Instant Genius - How the battle for space will change the world, with Tim Marshall

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

As space travel becomes more common, questions are being raised over laws in space, how it will be split up amongst countries and even the risk of potential star wars. We spoke to author Tim Marshall to find out about the future of space politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. From BBC Science Focus magazine. This is Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Alex Hughes, staff writer at BBC Science Focus magazine. This week, we're talking about astropolitics.

As space travel becomes more frequent, and our occupation of outer space expands, questions are now being raised over how space can be governed, what we should be doing out there, and what rules and regulations need to be put into place. I'm joined by Tim Marshall to discuss this topic. He's the author of the new book, The Future of Geography. In this episode, he explores everything from the laws and ethics of space, how we can get there,

and even how we can generate more energy as a planet by utilising space. So as a society, we are, you know, we are very much firmly based on Earth right now with the very occasional trip outside of that border. Would you say we're approaching, I guess, science fiction future where we as a whole society begin to break out into space and further? Yes, and in many ways we have in so far as most countries have in one way or another. For the majority it's just satellites, which are now as small as a Rubik's cubes. some of them, which has given access to space for so many countries. I think it's in our consciousness that, you know, the degree of integration between our economies and space and perhaps to a lesser extent our militaries in space.

So I think we're there, and it's only accelerating. Obviously, we're not exactly going to, you know, up and move off the planet anytime soon, but as we're hearing about, I guess, billionaires and people with the means to do so, beginning to make these trips out to space, do you think we could start to see things like space tourism becoming a reality soon? And with that, I guess, concepts like space hotels and holiday plans and whatnot. I think it's a little wait for that. There's already been forms of space tourism, but we're talking a handful of people, of course. And, you know, the chosen ones, such as William Shatner from Star Trek, Captain Kirk, getting a ride out. But it will happen.

But I think, you know, we're at least a decade out from that. The acceleration is much more in the satellite world, the military world, and more than anything seriously big private companies, such as Elon Musk's. But many others that perhaps most of us haven't heard of, are they going for the resources which are out there on the moon. And that's, I think, where the real action is. Space tourism for most of us is a dream or a nightmare, depending on your disposition. For me, it would be a dream. You touch on it a little bit there about, I guess, the militarisation of space or its use in the military. Could you expand on that a little bit? There's a big difference between the previous space race and this one, in that the

previous space race between the Soviets and the Americans, I think the underlying rationale of it was to prove which culture, which society, which political system was superior to the other, and the way to do that was to land on the moon. And so that underpinned the space race. Now, there was a military aspect to it as well and a science aspect to it, but that was the main rationale. Now, Kennedy even pretty much spelt it out in a speech in 62 saying, you know, we need to win this race to persuade people that this fork in the road, the communist road you could go down, or the democratic capitalist system you could go down, partially depends on who wins this race. Now, there is a military aspect to it. There is who is the best tech country around, but primarily this is driven by commerce. This is exactly why the previous space race ended.

After the Americans won, Nixon pulled the plug on the funding, because he said, what's the point of just going back and going back and going back? There is a point now, and the point is to go and get the rare earth metals, the precious materials, such as lithium, that we can mine on the moon. and that is a big driver. One down from that, there is the military aspect. I'm absolutely convinced that in the not too distant future, satellites will be armed because the more that they are,

well, they're already integral to our economies and to our defence systems, and you cannot fight a modern military war without them. And as there is the ability to attack them now, I think the defence side of satellites, lights will grow. So there's all that because, you know, when you look at how good they are at surveillance, for example, they are a key thing to attack. If you intend to do something on earth, you better do something in space simultaneously or just before. Final bit on the

military, although there is so much more I could say. Another reason to have defensive things on them, and I'm not advocating for this, I just think that it's inevitable, is that. that we don't have the laws that say your satellite must be X distance from my satellite because my satellite has got my nuclear early warning system on it and I don't like yours being so close. We don't have laws for that. So we need them and I think we need them urgently. So do you think that's the next step in this sort of process to... Well, sadly, no. I guess... I think the discussion needs to be had and will be had and the debate will be there and there will be efforts for this. I'll give you an example of why it's so difficult by perhaps coming up with a strange

analogy, which is the treaty about Antarctica. The Russians and Americans argued for a very long time about a definition on Antarctica. The Russians said there should be no military in Antarctica, and the Americans argued for no aggressive military, because they wanted to have military scientists working there. And this was a huge bone of contention. So that sort of language will be difficult to iron out if we try to get modern space treaties because of the ones we have a well out of date. And the best example is direct-to-cent attacks. Four countries have done this.

