List of sponsors at a New Space Economy Conference.
Cite as: Jones, Craig. 2019. "Capital, Power, and Outer Space." In "Social Studies of Outer Space." In Innovating STS Digital Exhibit, curated by Aalok Khandekar and Kim Fortun. Society for Social Studies of Science. August.
Essay map
This essay is part of the meta essay on the Social Studies of Outer Space group. Another essay related to the shared question of "how does this innovation interrupt habitual modes of doing STS?" can be found at Interrupting earthly modes of doing STS.
Bibliography
Pollock, N. and William, R. (2010), 'The business of expectations: How promissory organizations shape technology and innovation', Social Studies of Science, 40(4), pp.525-548.
The study of Outer Space requires an engagement with the future and the questions this necessarily begets. Questions such as: Whose future? How may this be realised? And who controls this? Questions surrounding power, democracy, and (dis)empowerment have long been a part of STS, and Outer Space promises to be a site where these debates will be played out once more. Consequently, the bringing together of STS and Outer Space promises to be a fruitful area of research. With the ‘reinvigoration’ of aerospace activities over the past 15 years, the New Space Economy’s rapid growth, and the ever-shifting capital and geopolitical relationships these developments are causing, the Social Studies of Outer Space has the potential to reinvigorate STS. Specifically, these developments pose interesting questions for STS and its areas of study, most notably around deliberative democracy, power, and inclusionary/exclusionary practices around race, sex, gender, and class.
Indeed, consider the above image, taken during a New Space Economy conference in 2018. It shows a lot of core sponsors for the event and indicates some of the main actors that are working to shape the discourse(s) of Outer Space. This raises a series of questions pertinent to STS at present and the Social Studies of Outer Space more specifically, questions such as: How democratic are futures and practices regarding Outer Space? If certain actors have the monopoly through their capital, what becomes of ‘the common heritage of all [hu]mankind’? Who is included in this and, conversely, who is excluded? How do we understand power as it relates to Outer Space and how has it shifted from the State to private actors? What does this mean for democratic futurity?
These questions and the above image highlight the increasing influence of private actors within the aerospace industry and demand that we consider questions and issues around capital, power, democracy, and futurity. All of the sponsors represent some of the wealthiest and, by extension, their interests. Deloitte: a multi-billion dollar finance firm. Blue Origin: set up and owned by the wealthiest person on Earth. Virgin Orbit: owned and ran by a multi-billionaire. SpaceResources.lu: representing the interests of a nation renowned for its tax haven status. These sponsors act as what Pollock and Williams (2010) refer to as ‘promissory organizations’, working as intermediaries to influence and shape conversations and imaginations of futurity. These themes come together with ‘traditional’ STS to provoke thought pertaining to the relations and dynamics imposed and (re)created regarding Outer Space, demanding a more critical reading provided through the Social Studies of Outer Space. This new reading forces careful deliberation on how Outer Space does not simply happen in an abstract ‘out there’ but is intimately bound up in Earth-based networks and their associated problems. It demands that we move away from discussing Outer Space as a mere extension of issues surrounding power, inclusion/exclusion, democracy, and capital. Although these areas are doubtlessly useful in the Social Studies of Outer Space, this new context can (and should) require us to regard these areas of concern anew, the new context necessarily (re)creating a series of circumstances that trouble many of the a priori assumptions held in these concepts. With this in mind, Outer Space surely poses an exciting and (re)invigorating area of study for STS.