Space colonization
Space colonization, or extraterrestrial colonization, is the establishment of human settlements or colonies in outer space and on astronomical bodies. The concept, in its broadest sense, has been applied to any permanent human presence in space, such as a space habitat or other extraterrestrial settlements. It may involve a process of territorial occupation or resource control for commercial purposes, such as extraterrestrial mining.
Making territorial claims in space is prohibited by international space law, defining space as a common heritage. International space law has had the goal to prevent colonial claims and militarization of space, and has advocated the installation of international regimes to regulate access to and sharing of space, particularly for specific locations such as the limited space of geostationary orbit or the Moon. To date, no permanent space settlement other than temporary space habitats have been established, nor has any extraterrestrial territory or land been internationally claimed. Currently there are also no plans for building a space colony by any government. However, many proposals, speculations, and designs, particularly for extraterrestrial settlements have been made through the years, and a considerable number of space colonization advocates and groups are active. Currently, the dominant private launch provider SpaceX, has been the most prominent organization planning space colonization on Mars, though having not reached a development stage beyond launch and landing systems.
Space colonization raises numerous socio-political questions. Many arguments for and against space settlement have been made. The two most common reasons in favor of colonization are the survival of humans and life independent of Earth, making humans a multiplanetary species, in the event of a planetary-scale disaster, and the commercial use of space particularly for enabling a more sustainable expansion of human society through the availability of additional resources in space, reducing environmental damage on and exploitation of Earth. The most common objections include concerns that the commodification of the cosmos may be likely to continue pre-existing detrimental processes such as environmental degradation, economic inequality and wars, enhancing the interests of the already powerful, and at the cost of investing in solving existing major environmental and social issues.
The mere construction of an extraterrestrial settlement, with the needed infrastructure, presents daunting technological, economic and social challenges. Space settlements are generally conceived as providing for nearly all the needs of larger numbers of humans. The environment in space is very hostile to human life and not readily accessible, particularly for maintenance and supply. It would involve much advancement of currently primitive technologies, such as controlled ecological life-support systems. With the high cost of orbital spaceflight, a space settlement would currently be massively expensive, but ongoing progress in reusable launch systems aim to change that, and in creating automated manufacturing and construction techniques.
Definition
Space colonization has been in a broad sense referred to as space settlement, space humanization or space habitation. Space colonization in a narrow sense refers to space settlements, as envisioned by Gerard K. O'Neill. It is characterized by elements such as: settlement and exploitation, as well as territorial claim.The concept in its broad sense has been applied to any permanent human presence, even robotic, particularly along with the term "settlement", being imprecisely applied to any human space habitat, from research stations to self-sustaining communities in space.
The words colony and colonization are terms rooted in colonial history on Earth, making them human geographic as well as particularly political terms. This broad use for any permanent human activity and development in space has been criticized, particularly as colonialist and undifferentiated.
In this sense, a colony is a settlement that claims territory and exploits it for the settlers or their metropole. Therefore, a human outpost, while possibly a space habitat or even a space settlement, does not automatically constitute a space colony.
Therefore, any basing can be part of colonization, while colonization can be understood as a process that is open to more claims, beyond basing. The International Space Station, the longest-occupied extraterrestrial habitat thus far, does not claim territory and thus is not usually considered a colony.
Moriba Jah has criticized existing approaches to orbital space as colonialist, such as for satellites, on the grounds that it involves claiming ownership instead of collaborative stewardship.
Some advocates of peaceful human settlement of space have argued against use of the word "colony" and related terms, so as to avoid confusing their goals with colonialism on Earth.
History
In the first half of the 17th century John Wilkins suggested in A Discourse Concerning a New Planet that future adventurers like Francis Drake and Christopher Columbus might reach the Moon and allow people to live there. The first known work on space colonization was the 1869 novella The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale, about an inhabited artificial satellite. In 1897, Kurd Lasswitz also wrote about space colonies in his book Auf zwei Planeten. The Russian rocket science pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky foresaw elements of the space community in his book Beyond Planet Earth written about 1900. Tsiolkovsky imagined his space travelers building greenhouses and raising crops in space. Tsiolkovsky believed that going into space would help perfect human beings, leading to immortality and peace. One of the first to speak about space colonization was Cecil Rhodes who in 1902 spoke about "these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach", adding "I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far". In the 1920s John Desmond Bernal, Hermann Oberth, Guido von Pirquet and Herman Noordung further developed the idea. Wernher von Braun contributed his ideas in a 1952 Colliers magazine article. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dandridge M. Cole published his ideas.When orbital spaceflight was achieved in the 1950s colonialism was still a strong international project, e.g. easing the United States to advance its space program and space in general as part of a "New Frontier". As the Space Age was developing, decolonization gained again in force, producing many newly independent countries. These newly independent countries confronted spacefaring countries, demanding an anti-colonial stance and regulation of space activity when space law was raised and negotiated internationally. Fears of confrontations because of land grabs and an arms race in space between the few countries with spaceflight capabilities grew and were ultimately shared by the spacefaring countries themselves. This produced the wording of the agreed on international space law, starting with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, calling space a "province of all mankind" and securing provisions for international regulation and sharing of outer space.
The advent of geostationary satellites raised the case of limited space in outer space. In the 1960s and with an initial focus on communications spectrum management, the international community agreed to regulate the assignment of slots in the geosynchronous belt through the International Telecommunication Union. Today, any company or nation planning to launch a satellite to GEO must apply to the ITU for an orbital slot. A group of equatorial countries, all of which were countries that were once colonies of colonial empires, but without spaceflight capabilities, signed in 1976 the Bogota Declaration. These countries declared that geostationary orbit is a limited natural resource and belongs to the equatorial countries directly below, seeing it not as part of outer space, humanity's common. Through this, the declaration challenged the dominance of geostationary orbit by spacefaring countries through identifying their dominance as imperialistic.
Writers continued to address space colonization concepts by publishing books in the mid-1970s such as The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O'Neill and Colonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer.
In 1975, the first international joint space mission occurred as a symbol of the policy of détente that the two superpowers were pursuing at the time. The U.S. Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked in earth orbit for almost two days. In 1977, the first sustained space habitat, the Salyut 6 station, was put into Earth's orbit. Eventually the first space stations were succeeded by the ISS, today's largest human outpost in space and closest to a space settlement. Built and operated under a multilateral regime, it has become a blueprint for future stations, such as around and possibly on the Moon.
Additional discourse on living in space was generated by writers including Marianne J. Dyson who wrote Home on the Moon; Living on a Space Frontier in 2003; Peter Eckart wrote Lunar Base Handbook in 2006 and then Harrison Schmitt's Return to the Moon written in 2007.
An international regime for lunar activity was demanded by the international Moon Treaty, but is currently developed multilaterally as with the Artemis Accords. Threats to existing treaties come in areas such as space debris because of the lack of regulation on disposition of assets by operators once their mission is complete. The only habitation on a different celestial body so far have been the temporary habitats of the crewed lunar landers. Similar to the Artemis program, China is leading an effort to develop a lunar base called the International Lunar Research Station beginning in the 2030s.