ARTICLE IN PRESS

Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255

www.elsevier.com/locate/spacepol

How shall we live in space? Culture, law and ethics in spacefaring society
Linda Billings
SETI Institute, 3654 Vacation Lane, Arlington, VA 22207, USA
Available online 11 October 2006

Abstract

The US civilian space program is focused on planning for a new round of human missions beyond Earth orbit, to realize a ‘vision’ for
exploration articulated by President George W. Bush. It is important to examine this ‘vision’ in the broader context of the global
enterprise of 21st century space exploration. How will extending a human presence into the Solar System affect terrestrial society and
culture? What legal, ethical and other value systems should govern human activities in space? This paper will describe the current
environment for space policy making and possible frameworks for future space law, ethics and culture. It also proposes establishment of
a World Space Conference to aid deliberations on the above.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction interested in collaborating on human missions to the Moon

Today’s US civilian space program, borne of the 20th
century Cold War, is focused on planning for a new round
of human missions to the Moon and, later, perhaps, to
Mars. These plans are intended to realize a ‘vision’ for 21st
century human exploration articulated by President
George W. Bush in January 2004 [1]. The US National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) promotes
its plans for a new round of human exploration as a way to
maintain US leadership in space. Critics argue that the cost
of such missions may be prohibitive in the current fiscal
environment [2,3], and curious observers keep asking: why
are we going back to the Moon?
Since the turn of this century China has launched people
into Earth orbit and announced plans for human missions
to the Moon. NASA is phasing out its Space Shuttle system
and developing a new crew and cargo transport system but,
given the cost and complexity of this enterprise, the USA
may be without its own means of human access to space at
some point in the next decade, perhaps for several years.
Russia has an operating human space flight system and is
also developing a new human-rated space vehicle that
government officials have said might begin flying as early
as 2013. Canada, India, Japan, and member countries of
the European Space Agency (ESA) are among nations
and Mars. Still more nations—some with their own
capabilities to build satellites, robotic spacecraft, and
unpiloted space launch vehicles, some without any space
capabilities of their own—would like to have a role in the
global enterprise of space exploration and development.
Some important questions must be addressed in con-
sidering future human exploration of space, questions that
spacefaring nations have given insufficient attention. How
will extending the human presence into the Solar System
affect society and culture on Earth? What legal, ethical and
other value systems should govern human settlements and
other activities in space? Do humans have rights to exploit
extraterrestrial resources and alter extraterrestrial environ-
ments? Do spacefaring nations have an obligation to share
the benefits of access to space with those nations that do
not have access? Do those nations with early access to
space have a right to impose their social and cultural norms
on space-based civilization? The following review of issues
relating to space law, ethics and culture provides a
framework for speculating on what the human future in
space might hold and how President Bush’s ‘vision’ might
play out in the broader context of 21st century space
exploration.
2. Foundational principles

Tel.: +1 202 479 4311; fax: +1 202 484 8251. Issues of space law and ethics have been discussed in
E-mail address: lbillings@seti.org. international fora since before the launch of Sputnik I in

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doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2006.08.001
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
250 L. Billings / Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255
1957. The International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
first considered issues of space law at its 1952 annual
congress. The International Institute of Space Law (IISL)
was formed in 1960 as an affiliate of the IAF, which tasked
the IISL to study and report on ‘‘juridical and sociological
aspects of the space sciences’’ [4]. Space law issues
examined by the IISL include the uses of space; property
rights in space; rights, responsibilities, and liability for
space activities; contact with extraterrestrial intelligence;
and dispute settlement.
A considerable body of national and international space
law is in place that defines what is permitted and prohibited
in outer space. For the USA the foundational national
space statute is the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space
Act. Other US space statutes address commercial space
applications, such as satellite communications, land remote
sensing and space launches [5]. The USA is signatory to six
of seven United Nations treaties governing activities in
space, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty [6], which
stands as the foundational international space statute.
Other UN space agreements include a space rescue
agreement, liability and registration conventions and
principles relating to space-based television broadcasting
and remote sensing. The UN Committee on the Peaceful
Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), established in 1958,
oversees implementation of these space agreements.