This is China, India, Russia and the US. Each have launched a ballistic missile from the Earth's surface and hit one of their own satellites in a test and destroyed one of their own satellites. Now, obviously, they're testing to see if they can destroy somebody else. satellites. Now, the Americans have said, let's have a multilateral moratorium on testing such weapons. But the Chinese and the Russians know that their ground forces are not up to the scratch of the American forces. However, where they do have parity is in the ability to knock out these crucial elements of modern warfare satellites. So they're not going to sign up to a moratorium on

these things until they reach parity. So there's a good example of how difficult it's going to be. Where I think it is possible is something called a space situational awareness, SSAs. I think that that's a conversation that is being had and could result in a treaty where everybody agrees that everybody tracks every bit of space debris, every single satellite, everything that's out there, tells everybody about it, and hopefully within that writes the rules about distance, how close one thing can be to another. I think that's possible, but I think that the arms race is also inevitable. You touch on it a little bit there. I think it

could be an interesting thing to go on to. When we talk about Earth, you know, we're broken up into regions of countries, democracies, all of these different parts of the world. How does this work then when you get into space? Who owns certain areas? And how can you commercialize a space? that never ends. Depends who you ask, doesn't it? Well, I mean, as you'll know from your science background, that there are two definitions of when space starts, ones at about 60 miles, the Carmen line,

but another one is at 80 miles. And that is a problem, because supposing I define it at 80, and you define it at 60, and then I decide to fly something 61 miles above your territory, is that your sovereign territory? No, but you might argue that it is. So it would be helpful to also get a globally agreed definition

and also a definition of how high up, how horizontal is your sovereignty. These are murky areas, which of course weren't as important as they are now. I mean, this discussion is as old as hot air balloons from vague memories. This isn't in the book, but from vague memory,

I think the French were arguing about 150 years ago or 200 years ago that your sovereignty extended about three miles up, something like that. We're still arguing about it. it. So that sort of thing needs much better defining. And also, once you've defined that, therefore, I can't complain if you're flying a satellite above my country at geosynchronous orbit, which I assume, as you know, geosynchronous, hang a satellite there and it goes around the earth at the same speed as the earth moves. Consequently, it's always above the same spot,

which is very useful for a whole bunch of stuff. So we just need to define all this much better, get it all written down, and try to agree as much as we can so we can cooperate as much as we can. So I guess it's essentially semantics right now, or it has been, and now we're trying to move into a world

where it's actual agreed upon terms. And what is essentially a blank slate, I think, you know, we've established what the rules of Earth are. Now you have to somehow establish the rules of everything, outside of Earth. A lot of people in that world, in what's called the world of astro-politics, you know, of geopolitics, they point to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Unclos.

Because we do, not everybody has signed it, but most countries sign up to it, and it is regarded as the norms. You know, you have 12 nautical miles of sovereignty. That's your waters. You have 200 miles of your EEZ, your exclusive economic zone. if I'm 200 miles from the other person's coastline, we'll have 100 miles each. You know, all these things are agreed. And that's the sort of template that people want to put up into space,

but we need to get there. And the Outer Space Treaty, which is the sort of norms and definitions, is from 1967, and it's horribly out of date. Because, A, things like lasers weren't around then. Most people have signed up to the idea that we won't have weapons of mass destruction, in space. So great, I won't put a nuclear weapon on my satellite. I've agreed not to. But there's nothing to say I can't put a laser on my satellite. And if we did all agree not to do that, then we could diminish the arms race. So we need a 21st century version of the outer space treaty, I think.

So when we're looking into space, how do you see, I guess, sovereign tree working in space? Can anyone own anything? Theoretically not. It is generally agreed that the cosmos is for the common good, for all of humanity, and you can't own any of it. And that's

very good language, but of course it's language. Sometimes what is reality can be different. So there's already laws, for example, if you invent something if the Japanese invent something in the

Japanese model of the International Space Station, it is as if it was invented in Japan. But things get a bit more loose the further out you go. One of the most interesting things I found about the Artemis Accords, which about 23 countries have signed now, is that they all agree that if you've gone to the moon and you've spent a hell of a lot of money in investment in finding where the rare earth materials are, and getting there and investing in the mining equipment, you can declare a safety zone into which nobody else can come because it wouldn't be safe because you're busy working there. So if a country that's not an Artemis country, for example, Russia and China are not,

they've been excluded deliberately because there are now factions which mirror the factions on earth, you can't really say to them, well, look, says in the Artemis Accords, because they're going to say, well, what's that got to do with us? You know, what are you going to do about it? So it's another example of why we need new laws for the 21st century. I don't, I doubt that anybody will break that idea that you, that you cannot own part of the moon or indeed part of space. People will hold on to that concept, but I think the realities will kick in when country X has planted its flag in a section of somewhere and built a base, you know, it'll just be considered, not their sovereign territory, just that's where they are.

