Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine what economic, social and biological seeds we need to sow to create successful space colonies better protected from dissent and revolution. It considers that while the space development timetable is continuing, the Earth economy in its current form will damage the biosphere before space industrialisation can be established, and without a healthy consumer economy on Earth, space colonisation is unlikely to occur. Using themes drawn from earlier feudal structures and considering the birth of capitalism and the nature of growth, this paper examines three long-standing assumptions about the drivers of the space economy. The first driver is that the space industrialisation is a necessary stimulus to the Earth economy. The second is the obligation of humanity to physically diversify to save itself from extinction, and the third is humans’ innate exploratory nature, which must be given full expression. This paper will show that none of these drivers will be successful in altering the current economic realities of the space economy and that in particular, the third driver also misrepresents how humans explore. It will show that the Earth degradation timetable and the space economy development timetable do not match, and that the Earth’s biosphere is likely to become irreparably damaged long before the space economy can support it or become self sustaining. This paper considers that solutions to the problems of biosphere degradation and sustainable development on Earth will be the same solutions to those of colonising space, and will describe a two-part implementation of a scheme to provide a secure foundation for successful space colonies. Firstly, by implementing historical features of human societies to enable natural decision-making procedures to develop among diverse groups dedicated to space development and secondly to slowly separate the space economy from the world economy of fiat currency and standard capitalist investments vehicles, which will direct the evolution of space colonies along a path compatible with both a protected biosphere on Earth and long lasting settlements away from it.
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Notes
- 1.
Excluding military and secret government missions, space programs in billions of dollars: NASA, 18.0; Russia, 8.6; China, 12.0; ESA, 5.0; India, 1.3; Japan, 1.5; UK, 0.3. (CIA World Fact Book 2015).
- 2.
It may seem like madness to speak of soils going extinct, but more than a third of the world’s top layer is endangered, according to the UN, (which declared 2015 the International Year of Soils.) (UN 2014).
- 3.
The European Parliament now supports payments for specialised internet services as long as open access is not compromised according to new net neutrality rules (European Commission 2015).
- 4.
“GDP growth isn’t doing much to raise your income anymore. And the trend seems to be getting worse: since the 2009 recovery started, 95 % of GDP growth has been captured by the top 1 %. Under such conditions, if you are not among the top earners in America, you may not care very much whether the BEA announces that the economy grew at a 3.6 or 2.8 % pace in the third quarter.” (Economist 2013).
- 5.
Bitcoin is therefore not the answer to debt problems of countries like Greece.
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Kennedy, A. (2016). Overlords, Vassals, Serfs? How Space Colonies, the Future of the Space Economy and Feudalism Are Connected. In: Cockell, C. (eds) Dissent, Revolution and Liberty Beyond Earth. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29349-3_14
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