One of the commonly-referenced triumphs of the USSR is their commanding lead throughout most of the Space Race - first launched satellite, first man in space, first woman in space, first rover on Mars, etc. And that’s with half the economy of the US - as the saying goes, feudalism to space age in forty years.
But I’m not here to discuss the past. I’m here to discuss the present and the future - unfortunately, one in which the USSR no longer exists. What do we think of space exploration and eventually colonization before the next revolution?
First, on colonization. On Earth, the problem with colonization is that there are people already living there. On Mars, on Europa, on the Moon, finding current intelligent life is unlikely. (It’s not impossible, but I doubt it, as do most scientists. If intelligent life is discovered, ) And in a case where there is no intelligent life already there to repress, kill, and steal land from, colonialism is not necessarily a bad thing.
The exploration of space is almost inarguably a good thing. The best argument I’ve heard about it is that it draws resources away from Earth. Which, under a liberal view, is a valid argument. However, neither the government nor the capital-holders will contribute their capital to anything useful for the workers.
Regardless, space exploration is nearly always useful. It expands our understanding of the greater universe at very little cost to workers. Space colonization, however, is far less clear-cut.
(A note here: A manned mission to Mars is possible as of 2005. Building a liveable city on Mars is possible within a few decades if we dedicate ourselves to it. Terraforming Mars, with our current level of technology, is also possible, but would take approximately a thousand years. For more information, see The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin. As such, most of this post will be focused on the impact of Martian colonies.)
A common metaphor for the Cold War is a map in which countries turn red and blue. Nowadays, the capitalists have mostly won - China and Cuba remain holdouts, but until the next revolution, the map of Earth is mostly blue.
There’s another planet out there. The Red Planet. Turning the Red Planet blue would be a major victory for any capitalist nation. And in any future where the only surviving governments are competing capitalists, it would also represent a major triumph over other capitalists, which makes it likely that colonization of space will eventually happen. The wealth from their colonies in the New World made Spain one of the richest powers in Europe - there is no reason to think anything will be different.
Colonization of space by a capitalist power would likely change the balance of power significantly in favour of that capitalist state, and in favour of capitalism in general.
Some would argue that the colonies open up a new battleground for the revolution. “No rich person would move to Mars, so it makes a prime ground for revolution.”
Earth’s bourgeoise will not move to Mars. However, there will likely be a bourgeoise class homegrown on Mars.
This avoids the biggest problem, however. A Martian colony will not be self-sustaining for centuries. If Mars and only Mars were to revolt, creating a truly “Red Planet,” they would immediately be embargoed by ever capitalist country on Earth. Such embargoes are quite effective on Earth, where we do not require advanced technology to survive. Martian colonies for centuries will be reliant on Earth for advanced machinery, which makes any solely Martian revolution destined to fail.
If, however, a revolution begins on Earth and then spreads to Mars, surely the Earthen country could support a Martian colony? This method of revolution has been done before - notably, the relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba. And yes, this would likely work. If an established socialist country were to support a revolution on Mars, that revolution would have a chance at succeeding.
However, this leads to no benefit of a capitalist colony on Mars. It becomes simply another capitalist government that needs overthrowing. The far simpler and better solution would be to first revolt on Earth and to leave the building of colonies for a socialist government.
To me, it seems most likely that capitalists will focus on asteroid mining before they seriously consider colonizing Mars. At least, that’s the speculation I’ve seen online
You’re probably not wrong about that. But one of the great values of Mars from a capitalist perspective is that it’s really easy to get to the Asteroid Belt from there and easy to send mined materials home from there. IMO, Mars will be an outpost from which to mine asteroids before anything else.
Maybe. I’m no expert obviously, but would that not be more expensive in a way? Like, I thought a big issue is the amount of energy it takes to get out of Earth’s orbit, seems to me that an outpost on Mars might be doubling the problem no?
The energy required to get out of Earth’s orbit is exactly the problem. You can run fifty missions to the asteroid belt from Earth. Or you can send one big mission to Mars, including all the advanced hardware that’s needed for them to run asteroid missions. They can then produce the rough equipment, including fuel (CO/O2 fuel can be produced on Mars quite easily, and once a source of water can be found, so can CH4/O2, and the color comes from all the iron) and then they can send fifty missions to the asteroid belt. What you’re saving is the effort it would require to get all that rough material out of Earth’s gravity.
Ah that does make sense
It’s a bit counterintuitive, but it’s actually cheaper on energy to get to the Moon from Mars than it is from Earth.
I don’t think we need to worry about capitalist space colonization. Whether you want to beam power down from GEO, build rotating habitats in space, or build a base on another celestial body, the capital costs are exorbitant and the profit to be made is minimal. Even asteroid mining would cause a crisis in profitability as the price of minerals reaches zero, no?
Yes, it’s expensive. First, it’s a pride thing. Billionaires like nothing better than massive projects to feed their ego and show off how rich they are. Second, capitalists so often lack long-term vision. They’ll see there’s X amount of gold or platinum in an asteroid, they’ll try and mine it based on it’s current value. Third, building anything in space would create another resource sink, which drives up demand to meet the increase in supply. And fourth, we’re currently in a resource crisis. There is not enough rare earth metals, say lithium, for the increase in demand that comes with the increase of electric cars.
We do need to worry about capitalist space prison, though. If private companies keep churning out satellites for little reason other than profits and without any plans or mechanisms for reentry, like Starlink is doing right now, then we will inevitably arrive at a point where space debris will create our own little asteroid field covering the whole orbit, and trying to leave it will mean certain death.
That is very true, and there’s no great solution to it.
I agree with your conclusion that revolution on earth before space colonisation would be the best end result. Although at the pace of space investment and revolution that doesn’t seem most likely. I also agree a Martian revolution would be more likely in that most of the people on Mars would be working class for a decent amount of time. I think it would just necessitate the Martian colony to be pretty self-sufficient before revolution as an embargo would be almost guaranteed
Break this up into paragraphs pls this is nearly unreadable
I had paragraphs in when I was writing it. I guess I need to double-space them? One moment… there we go.
Alright thank you so much lol
To anyone interested in space colonization I’d suggest a recent Everybody Loves Communism episode on the subject. Personally, I think space exploration to such an advanced degree you suggest is highly improbable considering the state of the neoliberal order. It’s socialism or barbarism. The multipolar world is rising and the environment is falling. The west will not have the means to keep funding failed space experiments for long. China will lead the new space race. Also, as many an environmentalist has said, we aren’t going to escape the climate crisis to space, a greatly degraded earth is way easier to survive on than a new uninhabitable planet.
