Considering Continentality; Exopolitics of Space Heritage

Floating Venera islands, cover of the Soviet magazine "Technology for young people" 1971

I’m not incredibly attracted to ideas of Interplanetary human migration and exploration—and not because I’m opposed to space exploration. Rather, it’s the scarcity of human-friendly planetary environments out there that does it for me. I do not know whether humanity’s future lies in the cosmos, but I do know that human-aided machines have sustained and advanced the presence of Earth-originating cultures in outer space thus far. Our metallic aides venture forward where humans cannot and, together with the fruit fly and canine life forms, have the distinction of being the first terrestrial travelers to go beyond Earth. If the cosmos is to be inherited, its most deserving recipients may be the non-human communities we cultivate and with whom we collaborate.

While the human cost of manned space travel is too great to be pursued candidly or even as a means to an end, the following text nevertheless introduces such a project. Even though I’m not super interested in manned space missions, I do find myself taken by the possibility of some extreme near-future scenarios in which a need and opportunity emerges for a radical shifting of the existing poles of planetary geopolitical influence. In the near future, aggrieved earth originating communities might focus collective effort toward understanding interplanetary migration projects as accessible strategic political tools, through an international value system not dissimilar to contemporary political strategies by formerly colonized and emerging nation-states to invest in telecommunications and space technologies.

Visions of human settlement on the planet Mars ought to be redirected toward Venus. There are many reasons why Venus is a better option to consider for future viable exoplanetary human settlements and really no one particular reason why Mars is the better candidate. Being especially bright and visible to the naked eye in the evening and night sky, both planets fascinated and inspired our ancestors for millennia. By the late 19th century, public interest in either planet escalated, bolstered by low-resolution observations of terrestrial features interpreted by eager enthusiasts as evidence of signs of intelligent life.

For Mars, it is the Canal hypothesis, inspired by a mistranslation of Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s description of channel-like surface features. For Venus, it is the observation of dense layers of clouds obscuring the planet’s surface. 

In a way, our collective global modernities currently sustain the early fledglings of a transplanetary Space Age. Its formation is shaped by shifting post-war geopolitical climates that saw post-imperial superpowers exert global dominance, both supporting and suppressing international calls for ethnic and nationalist sovereignty.

Modernity’s entry into space was witnessed and powered at the expense of indifference to indigenous sovereignty and preservation efforts. The launch sites for the first successful manned missions to space and to the surface of the moon occurred, respectively, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States and at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Kennedy Space center sits on Merrit Island, an ancestral territory of the Ais nation, who had occupied the coasts of Florida for over 15,000 years. By the 18th century, after almost 200 years of infamous resistance to Spanish sailors, the Ais nation gradually vanished from colonial archives. The Ais population dwindled into apparent oblivion due to disease introduced by the Spanish settlers and from migration escaping slave raids, thereby leaving behind thousands of years of material cultures buried in the landscape. Ais pottery and oyster shell middens, many of them re-engineered as mounds, are known to be commonly distributed on the Kennedy Space center grounds.

It is reported that the Launch Pads constructed for the Apollo program, Launch Pads 39A and 39B are made from earth bulldozed from surrounding areas. Even though initiatives such as the Cultural Resources Management Program purport to address the preservation of known culturally significant archaeological sites on their properties, NASA has historically pursued the expansion of launch facilities with little action taken to address the displacement of Indigenous archaeological heritage.

Another mighty settler-colonizer established the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the far more remotely located Kazakh steppes in the 1950s. Baikonur Cosmodrome and the city of Baikonur, formerly Leninsk, bear a name that was chosen as a misdirection ploy for US intelligence. With its origins as a missile test site and development into a launch platform site for Soviet space missions, this site is where modern nation-states first left planet Earth. Several centuries ago, the Turkic philosopher and poet, Korkyt-Ata is said to have settled and died in this area at the end of a search for a sacred land prophecised to offer an escape from death. Korkyt-Ata named the land, zher kindingi - “earth’s umbilical cord”. 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Indigenous pastoral nomadic confederation occupying the region known as the Khan Khanate, came under control of the Russian Empire. In December of  1991, after 80 years of forced sedentarization as a satellite state of the Soviet republic, Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Baikonur, however, remains central to the Russian Federation's space programs, and the city complex has been on lease to Russia since 1994.

The postcolonial context of Baikonur Cosmodrome is a useful example of the techno-political potency of space activities for today’s nation-states in defining themselves and creating geopolitical agency.  In August of 1991, a few months prior to its independence, Baikonur Cosmodrome had been claimed as republic property by the Kazakh SSR. In October, the first Kazakh cosmonaut, Toktar Aubakirov, flew alongside Russian and Austrian cosmonauts on Soyuz TM -13. In his book, The Kazakhstan way, President Nursultan Nazarbayev reflects that Kazakhstani independence was first established in space, before on Earth.

Over 80 nations operate satellites in low-Earth and geosynchronous orbit. The majority of these projects are run by governmental space agencies. Out of the hundreds of major planetary bodies in our solar system, three are currently being visited by the machine envoys of around five nation-states. The orbiters, landers and rovers deployed by the U.S.A and the People’s Republic of China both dominate Earth’s nation-state presence in the solar system. 

The CNSA’s growing influence in space governance positions China as a formidable counterweight to the Global North’s public and private sectors over half-a-century long monopoly on space activities. A monopoly exemplified by China’s exclusion from the development of the International Space Station. 

In response, Chinese policymakers reframed aspirations to develop human spaceflight capabilities as a demonstration of Chinese technological independence and broader sovereignty. Project 921 is an initiative adopted by CSNA in the early 1990s to develop a manned space program. Since then, a recent history of successful spacecraft development and crewed spaceflight operations have culminated in the present day multifaceted space-based projects that includes the launch of China’s own permanent space station.

Recent space governance agreements among members of the economic bloc BRICS unmasks the egalitarian rhethoric of the International Space Station, challenging the dominance of the West in space. 

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