Welcome to the first regular edition of the JustSpace Alliance newsletter. Besides keeping our followers up-to-date on the activities of the organization, our goal for this newsletter is to support the mission of the JustSpace Alliance: to advocate for a more inclusive and ethical future in space, and to harness visions of tomorrow for a more just and equitable world today. 

We’ll be connecting you with the ongoing conversations about the intersection of social justice and space, and amplifying voices that have not traditionally been encouraged to speak on the topics of space exploration and settlement. We’ll also draw your attention to opportunities to work for equity, justice, and the protection of human rights here on Earth.

Thank you for joining us!

Recent Events

One of the goals of the JustSpace Alliance is to facilitate conversations between subject matter experts and the public about the ethical issues that we will face in space, and how we can start addressing these problems now. So when Future Tense — a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University — approached us about co-hosting an event titled “How Will We Govern Ourselves in Space?”, we enthusiastically accepted.

Held at the New America building in Washington, D.C. on July 10, this event consisted of three panel discussions, moderated by Future Tense’s Andrés Martinez, and JustSpace Alliance co-executive director Erika Nesvold. The first panel approached the question of governance from a historical perspective, and included an examination of the interaction between European, colonial, and Indigenous governments during the European colonization of the Americas. The second panel, which included JustSpace Alliance board member Amanda Nguyen, explored the legal landscape of space settlement and imagined how that legal framework will evolve to protect the people who live and work in space. The third and final panel considered the social aspects of a space settlement, and how the decisions we make today about design and organization will shape the space communities of the future.

If you’d like to know more, you can read Anthony Nguyen’s recap of the panel discussions on Future Tense, or you can watch the recorded livestream of the event. Transcripts of each of the three panels are available via Open Transcripts.

To Read

In the weeks leading up to the “How Will We Govern Ourselves in Space?” event, Future Tense published a number of pieces on various space settlement topics, written by panelists and participants in the event. 

Our co-executive director Erika Nesvold imagined the dystopian, but perhaps not inevitable, criminal justice system of a space settlement: “Most of today’s conversations around space settlement imagine high-tech Utopias populated by citizens working together to advance human civilization, but even in the most optimistic of these scenarios, our descendants in space will have to figure out how to deal with the darker side of human nature and address behaviors that threaten the health and stability of their societies.”

Christopher Mellon and panelist Yuliya Panfil wrote a brief explainer of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and argued for a new and updated treaty to govern human activities in space: “The world is suddenly realizing a rather unfortunate fact: Other than policing where we put our nukes and where we plant our flags, the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t tell us much.”

Panelist and architect Fred Scharmen responded to Chen Quifan’s sci-fi short story “Space Leek”, also published on Future Tense, and speculated on the benefits that plants and animals will provide to future space settlers: “In any space settlement scenario, human existence will depend on more than just the number of square meters devoted to park space or farmland, or the mass of protein and carbohydrates available from agriculture. The things we bring and make will have value that’s not immediately quantifiable.”

How You Can Help

If you’d like to learn more about the JustSpace Alliance and join in the discussion, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. You can also visit our website for more information and resources, and encourage friends and colleagues to subscribe to our newsletter here.

If you’ve read or written a piece that you think we should include in a future newsletter, please send us a link at [email protected].