed for the Earth. So most people
• 51:37
  Speaker 8: who want to go raise kids in space, it's just
• 51:39
  Speaker 8: because they want to, not because they necessarily know that
• 51:42
  Speaker 8: it's going to give their kids a better life. But
• 51:46
  Speaker 8: you're right, we have a bit more of a hands
• 51:48
  Speaker 8: off attitude here on Earth, and we let people raise
• 51:50
  Speaker 8: their kids how they want, but not completely. There's plenty
• 51:53
  Speaker 8: of limitations that the state puts on what people do
• 51:56
  Speaker 8: with their kids different ways. In different places in the US,
• 52:00
  Speaker 8: they're required to have an education sometimes that's better monitored
• 52:04
  Speaker 8: than in other places, and in other places around the world,
• 52:07
  Speaker 8: there's more restrictions on whether you can or can't make
• 52:10
  Speaker 8: decisions about your own ability to have kids. And this
• 52:13
  Speaker 8: all comes back to the balance between someone's own bodily
• 52:17
  Speaker 8: autonomy that they should be able to decide what happens
• 52:20
  Speaker 8: with their body or not, versus what society needs or
• 52:24
  Speaker 8: wants from them, which when it comes to population level,
• 52:27
  Speaker 8: stuff is affected by whether people are having kids round.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So we've kind of scratched the surface of the many
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: interesting ethical questions that you brought up in your book.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it can feel sort of overwhelming and helpless to
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: think about all of this stuff. What are some options
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: for things that we can do now to try to
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: make sure that we do settle space when we get
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: there to that point that we do it in an
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: ethical and just way.
• 52:50
  Speaker 8: Well, just having these conversations at all is super important,
• 52:53
  Speaker 8: because the alternative of just giving it a go and
• 52:56
  Speaker 8: seeing what happens, I think, is not the best choice.
• 52:58
  Speaker 8: So any level of conversations, more.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Conversation, launch baby launch.
• 53:04
  Speaker 8: At any level of conversation is good. Encouraging people to
• 53:06
  Speaker 8: have these conversations at the decision maker level is very important.
• 53:11
  Speaker 8: Reading Kelly's book, I think purchasing and reading Kelly's.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Book is super important with yours.
• 53:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely by books about this topic, and as an individual,
• 53:21
  Speaker 8: I think definitely trying to learn more about history if
• 53:24
  Speaker 8: you're interested in space is very important. It's not immediately
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: obvious that should be the case, but as we've talked about,
• 53:29
  Speaker 8: there's plenty of examples from history, and not just the
• 53:33
  Speaker 8: history of your part of the world. I think North Americans,
• 53:35
  Speaker 8: like myself, focused a little too much on the history
• 53:37
  Speaker 8: of North American colonization, but again, all of human history
• 53:40
  Speaker 8: to learn from. Let's do that. I think anyone who's
• 53:43
  Speaker 8: working anywhere near space, whether you're in an astronomy department
• 53:47
  Speaker 8: at university, or you're working for a space startup, or
• 53:49
  Speaker 8: you're working in government regulation, there's plenty of ways you
• 53:52
  Speaker 8: can work towards making your company more ethical, making them
• 53:56
  Speaker 8: make the right decisions. But I also think it's really
• 53:57
  Speaker 8: important to look at your organization and see if it
• 54:00
  Speaker 8: does it embody the kind of values you want to
• 54:02
  Speaker 8: see in a space settlement. Is there a labor being exploited,
• 54:05
  Speaker 8: are there people being marginalized, or is everyone being treated well?
• 54:09
  Speaker 8: Because whatever values we have in our society today is
• 54:13
  Speaker 8: what's going to get pushed forward into space in the future.
• 54:16
  Speaker 8: So the better we can treat each other now on Earth,
• 54:18
  Speaker 8: the easier it'll be to transfer those norms into space.
• 54:21
  Speaker 8: And that's just as important as building a good legal
• 54:25
  Speaker 8: system or safe technologies, is to make sure that the
• 54:27
  Speaker 8: values we want to see in our descendants in the
• 54:29
  Speaker 8: future are what we're actually actively working towards for ourselves. Now,
• 54:33
  Speaker 8: we can't just wait and say, well, they'll figure it out,
• 54:35
  Speaker 8: they'll be better in space. We don't need to do
• 54:37
  Speaker 8: that hard work. We have to do it for them.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And I think a lot of people
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: see space settlement in their minds as some sort of
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: utopia where we go there and we don't bring any
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: of the problems we have here, and that we somehow
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: all magically get along. But we all know that we're
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: going to make the same mistakes. Somebody's going to invent
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: white chocolate even if we don't bring it with us, right, Like,
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: this is just who we are as humans. We I
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: agree with you. We need to acknowledge that and face
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: those and figure some of this stuff out before it happens.
• 55:04
  Speaker 8: That's right. Space is only a blank slate till we
• 55:06
  Speaker 8: show up.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: So if folks want to stay in touch with Erica,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: they can go to Erica nesvuld dot com. That's E
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: R I KA ne E s v O l d
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: dot com and you can sign up for her newsletter
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: to stay up to date on Erica updates. Absolutely well,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the show, Erica.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: It was I was going to say a lot of fun,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: but maybe space ethics isn't always supposed to be fun.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: But it was certainly very informative and I enjoyed talking
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: to you.
• 55:31
  Speaker 8: I had a great time talking about you think.
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: And I think the takeaway message is not we shouldn't
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: settle space, so that we can't settle space, but then
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: we have to do it thoughtfully and carefully. We shouldn't
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: just rush into it and do it because it seems fun, right,
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: So we don't have to feel like we're being pessimist
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: about it. We're just being thoughtful.
• 55:48
  Speaker 8: That's right. And we'll leave the white chocolate behind.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: That is the right note to end on.
• 56:03
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