why it's all about space, stupid!

the most underrated policy area?

This is the third in my series of short, quickly-written, weekly philosophy essays.

If you know me in person, you’ll know that I love space. I wrote here recently about my interest in the philosophy of space. I’ve published elsewhere on topics ranging from lunar property rights to the value of space exploration. I’ve even spent time as Consulting Space Philosopher at a space research firm. I’m biased, therefore, to seeing the relevance of space everywhere I look.

Indeed, I often find myself saying things like “It’s all about space!”, even though I get frustrated when other people conflate ‘most’ with ‘only’, and even worse, when they conflate ‘under-acknowledged’ with ‘only’. The aim of this short piece, therefore, is only to persuade you that most people are under-acknowledging the relevance of space. And that smart liberal policy-thinkers, in particular, should be paying more attention to it.

At this point, you might want to remind me that I committed to writing a short weekly philosophy essay, yet it seems as if this might be an essay about space policy. Well, aside from my belief that space policy is an area particularly well-suited to the philosophically-minded, I believe that philosophers have obligations to get involved in the real world.

In particular, I think that professional philosophers who depend in any sense — direct or not — on taxpayer money in order to spend their lives doing philosophy have special obligations to this end. And I think that professional philosophers who spend their lives reaching conclusions about pressing moral and politico-philosophical questions have extra special obligations.

So if you don’t think this essay is philosophical enough, per se, then feel free to see it in that light.

I’ll begin by stating that I’m pretty sure that if you asked most policy people in Westminster and DC to list the twenty most important policy concerns of the moment, space would not be mentioned. And if you asked them to expand their lists, then where would space appear? Number 45? Ever?

Sure, you could argue that some of the more general matters these policy people included in their lists had space-based implications. You might say, “Oh but they were including space in their reference to emerging tech!” Or, “They were including space in their reference to the impact of regulation on small companies!” But correlative to an argument I made in my recent ‘philosophy of space’ piece, it seems clear there are enough space policy questions, per se, to justify a domain-specific approach. And an implicit aim of this piece is to persuade you of that!

1) Defence, militarism, and peace

One exception I’d make to my claim about policy people overlooking the importance of space would, of course, be the defence dudes. In particular, there’s a small set of space-focused defence dudes, who for years have been trying to tell everyone else about the increasing relevance of space affairs. Check out, for instance, the work of my old friend Gabriel Elefteriu.

More recently, the non-space-focused defence dudes have caught up. This is hardly surprising when, as I wrote elsewhere, “the Space Foundation […] calculated that, in 2023, global military space budgets grew 18 per cent on the previous year, totalling $57 billion, and comprising almost half of total government space expenditure”. Note also, for example, growing American financial commitment to the Space Force. Yes, there is a Space Force!

Then, at the level of everyday awareness, few would deny the role satellite technology has come to play in military operations. Surely you’ve read about Starlink’s relevance to the Russia-Ukraine war. And it’s increasingly easy to conclude that future conflict won’t simply be monitored and guided from space, but that militaristic activity will likely take place up there. After all, we’re currently seeing the ground being set for space weapons firing at targets on Earth.

My first simple conclusion, therefore, is that there’s increasing need for smart liberal policy-thinkers to pay more attention to space, because these are people who, by definition, should believe in protecting and promoting the value of peace.

2) Innovation, regulation, and property rights

The space economy is also increasing in relevance. I recently wrote a journal article about how difficult it is to quantify the current and potential space economy. This is partly, again, because of the pervasive relevance of satellite technology. (As I’ve asked here before, does every sat nav count as part of the space economy?). But the most expansive and extreme predictions tell us that the space economy could be worth $2.3 trillion by 2035!

Setting calculation (and incentives for exaggeration) problems aside, if you look at each segment of the space economy, you can see astonishing economic opportunities. Take, for instance, recent improvements and cost reductions in rocket technology — crucially, payload costs have been decreasing fast — which mean that for many firms of many kinds the sky is no longer the limit.

