five takeaways on the value of space activity 🚀

a short bonus piece about the philosophy and economics of space

TLDR:

• Does ‘the space economy’ include every single sat nav?

• State spending continues to dominate

• The need for defence implies aggression 

• We can derive more than happiness from being up there

• The clock’s ticking on property rights

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This is a short post highlighting some things I enjoyed thinking and learning about while writing a new space philosophy article, ‘The Value of Space Activity’, which was published in the journal Economic Affairs, a few days ago. 

This Substack will generally provide philosophical writing about what’s going on in politics, with only occasional pieces on space.¹ And I was intending to write this week about the problem of British exceptionalism within current discourse about the possible legalisation of assisted dying and euthanasia. But I’m going to save that for another time, because: 1) I’ve just finished a short train-and-road trip around the Eastern United States, which has been excellent but lacking in internet connection; and 2) my mind is full of space philosophy, and my Twitter feed is full of SpaceX videos, so I thought I’d ride demand today.

Here are five takeaways, therefore, from spending time thinking hard about the value of space activity:

1) Attempts to quantify the monetary value of space activity run into immediate problems arising from contestation over what the widely-used term ‘the space economy’ refers to. At the extreme, you can find enormous estimates of the size of the (current and potential) space economy that seemingly depend on including ‘every single car sat nav in the world now and forever’, and risk double-counting at various levels. There are also some amusing ‘we had to ignore the possibility of problem X’ footnotes to be found within predictions of the potential size of the space economy, on which X refers to e.g., geopolitical uncertainty. 

2) Although commercial actors are of course playing an ever-growing role within space activity, the state is almost universally predicted to remain the biggest space player, at least over the next decade. This will be unsurprising news to anyone aware of the significance of government procurement opportunities!

3) Arguments focused on the urgent value of space activity for defensive purposes are convincing, but we should remember they implicitly emphasise the increasing use of space for aggression. In my article, I also discuss the optimistic idea that knowledge-based space-tech advances, particularly in observation and communications technology, could help to create conditions on Earth that are generally more conducive to peace. My overall take is that the realisation of the potential instrumental value of space knowledge will remain (again, unsurprisingly!) dependent on how such knowledge is used. But that, particularly, we shouldn’t undervalue how space tech is widening access to reliable information that can be used to mitigate the risks of accidental nuclear war, and to expose the perpetrators of human-rights atrocities.²

4) William Shatner made headlines when his outer-space experience left him feeling sadness and grief, but no doubt he made headlines because of the atypicality of his response. At the other end of the spectrum is the response of Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti,³ who space-tweeted an ancient Chinese text, which she translated as, “Looking up, I see the immensity of the cosmos; bowing my head, I look at the multitude of the world. The gaze flies, the heart expands, the joy of the senses can reach its peak, and indeed, this is true happiness”. Nonetheless, when discussing these matters in relation to how space activity can further human happiness, I contend in my article that “it is perhaps more straightforward to think about the value of ‘experiencing space’ in terms of objective human goods furthered by space activity that don't depend on their experients' feelings: for example, you don't have to feel as if you have made an achievement to have done so. An alternative approach is to look to something much broader than happiness, which is nonetheless dependent on positive subjective experience: the sense of fulfilment that comes from meeting one's [objectively] valuable goals.” 

5) Finally, to return to one of my favourite themes, humankind still has a small amount of time to deliberate and establish an effective and morally justified system for the acquisition and holding of legal property rights to space land. I’ve argued before that the clock is seriously ticking if we want to avoid inevitable land grabs (and their long-term ownership implications) by the billionaires and autocrats who currently enjoy first-mover advantage. This isn’t to deny the massive positive externalities of billionaires spending their wealth on the overdeterminedly-valuable pursuit of space exploration! Rather, it‘s to acknowledge that ‘first come first served’ is not only a morally deficient approach in terms of value considerations such as freedom and fairness and equality, but that it also comes with serious opportunity cost. You can check out my alternative Georgist-inspired market solution here, and here.

Finally, if you’re interested in reading the whole of my new ‘The Value of Space Activity’ article, you can find it here. And here’s the introductory section, which includes an overview of the rest:

“It seems likely that human beings have found space valuable, at least as a source of intrigue, since long before anyone knew much about what exists beyond the Earth's atmosphere. It's only since the 1960s, however, that people have been up there, doing things. In this article, I'm going to discuss ‘space activity’ in a broad sense, encompassing not only people and man-made machines doing things in space, but also the resource production and use that enables this. In particular, I'll focus on the value of space activity – again, on a broad conception of ‘value’. I'll begin by discussing the financial value of space activity: first, in the direct sense of its monetary value, in the context of calculations about the current and potential future size of the space economy; and second, in the derived sense of the good that can be brought about through the spending of the money raised through this kind of economic activity. Next, I'll turn to ways in which space activity furthers the human good: that is, how it can bring about things that are objectively and irreducibly good for human beings. Here, I'll focus on happiness and knowledge – discussing, for instance, the way in which knowledge about space is both valuable in itself and can also assist in meeting valuable societal goals, such as medical progress and peace. Finally, I'll briefly discuss space activity as a source of non-human value, in the sense of the good it can bring about for non-human animals, other living things, and natural resources.”

1. I love space, and am fortunate to spend some of my time as Consulting Space Philosopher for the strategic space advisory firm, AstroAnalytica (not only because it’s the coolest possible job title).

2. As exemplified by the way in which satellite imagery helps to prove the existence of the Chinese government's human-rights-violating detention camps. 

3. Cristoforetti’s (very long) autobiographical book, Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut, is probably unparalleled in its level of interesting detail about the hardcore process of becoming an astronaut.