Article I of the Outer Space Treaty states that space
exploration ‘‘shall be carried out for the benefit and in the
interests of all countries.’’ The treaty also specifies that
‘‘outer spaceyis not subject to national appropriation by
anyymeans.’’ As a ratified agreement, the Outer Space
Treaty stands as ‘‘the supreme Law of the Land’’ in the
USA, a status accorded to international treaties by Article
VI of the US Constitution. Some advocates of space
settlement and development argue that this treaty does not
prohibit private property claims, and some have even
asserted that the USA is not obligated to abide by the
terms of the treaty (see Section 4). The USA has not
ratified the so-called 1979 Moon Treaty [7], which specifies
(in Article XI) that the Moon and its resources are ‘‘the
common heritage of mankind’’ and not subject to any sort
of property claims, sovereign, private, or otherwise. The
agreement specifies that nations have the right to explore
and use the Moon ‘‘in accordance with international law
and the terms of this Agreement,’’ and it calls for ‘‘an
international regimeyto govern the exploitation’’ of lunar
resources.
3. Cooperation or competition: what is best for humankind?
Existing space law shows that space exploration has been
conceived from its beginnings in the mid-20th century as a
human endeavor with global consequences, and the history
of the US civil space program shows that international
cooperation has played a major role in space activities.
Lyndon B. Johnson, as senator and vice president, and
President John F. Kennedy were among top US officials
who ‘‘hoped that competition among diverse states [in
space exploration] could be channeled into peaceful pur-
suits—exploring the cosmos as the moral equivalent of
war’’ [8].
Although international cooperation in space exploration
has fallen short of a moral equivalent of war, nonetheless
NASA and other national and multinational agencies have
entered hundreds of bilateral and multilateral agreements
over the past half century to pursue increasingly costly and
complex space initiatives, such as the Hubble Space
Telescope and the Cassini–Huygens robotic exploratory
mission to Saturn. Thus precedents have been set for
international cooperation in space. Since the turn of the
century, however, international cooperation has experi-
enced some strains, and the Outer Space Treaty’s ethical
standard of pursuing space exploration and development
‘‘for all [hu]mankind’’ has been challenged. President
Bush’s ‘vision’ for space exploration articulates a goal of
promoting ‘‘international and commercial participation in
exploration to further US scientific, security, and economic
interests’’ [9]. But in the months following Bush’s
announcement of this ‘vision’, some of NASA’s traditional
partners in space—ESA and its member states, Canada and
Japan—expressed concerns about NASA’s perceived re-
luctance to fulfill commitments under an international
agreement to develop and operate the ISS, for example—
an agreement with the legal status of a treaty.
In October 2004 a Bush campaigner told a space policy
forum in Washington, DC, ‘‘The administration is review-
ing whether or not we want to be signatory’’ to the UN
Outer Space Treaty [10].1 In April 2005, at a meeting with
the Washington space community, NASA Administrator
Michael Griffin, a Bush political appointee, said that when
human civilization reaches the point where more people are
living off the Earth than on it, ‘‘we want their culture to be
Western’’. Western civilization, he asserted, is ‘‘the best
we’ve seen so far in human history,’’ and the values space-
faring people should take with them into space should be
Western values.2 In November 2005 Griffin told a
conference on international cooperation in space in
Washington, DC, that the US interstate highway system
is a good model for NASA’s exploration architecture.
Using this model, NASA would build the highway
system—‘‘because it must be done, and because we can
do it’’—and partners could determine what to do beyond
the ‘off ramps’. An avowed advocate of the commercial
development of space, Griffin said he hoped that the
international legal regime governing execution of President
Bush’s ‘vision’ could be interpreted to enable rather than
1
The author was present at this event, sponsored by Women in
Aerospace and the Society of Satellite Professionals. Campaigner Frank
Sietzen’s statement about the Treaty reportedly prompted Bush admin-
istration representatives at the State Department and NASA to disown the
remark [10].
2
The author was present at this event, sponsored by Women in
Aerospace.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
L. Billings / Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255
restrict space exploration and development.3 In May 2006
Griffin said at a Washington aerospace event, ‘‘We want to
be the world’s pre-eminent spacefaring nation for all future
timeysecond to none.’’4
Thus it seems that, while NASA claims to seek
international partners in costly, long-term space explora-
tion initiatives, it continues to insist on being in charge.5
NASA’s traditional partners do not appear inclined to
accept such terms, and existing and prospective partners,
such as China, are building stand-alone programs or
building alliances with spacefaring nations other than the
USA (or both).
