Draft:Space advocacy
Space advocacy is a movement which promotes activity in space, or human presence in space. Today the movement is based in the USA. Excessively enthusiastic space advocates have been called space cadets. While it seems to be shrinking, it influenced many people who became very wealthy in the software industry in the 1990s and 2000s such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. As of 2025 it has more funds than ever before even if its support base remains modest (membership in the Planetary Society, an international advocacy organization, peaked in 1989).[1]
History[edit]
In the first half of the 20th century, some people started to actively argue for human presence in space, rather than just speculating that it might be possible or telling stories about flying into the void on a chariot pulled by giant swans. Mystic Nikolai Fyodorov (philosopher) was followed by engineers such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
in the USSR, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt
(Society for Space Travel, est. 1927) in Germany, the American Interplanetary Society (est. 1930), and the British Interplanetary Society (est. 1933). Pulp science fiction presented Mars and Venus as no more hostile than Libya or Papua New Guinea which Europeans were colonizing.
In the postwar period, the Soviet and American space programs had some exciting successes. Humans launched Sputnik and other satellites into orbit, send robot probes to the planets, and landed on the Moon. By the 1970s, believers started to feel that not everything was headed where they wanted it to go. Doing things in space was very expensive, with a cost in the tens of thousands of 1999-dollars to put 1 kg in orbit. Satellites were immensely useful for spying and communication, but other industries in space were not developing. Robotic missions took years of preparation and often failed spectacularly when Venus' surface was more hostile than anticipated or someone messed up converting between US customary system and metric. Instead of going to the planets, humans were visiting ramshackle space stations in low Earth orbit such as Mir and Skylab. Everything was slow and bureaucratic and required compromises to keep politicians voting for funds or the military supporting the civilian space program. Space advocates who doubled down on the original vision often embrace doubtful ideas. This page focuses on those ideas and not the RW-friendly side of the movement.
Anarcho-capitalist or Libertarian side[edit]
If NASA is disappointing, maybe private companies should get involved? The government could motivate them to compete for cash prizes. These were inspired by the Longitude Act (UK) of 1714 and lead to the Ansari X Prize. If these worked once, surely they can solve all the problems which limit human activity in space.
Perhaps NASA is too cautious? It only lost two of six Space Shuttles, and only one of seven Apollo missions nearly killed all three astronauts. And going slowly blind or dying of cancer far from chemotherapy and hospitals because your ship has too little radiation shielding or your mission planners never solved eye degeneration in free fall sounds glorious. Astronauts are volunteers and if someone wants to spend tens of billions of his own money on a rocket that explodes halfway to orbit, he should be allowed to do so.
Could we finally build Libertarian paradise in space out of reach of governments? A pure capitalist society where even the oxygen is manufactured and home is a six-month rocket trip away sounds delightful.
Dubious fundraising[edit]
Space is big, but its also expensive. Ordinary space advocates can only fund small projects like a demonstration of a solar sail. In the 21st century, some billionaires fund commercial space companies, but their resources are not unlimited. Other possible sources of funds are either selling space-based goods or services, or asking taxpayers for help.
Intelligence agencies and telecommunications companies will pay for satellites, so how about we spam them like a Starcraft champion making Zerglings? The commercial space companies of the 2020s love this idea. For sure, these cheap disposable microsatellites emit light and radio which are very noticeable at night. Astronomers like Sam Lawler don't have a lot of money or political influence when their telescopes are blinded, these short-lived satellites have not crashed on anyone important yet, and Kessler syndrome has not happened yet.
Space tourism (or launching symbols and memorabilia like human remains, religious symbols, and lists of donors into space) seems barely viable as of 2025. It depends on a handful of wealthy clients, uncrewed missions often go wrong, and crewed missions are often very short. That has not stopped some space advocates getting very enthusiastic about it and dreaming of hotels in orbit or resorts on the Moon.
Supporters of public funds for crewed spaceflight often boast of their amazing benefits. Critics such as Maciej Cegłowski argue that most of their R&D goes into keeping the crews alive in space, and most of the science could be described as "do something in space, and see if it is different than on Earth."[2] Crewed missions are good publicity, but they are very expensive, and the public like photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and press releases about robotic landers too. If the arguments about economic benefits of crewed missions are just an excuse, telling a noble lie never worked out badly for anyone did it?
Speculative engineering, pseudoscience, and woo[edit]
Maybe there is a miraculous resource in space like Helium 3 in the lunar regolith? We don't know how to make fusion power, and we don't know there is useful He-3 on the moon, but that would give us a reason to go there.
The rocket equation is cold, and actually-existing spacedrives don't have as much zip as we could hope for. A Hohlman transfer orbit is slow and does not let us jaunt towards Saturn anytime we please. What if the Dean Drive
works? It violates physics as we know it but would let humans zoom around the solar system.
If you want to explore the galaxy, Einstein's relativity is depressing. What if exotic propulsion methods such as the Albucierre drive work?
Anti-relativity and reactionless drives seem marginal within space-advocacy circles in 2025, but were popular among science-fiction fans and writers in the 20th century.
Transhumanism[edit]
Keeping primates alive in space is hard. Taking more risks did not go well for Stockton Rush's Titan submersible. What if we make humans better able to survive in space with genetic engineering or nanotech? Just by trying we might solve longevity!
What if we turned humans into something else and send mind-uploads or eggs, sperm, and mechanical wombs to distant stars? We don't know how to do any of those things so we can imagine they would solve our problems
What if we sent posthuman entities like a self-replicating von Neumann probe? Probes which arrive in a star system, replicate themselves and their fuel, and launch copies to new star systems could explore the galaxy one centuries-long jump at a time. Machines do not age, change their minds, or need air and water, but they can break down over time.
Conclusion[edit]
Space advocacy includes some sympathetic ideals, some ugly politics, and some crazy ideas. This article does not discuss the first kind because organizations like the Planetary Society will tell you everything you want to know about why the JWST is awesome. The weirder ideas are often recycled from the 1970s and earlier, or inspired by science fiction (Elon Musk looks kind of like Delos D. Harriman if you squint, and both he and Jeff Bezos grew up on stories by space advocates).
- ↑ https://www.planetary.org/about/our-story
- ↑ Maciej Cegłowski, A Rocket to Nowhere, Idle Words, August 2005