Sure, we haven’t yet reached the age of mining on asteroids or hotels on the moon. But those are simply cartoon totems. What’s happening now ranges from the valuable development of products enabling advances in space medical testing, to the valuable development of modular space tech. (There are so many examples of these things I feel no need to provide hyperlinks!)

My second simple conclusion, therefore, is that there’s increasing need for smart liberal policy-thinkers with expertise in economic and legal analysis to pay attention to space. These people are needed, not least, to hold policy-makers to account for the overly burdensome, and often outdatedly irrelevant, regulation that currently holds back space entrepreneurs. (And if you think space entrepreneurs should be focusing on Earthly goods instead, then here’s my piece to persuade you otherwise.)

Upstream of all this is the urgent need for humankind to set in place an effective and morally justified property rights regime in space. I’ve written about this many times before, so I won’t go on about it here. But the lack of good writing on this topic represents a pretty unparalleled intellectual and practical opportunity for smart liberal policy-thinkers with expertise in political philosophy and law.

3) Life and exploration

Finally, because I promised you a short piece, let’s think about the aliens. You might have noticed increasing amounts of evidence being released to show that government actors have long held back information about unexplained activity in our skies. Now, I’ll be up front about the fact that I don’t believe that these releases, or any to come, will prove the existence of little green men at Roswell!

But, beyond the importance of knowing about the unjustifiably non-transparent norms of state actors, I do think it’s rational to be open to the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Indeed, pretty much regardless of the pure likelihood of this — not least because I believe calculating this likelihood borders on the impossible — I believe this is something we should all take seriously, as responsible and inquisitive creatures.

More people should be aware, therefore, that we’re on the verge of gaining new information about nearby places in the solar system that could potentially harbour life. Numerous current space missions, which are either underway or soon to launch, are targeted at gaining knowledge about the nearby places that seem most conducive to life, particularly owing to the current or past presence of water.

My third simple conclusion, therefore, is that paying attention to this information as it arises offers smart liberal policy-thinkers with expertise in moral philosophy an astonishing opportunity. This is the opportunity to help to ensure that humankind behaves well towards the new kinds of living things we might encounter in space.

4) A caveat and a commitment

I now want to add a caveat to my call for smart liberal policy-thinkers to think more about space. I’ve pre-empted this caveat, to some extent, by emphasising the need for various kinds of expertise.

As I wrote here recently about AI, there’s an unfortunate tendency for new fields of inquiry to attract new fields of experts. You know what I mean: the AI policy person, or the medical ethics policy person. These policy people often lack the methodological rigour and subject experience that comes with discipline expertise. Or they come from disciplines that are ill suited to the policy questions at hand. For example, computer scientists are not, per se, well placed to answer questions about AI consciousness. And doctors and nurses are not, per se, well placed to answer questions about medical ethics.

My general strong advice for policy-thinkers, therefore, is to develop a disciplinary expertise and apply it to new fields, where best suited. This brings advantages at the personal level as well as at the aggregate. It can lead, for instance, to a beautifully deep kind of interdisciplinary work, where each person is not aimed at becoming an expert in each field, but people from different disciplines help each other to strengthen their arguments and conclusions in new ways.

My fourth simple conclusion, therefore, is that humankind urgently needs good economists and good philosophers and good lawyers, and so on, to turn their attention to space policy. And that those of us who are committed to liberal ideals should want these people to focus on values including peace, innovation, and the welfare of all living things.

Finally, and I won’t say much about this now, I’m excited to be spending some of my time at Mercatus building our space policy capacity. I’m convinced that this work is timely and important, and that we’re unusually well placed to do it well. Moreover, like I said above, if you’re lucky enough to be a professional philosopher, and particularly one who works on important moral and politico-philosophical questions, then you have certain obligations to get involved in real-world stuff.

So, if you’re interested in knowing more, or maybe even getting involved, then drop me a line..

Thanks to GPT for the picture.