Chatter: Governing Space Settlements Ethically with Erika Nesvold
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2023
⏱️ 93 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As humanity builds settlements beyond Earth, myriad ethical issues will arise--many in a different way than they do terrestrially. Astrophysicist and space communicator Erika Nesvold has devoted extensive thought and research to how to ethically govern space settlements, most notably on her podcast Making New Worlds and in her book Off-Earth.
In a conversation that pairs well with Shane Harris's March 2022 Chatter discussion with astrobiologist Lucianne Walkowicz about ethical space exploration, David Priess spoke with Erika about her grounding in Star Trek and other science fiction, the JustSpace Alliance that she co-founded with Lucianne, that alliance's interactions with space industrialists, Erika's application to be an astronaut, conflicting motivations for humanity to settle space, how we should select space settlers, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the concept of legal personhood for non-terrestrial bodies, labor law and criminal justice in space settlements, how motivations for settling space influence openness to various forms of government, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The podcast Making New Worlds
The book Off-Earth by Erika Nesvold
The Chatter podcast episode Ethical Space Exploration with Lucianne Walkowicz
The Foundation book series by Isaac Asimov
The Dune book series by Frank Herbert
The YouTube video All Tomorrows
The movie 2012
The book 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke
The book Artemis by Andy Weir
The movie Sunshine
The book A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Pinketty
The book series The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
The book Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:56.9 | Welcome to chatter. I'm David Priest. This week, astrophysicist Erica Nessvold on governing |
| 1:11.3 | space settlements ethically. I often say that science fiction authors were the original |
| 1:19.7 | space ethicists because they were doing space ethics before humans went into space. It's |
| 1:26.7 | generally assumed that a lot of these habitats, these space settlements are going to have some |
| 1:30.6 | kind of centralized control of things like the water and the air and the food. It's pretty |
| 1:35.4 | easy to squash a protest or a strike by just turning the oxygen down a little bit so you |
| 1:39.6 | can see that there's a lot of concerns for liberty and for expressing dissent in a space |
| 1:44.7 | settlement. Who deserves to live, who ensures the long-term survival of the human race, trying |
| 1:53.5 | to make sure you have enough genetic diversity, enough expertise so that you don't send 10,000 |
| 1:58.7 | doctors and no plumbers. That gets to a whole different set of questions with much higher |
| 2:03.5 | stakes. Erica, welcome to chatter. Thank you. |
| 2:12.5 | I have been a bit of a fanboy for some time, your podcast making new worlds and your book |
| 2:19.2 | off earth talking about the ethics of space settlements and really all kinds of issues |
| 2:24.4 | having to do with moving off of this planet earth are just fascinating and not only take |
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