4. Property claims on the space frontier
Meanwhile, encouraged by Bush’s ‘vision’, advocates of
private property rights in space and other exploitation-
oriented agenda items have been advancing their cause in
various venues, including NASA, the White House and the
US Congress. The National Space Society (NSS), a space
advocacy group based in Washington, claims its rationale
for promoting space settlement is ‘‘survival of the human
species’’. The Society has its own ‘vision’ of space
exploration and development which embodies conflicting
values and beliefs, among them ‘‘prosperity/unlimited
resources,’’ ‘‘growth/unlimited room for expansion,’’ in-
dividual rights, unrestricted access to space, personal
property rights, free-market economics, democratic values,
enhancement of Earth’s ecology, and protection of new
environments [11,12].
The Space Frontier Foundation, a California-based
advocacy group with a similar ‘vision’, claims it is
‘‘dedicated to opening the Space Frontier to human
settlement as rapidly as possible’’. Its goals include
‘‘protecting the Earth’s fragile biosphere and creating a
freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using
the unlimited energy and material resources of space. Our
purpose is to unleash the power of free enterprise and lead
a united humanity permanently into the Solar System.’’
[13,14]. High Frontier, Inc., a conservative aerospace
think-tank, also advocates private property rights and
resource exploitation in space, recommending application
of the principles of 19th century US homesteading law and
3 not. In the 21st century, US policy makers and other
The author was present as this event, sponsored by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies. See http://www.csis.org/hse/.
4
The author was present at this event, sponsored by Women in
Aerospace.
5
European Space Agency scientist Gerhard Neukum, who is in charge
of an instrument on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express
spacecraft, reportedly asserted at a space science conference in Houston,
TX, in March 2006 that NASA had reneged on international agreements
without any consultation of its European partners by unilaterally deciding
to defer the Dawn mission to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. ‘‘This is not
the way NASA should treat these things if you want continued
international cooperation,’’ Neukum was reported to have said; ‘‘things
are really degrading in terms of cooperation, and I’m not the only one who
feels that way’’ [39]. NASA subsequently reversed its decision to cancel
Dawn.
251
the colonial Jamestown settlement model to commercial
development of the Moon [15]. High Frontier’s director
has asserted that the USA need not comply with the Outer
Space Treaty.6 Some advocates, it should be noted, suggest
a more temperate approach to space development, based
on the assumption that private property claims in space are
precluded by international law. In this framework, it has
been suggested, establishment of a legal/regulatory regime
that would permit space resource extraction without
allowing property ownership could be a viable option [16].
Nonetheless, the belief persists that, as one space
development advocate has put it, ‘‘one of the major
roadblocks to space development is the lack of off-planet
property rights, and the socialist mindset engendered by
the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which the US is a
signatory’’ [17]. In a similar vein, another advocate has
argued that the Pilgrims who emigrated from England to
settle in what is now the USA ‘‘had something that modern
space enthusiasts don’t—they were pretty sure that once
they got here, they could claim land without government
interference’’ [18].
To sum up, the vision of a human future in space
described herein is predominantly Western, a vision resting
on the assumption that Western nations will be first to
establish a permanent human presence in the Solar System
and, consequently, to define the legal, ethical and cultural
boundaries of space-based society. In international fora,
such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Commission
on the Ethics of Science and Technology (COMEST), the
boundaries of dialogue about a human future in space are
broader (see Section 8).
5. Cultural contexts, past and present
As described in Sections 3 and 4, US visions of a human
future in space are constricted by a peculiarly ‘all-
American’ world-view. The US civil space program and
many of its advocates appear to be stuck in the past in
some important respects. While the social, political,
economic and cultural context for space exploration has
changed radically since the 1960s, the rhetoric and,
arguably, the substance, of US space policy making has
advocates have been promoting ‘the Moon-Mars thing’ as
exploration for the sake of exploring and also as a means of
opening up the Solar System to private property claims,
resource exploitation, and commercial development. ‘‘The
solar system is like a giant grocery store’’, one space
advocate has been reported as saying; ‘‘it has everything we
could possibly want’’ [19].7 This analogy has its weak-
6
High Frontier director Klaus Heiss make this claim at a meeting in
Washington, DC, which the author attended.
