Space Race by H . Peter Steeves
ABSTRACT
Through an investigation of popular culture sources focused on our relationship with space exploration , this essay asks if and how we might go about traveling off-planet in an ethical way . Moving from a reading of Georges Méliès ’ silent film , A Trip to the Moon ( 1902 ), to the history of the Soviet space program , to contemporary plans to colonize the moon and Mars , questions of the value of science and discovery are juxtaposed with questions of racism , speciesism , environmentalism , and social justice .
KEYWORDS
NASA , Laika , space , Mars , Moon , Georges Méliès , colonization , ethics , astronaut , cosmonaut
1 . GO FOR LAUNCH
I have a complicated relationship with space . From a young age , I loved not only space but the scientists who were making it possible for us both to visit and study it . There ’ s a part of me that�though firmly entrenched in middle age�still thinks I might grow up to be either an astronaut or a NASA scientist . But there is also a part of me that realizes how troubled all such work is , necessarily tied , as it is , to capitalism , colonialism , a neoliberal state , the megamachine of technology , and an Enlightenment ideology that has led us to the brink of the destruction of our own world . The notion that we are explorers , that we ’ re necessarily on the move , and that we must know something if it is there to be known , leads only
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