Does This Mean War? Ruminations from an Astronaut of the Future
By Ashleigh Chase
Photo of an American astronaut staring into the distance courtesy of A. Miller
The view through the porthole clouds as the rocket landing kicks up debris from the surface. As it settles, you can see the outside world more clearly. While some aspects of what you see remind you of Earth, you can’t help but focus on the differences that remind you of why you are here. After receiving multiple signals from this celestial body that could indicate intelligent life, coupled with years of technology improvements, you and your team landed on this new world to find and communicate with these life forms.
As you prepare to explore this unfamiliar world, you are acutely aware of the importance of your mission. You’ve been through years of classes, training, and preparation for this journey, but as with any unfamiliar experience, you have many questions. Are we prepared for how intelligent extraterrestrial life may perceive us? Will we find ways to communicate efficiently? How long, if at all, would we be able to survive on this planet?
Could we end up sparking an intergalactic war?
From day one of training for this mission, these questions have never been far from your mind. One of the first things ever discussed were the Drake Equation (“Drake Equation,” n.d.) and Fermi Paradox (Howell, 2018). As starting-off points to addressing the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (aka SETI, a term you’ve become all too familiar with), they addressed the likelihood of finding intelligent life and why it hasn’t been found yet, respectively. You can’t help but contemplate the odds of intelligent extraterrestrial life existing and the barriers that have prevented a meeting between humans and said life. Naturally, if intelligent life had been avoiding contact with humans, there would be a reason, wouldn’t there?
You have to consider what aspects of humanity would be unappealing to other species of intelligence equal to or greater than humans. While it can be uncomfortable to view one’s own species in a critical light, you are aware that human history has not always been stellar. After all, there are multiple things you can think of that would discourage someone from wanting to interact with humans. Some of the biggest reasons you consider are also some of the most compelling: war, violence, discrimination, and lack of accountability for those in power.
As another part of your training, you’ve also learned much about the last of these potential reasons. Of particular interest are the United Nations Treaties (“Space Laws Treaties and Principles,” n.d.) regarding space exploration, especially the Outer Space Treaty (Grush, 2017) and Moon Treaty (Listner, n.d.). These treaties have provided valuable guidance to your mission, highlighting the importance of approaching space as a free frontier, rather than land and resources to be colonized. After all, colonization has created lasting problems in all areas of the world, including the stripping of native rights, racial imbalance and bias, genocide, war, and continued struggles over land and property ownership, which all connect to the other aspects of human history you can believe would discourage any intelligent species from initiating contact.
This is why the history of international space treaties has also been alarming to you. After all, the Moon Treaty wasn’t ratified by many of the major countries in space exploration, including the United States (de Gouyon Matignon, 2019) - not to mention private companies often had less restrictions from said treaties. You can’t help but question if this view on outer space may become dangerous, even disastrous. You’ve joined this team and mission because of your excitement to meet and communicate with previously unknown intelligent life, but you can’t necessarily say the same for your team. Even with caution-based training, you can easily believe at least 2 of them may be swayed by the riches they could find by taking advantage of this unprecedented situation.
Colorful galaxy photo courtesy of J. Thomas
Who knows what disasters may arise if these people are allowed complete control of the future of human-intelligent extraterrestrial interactions. You can only picture scenes reminiscent of so many of the struggles of human history: land seizure, labor camps, blatantly discriminatory laws, plundering and pillaging, family units separated, innocents carrying the brunt of the pains from war - and the list goes on.
Are you the only one who feels this heavy weight of this mission? There is no way it won’t change life on Earth as it is known today. Even if the messages are a fluke, what’s stopping your team from violating this land and destroying her beauty with ugly, unwieldy structures and contraptions? The treaties are so outdated, and the private-sector pioneers of space exploration have only grown more and more colonizationally ambitious as the capabilities of intergalactic travel have improved.
And if there are intelligent life forms waiting outside this ship, there are so many things that can go wrong. Like humans, you expect them to have a beautifully rich and complex culture and social structure, and it’d be extremely unlikely that every aspect of their society would align perfectly with yours, especially considering that just on Earth alone, culture clash is not uncommon. One wrong move could spark lasting repercussions for future generations of both species, and if rules aren’t established quickly and reasonably, any progress could come crashing down in the future. Discord would be allowed to fester into a full-blown war.
Perhaps your view of the future is on the cynical side. After all, everything could go perfectly. Lasting, peaceful, intergalactic symbiosis is a possibility. You just happen to appreciate the beauty of the unknown and undiscovered universe over the price tags tied tightly to it. And, growing up with a love of science fiction has shown you that the classics, the cream of the crop of the genre, have always had a heavy basis in the realities of the authors. Some have predicted the future so well simply by examining the present.
Knowing this, as you finish securing your gear and begin double-checking your supplies, you wonder - if your predecessors had viewed SETI and outer space exploration differently, would you have fewer worries? If those who had eagerly set foot on Mars, ready to claim an entire planet as theirs; those who have let the excitements for scientific glory and fame overtake moral and ethical obligations; those who’d rather steal and own than study and marvel had all been more closely regulated and held accountable, would success and peace seem more likely to you? If you could travel back in time and change the views of those in power, your view of the future may be more hopeful.
But, you know as the door to the outside world opens, you can only impact the future. And, as you descend the stairs and take your first steps into an unfamiliar world, you can only hope that science, whether funded by a governmental decree or a private hand, will be regulated so that greed can never overcome knowledge and discovery, and ultimately prevent war from darkening the doorway of an intergalactic future. It’s not too late to make this future an even brighter and exciting one.
Sources:
de Gouyon Matignon, Louis. “The 1979 Moon Agreement - A Space Law Analysis on Space Legal Issues.” Space Legal Issues, 4 Aug. 2019, www.spacelegalissues.com/the-1979-moon-agreement/.
“Drake Equation.” SETI Institute, www.seti.org/drake-equation-index.
Grush, Loren. “How an International Treaty Signed 50 Years Ago Became the Backbone for Space Law.”
The Verge, The Verge, 27 Jan. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14398492/outer-space-treaty-50-anniversary-exploration-g uidelines.
Howell, Elizabeth. “Fermi Paradox: Where Are the Aliens?” Space.com, Space, 27 Apr. 2018, www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html.
Listner, Michael. “The Moon Treaty: Failed International Law or Waiting in the Shadows?” The Space Review: The Moon Treaty: Failed International Law or Waiting in the Shadows?, www.thespacereview.com/article/1954/1.
“Space Law Treaties and Principles.” United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.html.