7
X-Prize Foundation Chairman Peter Diamandis was reported to have
made these remarks at a 2004 conference on space exploration at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology [19].
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
252 L. Billings / Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255
nesses: for example, in a grocery store one must, of course,
pay for what one wants. In this vision of a human future in
space, those with the means to get to the ‘store’ of space
first get all the goods. Those who get there late may get
nothing—a system more in the spirit of imperialism than of
the Outer Space Treaty.
The rhetoric of space advocacy highlighted herein
reflects an assumption that the values of materialism and
consumerism are values worth extending into the Solar
System. Expanding Western-style consumer culture into
the Solar System could conflict with upholding the
principles of equal access, benefit sharing and non-
appropriation articulated in the Outer Space Treaty. The
conception of outer space advanced by this advocacy
rhetoric is the idea of a Solar System (and beyond) of wide-
open spaces and limitless resources—a space frontier.
The metaphor of the frontier, with its associated images
of pioneering, homesteading, claim-staking and taming,
has been persistent in American history.8 In the rhetoric of
space exploration, the idea of the frontier has been, and
still is, a dominant metaphor. ‘Space frontier’ may mean
different things to different people, however, and thinking
about the range of meanings invoked by the metaphor may
be useful in considering what values are, could be, or
should be embodied in the human endeavor of space
exploration; and what sort of society and culture humans
could, or should, establish in space.
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s 100-year-old
essay, ‘The significance of the frontier in American history’
[21], is perhaps the best-known articulation of the
metaphor. Later historians of the American West have
deemed the idea of the frontier a ‘myth’, embodying a
world-view in which the USA is ‘‘a wide-open land of
unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious self-reliant
individual to thrust his way to the top’’ [22]. Historian
Patricia Nelson Limerick has observed that space advo-
cates tend to cling to the frontier metaphor, conceiving
‘‘American history [as] a straight line, a vector of
inevitability and manifest destiny linking the westward
expansion of Anglo-Americans directly to the exploration
and colonization of space.’’ Critiquing this frontier vision
of a human future in space, Limerick has warned: ‘‘In using
this analogy, space advocates have built their plans for the
future on the foundation of a deeply flawed understanding
of the past, [and] the blinders worn to screen the past have
proven to be just as effective at distorting the view of the
future’’ [23].
Historian Stephen Pyne has examined space exploration
as a ‘‘cultural invention’’ (p. 18) that ‘‘reinforces and
reinterpretsymyths, beliefs, and archetypes basic to its
originating civilization’’ [24]. Modern Western (European
and American) exploration functioned as ‘‘a means of
knowing, of creating commercial empires, of outmaneuver-
ing political, economic, religious, and military competi-
tors—it was war, diplomacy, proselytizing, scholarship,
8
The frontier metaphor is discussed in [20].
and trade by other means’’ [25]. The postmodern explora-
tion of space is different, Pyne argues. Rationales advanced
for space settlement, he says, are ultimately ‘‘historical,
culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to
pioneer to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of
renewing civilizationywith neither a rambunctious im-
perialism nor an eager Enlightenment’’, he concludes, ‘‘the
case for space colonization is not compelling’’ [25].
6. Exploration and the ethics of planetary protection
History thus offers space advocates and policy makers
useful insights into the functions and the dangers of
frontier rhetoric. The drive to conquer and develop bumps
up against the need to preserve and protect. One place in
the area of space policy where legal and ethical considera-
tions of preservation and protection intersect with the drive
to explore—and where frontier rhetoric is notably absent—
is in planetary protection policy. NASA and the Commit-
tee on Space Research (COSPAR) of the International
Council of Science have long-standing national and
international planetary protection policies in place direct-
ing solar system exploration missions to take steps to
prevent the transport of terrestrial biological contamina-
tion to extraterrestrial environments and the transport of
possible extraterrestrial biological contamination to Earth
through solar system sample returns [26].
