Hello, JustSpace allies! We’re almost halfway through 2021, so we’d like to keep you up to date on what we’ve been up to.

Recent Events

We are unbelievably excited that JustSpace Board member Sian Proctor is going to space! Dr. Proctor was selected to be a crew member on the first all-civilian mission to space this September. Billionaire Jason Isaacman purchased a three-day orbital trip from SpaceX for himself and three others. Isaacman raffled off one seat in a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, awarded another to an employee and former patient of St. Jude’s, and selected Sian Proctor for the last seat via an entrepreneurial contest. We send our biggest congratulations to Sian and wish her bon voyage in September!

JustSpace Board member Jordan “DXTR Spits” Holmes has launched an incredible new initiative, “How Men Cry”, which challenges norms around men expressing vulnerability and seeking mental health support. Check out some of the first contributions on the website, submit your own story, and/or donate to support the How Men Cry book! 

To Listen

Our co-founders, Lucianne Walkowicz and Erika Nesvold, have been hitting the podcast circuit lately to talk about a number of issues at the crossroads of space and social justice.

Lucianne spoke to Slate’s What Next? TBD about What Space Billionaires Cost Us. They also dropped in on Reach: A Space Podcast for Kids to talk about ethics and space exploration in “The WHY of Space with Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz and Ithamar Enriquez”. Lucianne was also interviewed by the definitely-not-for-kids Move Left, Idiots!, chatting about Perseverance, Elon Musk, space tourism, and space colonization in “Talking Ethics in Space Exploration and Colonization with an Astronomer”.

Erika was interviewed for a recent episode of Clayming Space, “The Ethics of Space Settlement with Dr. Erika Nesvold”, about the ethical issues we’ll wrestle with during space settlement. Erika also joined space philosopher James Schwartz to discuss the environmental and labor rights issues of asteroid mining on the Flash Forward podcast, “Can You Mine an Asteroid?”

If you’re interested in learning more about the space mining industry, we also highly recommend Ingrid Burrington’s recent episode of RipCorp on space mining, “In Space No One Can Hear You Sell”.

To Read

There have been so many great pieces published about space and social justice in the last few months! Here are a few highlights:

Adam Mann asked “Is Mars Ours?” in The New Yorker: 

[I]n contemplating a future human presence on the planet, I start to worry about the questions presented in [Kim Stanley] Robinson’s books. If there’s nobody around to stop us from doing what we want, what should we do?

Please note: The New Yorker Union is currently fighting for a fair contract. They are not currently on strike at the time of this writing, but if they do go on strike, they will request that readers support the union by not clicking on newyorker.com links, such as the one we include above. You can check the status of The New Yorker Union at https://www.newyorkerunion.com/the-picket-line.

Marina Koren and Leah Crane both wrote about the recent increase in civilian mission plans to space. In The Atlantic, Koren argued that “The New ‘Right Stuff’ Is Money and Luck” and wondered how our definition of “astronaut” will evolve in the near future:

In the American consciousness, astronauts are seen as almost superhuman, with “the right stuff,” a secret-sauce set of qualities that distinguishes them from everyone else. The wealthy astronauts-to-be have promised they aren’t just going to look out the window; they will donate money from raffles and auctions and help do research on the ISS. But if astronauts become synonymous with billionaires, our lofty view of them is bound to come back down to Earth.

In New Scientist, Leah Crane noted that “More people are going to space, but diversity is still grounded”: 

Getting to a point where any member of the public can go to space will take work – and it remains to be seen whether private space flight companies are willing to put in the effort.

There are also a number of recent articles bringing attention to situation in Alcântara, Brazil, where the construction of profitable launch facilities are displacing the quilombolas, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped plantations and built communities, called quilombos, in Alcântara. As Terrence McCoy and Heloísa Traiano wrote in The Washington Post:

The United States in 2019 signed a technology privacy agreement with Brazil that allows the United States to use the nearby [Alcântara] launch center for commercial and other missions… The Brazilian government last year announced a plan to expand the base by more than 30,000 acres to make room for the additional business. The quilombos would be cleared, officials said in a decree, and their people removed.

The U.S. State Department told The Washington Post that the deal does not discuss or endorse Brazil’s plans for the quilombos. But Davi Periera and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argued more recently in their Scientific American article, “Science Shouldn’t Come at the Expense of Black Lives”, that the U.S. cannot simply wash their hands of the matter:

As we face global warming, a planetary transformation that has been driven by technological development, it’s time to acknowledge that our old way of doing things is killing us. It’s time to democratize how decisions are made about land use and put the people of the land in a leadership role. We call on Biden to withdraw the U.S.’s request for further development of Alcântara, and we demand global support for quilombola land claims.

The residents of Boca Chica, Texas, while not struggling under the same weight of historical injustice as the quilombolas of Brazil, are also finding their lives and community disrupted by the growing presence of a nearby SpaceX launch facility. As Edgar Sandoval and Richard Webner wrote for The New York Times in “A Serene Shore Resort, Except for the SpaceX ‘Ball of Fire’”:

SpaceX representatives usually give the 10 or so residents plenty of warning that a rocket is scheduled for launching. Other times, loud sirens warn them, and some, like the Crawfords, choose to put on heavy-duty headphones to block some of the noise. When a rocket engine is tested, the roar and trembling are so powerful that they can blow windows inward.

Take Action

As we discussed in our previous newsletter, former NASA Administrator James Webb’s involvement with the so-called Lavender Scare, the U.S. government’s purge of LGBT employees, makes him an unworthy namesake for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. JustSpace co-founder Lucianne Walkowicz and fellow astronomers Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Brian Nord, and Sarah Tuttle have co-authored an open letter calling on NASA to rename the JWST:

This new mission reflects the rainbow of possible universes that our community imagines, dreams about, and works for, and its name should reflect its future legacy.

You can add your voice to this demand by signing the open letter via this Google form.

We also invite you to join us every Friday at 12:30pm CT on Twitter on the #JustSpaceTalk hashtag, where we chat about the week’s space news. We hope to see you there!