Hello, Houston? We have a bottle of water floating in space.
- Rebecca Franzin
- Feb 23
- 8 min read
For me and many members of Generation Z, what nature represents has always been linked to a contradictory feeling of wonder and urgency. Even as we discovered icebergs and polar bears, tigers and rainforests, our innocent and awestruck view of the world was immediately ‘desecrated’ by the realisation, usually conveyed in a single sentence, that all of this was in danger. Imminent danger, on an evolutionary scale. It is difficult to describe this strange mixture of wonder and nostalgia that tainted our discovery of the world, as well as the overwhelming realisation that everything that was wonderful and unknown was about to be snatched from our hands before we could even remedy it.
Space had the privilege of being free from these feelings. For a long time, it remained the ultimate promised land, the last refuge of fantasy and infinite possibilities. By the time I discovered that we had managed to pollute it, my capacity for surprise at human behaviour had long since vanished into the sewers of jubilant nihilism.
But I digress... Let's start at the beginning.
Couverture du Time du 6 juin 1960 | Vol. LXXV №23
The space race, or ‘Bob, Ivan, what if we could continue the fight, but on the Moon?’
Our species has a knack for finding itself in environments to which it is completely unsuited. We have no means of diving to great depths or breathing underwater, yet we are obsessed with the idea of continuing to explore the oceans. We have no hooves, fur or lungs adapted to high altitudes, yet people climb the highest mountains on the planet for pleasure. We are not equipped with wings and are too heavy to stay in the air, yet we have built aeroplanes. So, of course, even before we knew it was possible, we began dreaming of going into space.
Humans also have a passion for conflict. We enjoy small-scale (mass) killings ‘among friends’, and most technological advances have been made with a view to using them to wage war. Social scientists still don't know whether this is a bug in humanity's operating system or an acquired behaviour. Whatever the reason, it has led us to develop technologies that are as brilliant as their creators, in the sense that they have immense potential for both good and evil.
At a time when technology was advanced enough to attempt space travel, only two international players could afford to do so: the United States and the USSR. They were not on good terms, to say the least, even though they had just won the Second World War together. This conflict is notable for having ended with the biggest cliffhanger in human history: two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and people began to wonder whether, technologically speaking, we had perhaps gone a little too far this time. Scientists realised that if we used this new technology in future wars, we would end up destroying most of life on Earth, which gave rise to Albert Einstein's famous quote:
“I do not know what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
The ensuing war thus underwent a major change in form and was dubbed the ‘Cold War’.
The ‘coldness’ (or ‘coolness’, which was anything but cool in this case) of this war is debatable, since millions of people around the world have lost their lives in organised coups, brutal dictatorships and proxy wars taking place outside the Western world. What the atomic bomb did, however, was to introduce into the realm of strategy the possibility of weaponising the potential for destruction that has not yet been used [weaponisation of the unused potential for destruction]. Game theory specialists call this the ‘chicken game’, and personally I see it more as the ‘You think you're crazy? Well, I'm crazier than you’ game. It's like that comical scene you see in action films, where two people put their weapons on a table and bring out bigger and bigger, more and more absurd and useless weapons, and the tension rises until they finally move on without using them. Everyone in the room knows that if those weapons were used, the game would be over. The real provocation, then, is to show them off and convince others that we are prepared to use them. This game has another name: the arms race.
While artillery pieces were being stacked on a table, the idea of space began to intrigue leaders around the world. It was at this point that the arms race became the space race, and leaders began investing in the development of increasingly powerful space technologies, seeking to achieve key space-related goals before others, with the aim of threatening their enemies by offering them the possibility of launching the ultimate ‘attack from above’.
Race to space — Image via the Ultra Swank Flickr Group
A few rules: no ‘it's mine, not yours’ in space, and ‘let's make sure Star Wars remains science fiction and not a documentary’.
In 1957, the USSR launched the first satellite into space, putting the United States in a difficult position as it felt global hegemony, the real stake in the Cold War, slipping away. Since humanity's ability to identify, before it is taken, a path that clearly leads to disaster (commonly referred to as common sense) had not yet been destroyed, lawyers and specialists understood that it was imperative to take a step back from the principle of ‘anything goes’ and establish some basic rules. This led to the creation of space law, the coolest body of law (it is applied at -273.15°C), which came into being in 1966 with the Outer Space Treaty. We will return to space law in more detail later, but for now, it is important to bear in mind four key principles.