Expressing a consensus of the international science
community, Article IX of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty
specifies: ‘‘States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies
of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial
bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid
their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in
the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduc-
tion of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall
adopt appropriate measures for this purpose’’ [27]. Article
IX is the fundamental rationale for current NASA and
COSPAR planetary protection policies. The primary
purpose of these parallel policies is to maintain pristine
conditions in extraterrestrial environments for the purpose
of scientific exploration: ‘‘The conduct of scientific
investigations of possible extraterrestrial life forms, pre-
cursors, and remnants must not be jeopardized’’ [28].
It has been noted that such policies can be maintained to
meet ‘‘the pragmatic instrumental needs of scientific
exploration, or from ethical principles’’ [29]. The scientific
community continues to examine the ethical and philoso-
phical principles embodied in planetary protection policy.
An expert panel of the US National Academy of Sciences
has recently suggested that the space community consider
expanding the current rationale for planetary protection, as
reflected in present policy, beyond preservation of pristine
extraterrestrial environments for scientific exploration to
include the more expansive goal of preserving pristine
extraterrestrial environments for their own sake—that is,
the wilderness rationale. Regarding ‘‘ethical issues con-
cerning the introduction of terrestrial organisms into
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
L. Billings / Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255
sensitive environmentsyNASA and its international
partners [should] address this issue as expeditiously as
possible’’ [30].
7. Conquering space or exploring wilderness?
One logical extension of the idea of preserving the space
environment is the idea of outer space as a wilderness.
Thinking about space as a wilderness provides a means of
envisioning exploration in a less invasive way than current
frontier rhetoric does. Historian Neil Maher has argued
that, while the now-iconic ‘Earthrise’ photograph of our
planet, taken from space by an Apollo 8 astronaut in 1968,
‘‘helped extend America’s Manifest Destiny into the
ultimate wilderness—outer space’’, the equally iconic
‘‘Whole Earth’’ photograph, taken by an Apollo 17
astronaut in 1972, subsequently ‘‘debunk[ed] the frontier
narrative suggested in Earthrise’’, by reconfiguring public
perception of the home planet as ‘‘an environmentally
threatened home’’ [31].
The wilderness metaphor is at the core of the concept of
‘astro-environmentalism’, the idea of applying the values of
environmental protection and preservation to space
exploration. It has been argued that treating the Solar
System like a wilderness to protect rather than a frontier to
exploit could help to keep nuclear technology, human-
made debris, and other environmental hazards out of space
and prohibit private and sovereign property claims. The
point would be to ‘‘avoid making the same mistakes in
space as we have on earth’’ [32].
The case has been made that some sort of ethical code
for space exploration and development will be necessary to
protect the space environment [33]. It has been argued that
adoption of a code of ethics for business in space could
facilitate the commercial development of space and avoid
perpetuation of ‘‘the greed and power models so prevalent
today’’ [34]. One proposed code calls for the practice of
environmental stewardship, the promotion of honest deal-
ings, the importance of safety, the maintenance of a free-
market economy, and the maximization of wealth. The aim
of this code would be ‘‘to always protect outer-space and
its celestial bodies, and to engage in space commerce
unfettered by government or other barriers’’ [34, p. 6]. It
could be argued, however, that these aims may be mutually
exclusive.
8. International dialogue on space ethics
In the USA current dialogue on legal and ethical aspects
of extending human presence into the Solar System tends
to focus on protecting commercial interests. Elsewhere,
space ethics and the principle of protecting the space
environment for all humankind have been the subject of a
broader discussion. UNESCO has been studying the
feasibility and outlining the principles of an international
declaration or policy on space ethics, in consultation with
COPUOS. In 1998 UNESCO established COMEST and
253
tasked it to examine space ethics, among other topics.
COMEST has identified a number of principles to be
embodied in any national and international codes of space
ethics, among them respect for extraterrestrial environ-
ments, benefit sharing, free and open access, and public
participation in space policy making. The challenge ‘‘is to
devise an ethics of positive action and wise prevention, not
an ethics of regret’’ [35].
While opinions differ as to what the ethics of space
exploration and development should be, one point that
parties to UNESCO-sponsored examinations of the subject
tend to agree on is that space is the common heritage of
humankind: ‘‘space and celestial bodies are non-appropri-
able,’’ and ‘‘no exploitation of [space] resources should be
undertaken without a prior international agreement’’ [36].