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and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So it's more, I guess, less legality and more of an understanding between countries when it comes to that sort of thing. Yeah, and that's quite an important point because the norms do arise.

And it's usually the first people that get there and the way they behave and the parameters that they set. And then if somebody else comes along and agrees with them, well, it doesn't take that long until these, norms are sort of accepted as, in quotation marks, law. So it's very important to get, it's another reason to try and get there first, and it's another reason why, to an extent, this race, a gradual race, but accelerating, to get to the moon. Because again, just as on earth when, let's say, the switch from coal to oil was happening, a leading power is not mean to say to itself, well, we won't bother going for this new, these new resources. We'll just let everybody else get it. And hopefully they'll, they'll talk to us. They'll sell us some. No,

you're going to go and go there and try and get it yourself. If we'd be honest about it, is it likely that it's going to be, I guess, someone like the US or China that is setting these standards, the first countries to get there? The big three are China and Russia as a partnership with Russia as a junior partner and the United States. And they are a long way apart. They don't talk to each other at this level, partly because of Ukraine, partly because Congress has banned NASA from working with China, something I think should be looked at carefully again. Underneath that, within the American umbrella, you do have about another 20 odd countries that agree with America's view on all this. So it is who gets there and establishes the norms. The big three will

lead the way. And just as they have people that cooperate with them down here, there will be states that cooperate with them there. I hate to make the reference because I'm sure it's not something you're going to appreciate. But is there a risk of a Star Wars-type world of where we're fighting outside in space, not so much weapons of mass destruction hitting Earth? Yes. No, there really is. And also, as you know, Star Wars was the shorthand for Reagan's version of that, which they were going to do in the 1980s, but stopped for a whole bunch of reasons, including the tensions it would have caused with the Soviets and the problems with the different arms agreements. But we are heading that way. I'll give you two examples. Well, three. One is the one I've already mentioned, the ASATs, the director, to tax on satellites from ballistic missiles fired from Earth. Secondly, and this is now, not the future, as I said, I believe the satellites will be armed and it won't be too long in the future. The Russians have already tested a satellite, which opened, some aperture opened,

it fired something, and no one's quite sure what, at another one of its satellites. Now, the important thing here is it was space to space. It wasn't Earth to space or Space to Earth. it was space to space. They fired something. So that genie is just about out of the bottle. Direct energy weapons, and at the moment they have a range of about a max, say a mile. Several countries have tested these. For example, the Americans have fired a direct energy beam at a drone, a few hundred meters up in the air and destroyed it. And when you think that the electricity in that shot costs a few as opposed to spending $200,000 on a missile to hit that, you can see the direction of travel. So given that we've got that tech and that the Russians have tested something, it's not a great leap

to put those things on the satellites and then it's not a great leap to see them firing at each other. It doesn't have to happen. I'm just saying that it is now possible. The stage of beyond that, then, I mean, you know, I'm not a scientific background and I struggle sometimes with this, but my understanding as physics is that most of the sci-fi movies you see couldn't really happen. You can't have space planes doing a barrel roll and firing photon torpedoes. But the Americans and the Chinese already have a space plane. Not much is known about the Chinese, but the American one has been up at least once. It's a robotic plane, no crew in it. It looks a little

bit like the shuttle, and it spent about a year and a half out there in space. No one's quite sure what it was doing out there. So again, we are on, we are on that route. I hasten to add, this is not all doom, gloom and war. There's an awful lot of good stuff going on with with science and cooperation as well. Yeah, I think quite happy to take it away from war by asking a lot of recent research has been done into essentially how we can live outside of our own boundaries, you know, what we can plant, what can grow, how we can get oxygen. And I think, as we're well aware from lots of different billionaires talking about it, there is this conversation about us moving our civilisations out to Mars or to the moon. One of the questions that I think doesn't

get brought up enough is how do you get construction parts out there and how do you find water and energy sources? How do you get huge portions of people out there? Moon's the best example of this. And again, this isn't too far away. As you know, the Artemis Accord country is led by the states, intend to have a man and a woman walking on the surface of the moon. They said 2025, it looks like it'll slip to 2026 now. And they also say a moon base, 2032. So again, add a few. few years on. Ditto the Chinese and Russians. They're also heading for early 2030s for a moon base. So how on earth do you do that? Slowly and you build out. But there is water now. The Indians have proved it. Indian probe has proved it. There's millions of gallons of water ice,

notably at the South Pole near the Shackleton Crater region. And from water, you can get oxygen. So that is a work in progress. Mining it is also a work in progress. The Japanese are doing some amazing work on building mining equipment for both asteroids and the surface of the moon, and everybody's working on this stuff. So you get there. The first thing, obviously, you need is oxygen. You can get that from the water.