The principle of non-appropriation (1) stipulates that space, planets and asteroids are not for sale and that all space activities must benefit humanity as a whole. In more technical terms, ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination’[1] and ‘is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’[2].
The principle of free access (2) stipulates that everyone is free to go into space, if they have the means to do so. Or more precisely, ‘Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is open for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law’, and there is ‘free access to all areas of celestial bodies’[3].
The principle of liability (3) assigns responsibility to States for damage caused by space activities: ‘States Parties to the Treaty shall assume international liability for national activities carried out in outer space [...], whether such activities are carried out by governmental bodies or by non-governmental entities [...]’[4].
The last (4) is the principle of peaceful use, which prohibits the use of weapons of mass destruction in space and shows that, after all, we may not have completely lost our minds. "States [...] undertake not to place objects carrying nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth, not to install such weapons on celestial bodies, and not to place them in outer space in any other way. The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes"[5].
It is the late 1960s, we have humans in space and a set of specific rules to follow. We will look in more detail at why international law, and space law in particular, is difficult to enforce. It was also at this time that space pollution began.
Space turtles choke on plastic nets
Mandy Barker, Refused, from Times
When we think of space pollution, we imagine soda cans floating among satellites and car wrecks colliding with asteroids in slow motion. But in space, nothing is stationary: everything moves, all the time, at phenomenal speeds. Space itself is in motion, expanding, and has been since the dawn of time.
But let us return to space pollution.
Most of the objects we launch into space are sent into orbit. We will come back to the characteristics and properties of orbits in more detail later, but what is important for now is that objects in orbit essentially revolve around our planet at very high speeds. Even a millimetre-sized piece of paint circling the Earth can, in the event of a collision, puncture a satellite. What we call space debris, which can also be referred to as ‘space junk’, is not caused by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) throwing chocolate bar wrappers out of the window (spoiler: they do, but in a slightly more sophisticated way[6]). It is caused by pieces of equipment that break off during rocket launches or when satellites are put into orbit, by disused satellites that remain in orbit, by the explosion of these ‘dead’ satellites, but also by collisions with these disused satellites that can no longer perform evasive manoeuvres.
This is where space debris differs from the debris found on motorway verges on Earth. Earth debris does not multiply spontaneously. Space debris does. When debris is abandoned on the “space motorways” that are orbits, there is a risk that it will collide with other debris, creating new debris in an uncontrolled chain reaction. For now, this is an irreversible process, and there are no cleaning crews made up of Sunday volunteers to collect debris in orbit.
This is where Cosmos for Humanity comes in.
The Cosmos Rangers
La Croix-rouge de l’Espace
Cosmos for Humanity is a European NGO based in Switzerland whose mission is to promote the preservation of environmentally and economically sustainable access to space. Orbits are a limited resource, just like drinking water and forests, and they are vital to our current way of life. You would be surprised how many things would change in your life if all satellites suddenly disappeared. GPS navigation, satellite television, weather forecasting, climate change monitoring and natural disaster monitoring are just a few of the things that would be affected. Furthermore, space exploration and the study of the universe and the origins of life on Earth would be impossible if we could no longer use orbits.
For all these reasons, we believe that since access to space is a public good and orbits are common property (in the sense of Elinor Ostrom's typology of goods), we should all have a responsibility to protect them. One of the ways we envisage achieving this is through the creation of an indicator, the outer space footprint, which would help consumers and businesses (us), the space industry and space agencies (both governmental and private) to adopt more responsible behaviours. We will return to this in more detail in a future article.
“The planet Earth is blue, and there is nothing I can do about it” – or is there?
While it is extremely surprising that we have managed to pollute space from the very beginning of its exploration, and that we are well on our way to losing a resource that we are only just beginning to use, all hope is not lost. Just as it is not too late to take action on climate change on Earth, it is not too late to take action on space pollution. In fact, the two are linked, as many space-dependent technologies help us monitor and adapt to climate change. If you are passionate about sustainable development and interested in preserving space, we invite you to learn about the different types of space pollution and sustainable space development through our articles, as well as to support our NGO!
[1] Article I, Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.
[2] Article II, Ibid
[3] Article I, Ibid
[4] Article VI, Ibid
[5] Article IV, Ibid
Comments