9. ‘Astrolaw’ for society in space
Whether the development model or the wilderness model
prevails beyond Earth, space-based human communities
will need to adopt some system of governance. The idea of
space jurisprudence—the governance of ‘‘relations between
earthkind and spacekind and among spacekind them-
selves’’—has been explored. ‘‘First principles for the
governance of space societies’’ and a ‘‘spacekind declara-
tion of independence’’ have been proposed for future space
migrants and space natives [37]. It has been suggested that
the key Outer Space Treaty concept of space as the
common heritage of humankind could well serve as a
keystone principle of future space law (or ‘astrolaw’) as
well. It will doubtless be difficult for terrestrial experts to
conceptualize social and legal structures for extraterrestrial
human communities: ‘‘How do we design social structures
and reflective legal regimes for human societies in space on
the basis of empirical data generated by Earth-sitters?’’ [37,
p. 103].
10. Conclusions
Although plans for extending human presence in space
are moving forward (albeit slowly), key issues of space law,
ethics and culture have received little attention in the
discourse of US space policy making in the 21st century.
Contemporary visions of the human future in space range
from careful exploration and enjoyment of a pristine
wilderness to extension of familiar terrestrial patterns of
conquest, colonization and exploitation. Facing an oppor-
tunity to envision a new, 21st century era of spacefaring,
the US aerospace community appears to be choosing to go
back to the future, leaning on an outdated—and arguably
dangerous—rhetoric of frontier conquest and manifest
destiny to justify mining the Moon and creating human
colonies in space. At a time when space advocates are
calling for greater efforts to build public support, these
advocates may do well to consider that the frontier/
conquest/exploitation rationale for space exploration may
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
254 L. Billings / Space Policy 22 (2006) 249–255
not be widely palatable outside the space community
today.
Members of the expanding pool of spacefaring nations
are entering bilateral and multilateral agreements to pursue
various spaceflight projects, ranging from robotic plane-
tary exploration missions to human space flight. While the
USA is party to some of these agreements, it is increasingly
the case that US participation in space projects is no longer
a necessity. Now is the time for US space policy makers, as
well as the USA’s current and prospective partners around
the world, to start planning (preferably in cooperation) for
space exploration as the global human enterprise the
drafters of the Outer Space Treaty envisioned it to be.
In the first volume of Space Policy, Hempenius and
Voute [38] asserted that space exploration carries with it:
the danger of domination by extrovert cultures. Proper
development of space technology requires international
cooperation, scientific creativity and technological
innovation combined with sociopolitical, economic and
cultural aims and objectives and ethical valuesyNorms
and objectives have to take into account religious
concepts, humanistic viewpoints and sociocultural
criteria. The ethics of the conquest of space have to
consider the benefit of all mankind and that of each
single individual, group and society as complementary
and of equal importance.
More than 20 years later, space policy makers would still
do well to consider these concerns in their deliberations on
the ethics of space exploration and development.
Advocates of frontier-style exploitation seem to speak
more loudly than others in public discourse on the human
future in space. But their views are not the only ones worth
considering in determining how the human exploration of
space shall proceed. The US push to make outer space
‘Western’ is akin to its push to make the Middle East
‘democratic’, in that it does not address in any depth what
sort of legal, ethical and social structures and values will be
most appropriate to these unfamiliar cultural environ-
ments. One way to begin to address these questions would
be to form some sort of World Space Conference that
could function as a bridge between programmatic and
political levels of governments regarding space activities.
Such a global space policy body could be responsible for
considering ‘‘the social impact of particular space activities
and thus anchor the process of defining politically
acceptable arenas in society at large’’ [39]. The formation
of a world space organization is a controversial idea, but it
is one worth serious consideration, if only for the purpose
of broadening the dialogue about space law, ethics and
culture in the 21st century.
Former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin used to say
that NASA was good at addressing how to proceed with
space exploration, but not why. The US space community
still struggles with explaining why it is doing what it is doing.
This community is not inclined to reflect on the nature,
functions and meanings of the cultural institution of space
exploration in the post-cold war, post-industrial, postmo-
dern (or post-postmodern) world. The question of whether
and how space exploration serves society and culture
deserves deeper thought. It may prove to be the case that
space exploration will need reinvention to survive and thrive
as a cultural enterprise in the 21st century and beyond.
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