You can get, obviously, water from the water. Hydrogen, you can get from water to make some fuel. building your shelter, there's two versions. There are many, many caves, also near the South Pole. And if you're in the caves, and they are also much more temperate, they don't have the extremes of temperature that you get on the surface. You're protected from the radiation. This is all theory, of course.

Whilst you're living there, you are 3D printing, permanent habitation. And it's a lot cheaper to have the non-crued machine. that can go out there, land with lots of equipment, and then you 3D print the stuff that you haven't got. And these are all, this is on the drawing board. This is intended to be happening over the next few years. This isn't some sort of wish list. Now, if you want to go on to Mars and stuff,

I think that's a lot further out, both literally and time-wise. Talking about satellites are being blown up or any kind of exploration outside of space, there is, as I'm sure you know, a huge issue with the amount of space junk that's left behind and that's begun to make travel outside of our own realms somewhat difficult. Is this, would you say, a problem that would need to first be addressed before we can start looking at these long-form trips and our life is high-hirst? No, I think it's simultaneous because near-Earth orbit, yes, it's getting busy, but it's a huge, huge area.

You know, obviously the further outside of the atmosphere you are, the volume, the area of space in an orbit, grows bigger and bigger and bigger. So there is a lot of space still out there, even in low Earth orbit, to fill, because it goes on for mile after mile. But I think Musk is on record as saying, I think, about another 20,000 at SpaceX satellites, small satellites, he intends to launch over the next few years. and the Chinese are launching them as fast as they can. And many other countries, also Nigeria now makes its own satellites, a cube satellites, size of a rubic's cube, because the costs of getting them out there have gone down so much. So, yes, it is a long-term problem.

The space debris is a long-term problem. And what I came across in the research for the book was if there is one subject that everybody agrees on and everyone agrees and really needs to be tackled, it is space debris. and everybody is aware of this thing called the Kessler syndrome. After an American scientist who just had the scenario of one satellite crashes into another, the debris goes around at 300,000 miles an hour,

or whatever it crashes into another and then another and then another. And at some point you have what I assume would be called the Kessler belt of sharp pieces of metal flying around at thousands of miles an hour, which you can't get through, in which case we are grounded. So everyone agrees, and it's a massive, massive investment is going in in all sorts of countries. The Japanese in particular. And already there are satellites that can have grappling arms on them that can get hold of a satellite that's defunct and throw it into the atmosphere so it burns up so that it's not in the way of another one

and creating more space debris. So it is a work in progress as we speak, but I don't think it will get in the way at the moment of the exploration aspect of space. Very, very different note. I think any time there's innovation, you also see commercialism following close behind. Do you think we'll see things like advertising in space, sports and space, all that sort of stuff?

Well, I do half jokingly say there'll be a museum on space built above Armstrong's on the moon. Armstrong's footprint. You know, it'll be akin to Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but just not religious. or there's a place in Bethlehem where you put your hand on this star that's in the crypt of the church in Bethlehem where allegedly Jesus was born. So, I mean, that's just the fun stuff. Yes, there are, there's somebody, of course, in America who's come up with the idea of a constellation of satellites that will fly in formation and spell out the names of major companies in the low earth orbit.

it, I cannot see, I hope countries agreeing with that, and certainly I do not think the publics of the world will take kindly to that. I find that one of the most depressing things possible, so I'm hoping that doesn't happen, but there are people talking about it. On a, I guess, more positive note, I'm not sure if you're familiar of the theory of Karashev scale, but about the energy consumption that a civilization can produce. I guess one thing that our exploration outside of Earth could bring is a higher level of energy consumption through, you know, very much theoretical ideas like Dyson spheres or the use of satellites. Do you think this is something that would be one of the first sort of things that gets explored as we push past this

boundary? Well, again, they already are. I mean, the Dyson sphere, for example, the Bezos, Jeff Bezos's company, and Blue Horizons, Musk is far more short-term ambitious and I think, I think it's impossible, Musk's ideas. He said a million people on Mars by 2050. It's inconceivable. But Bezos is saying, we will be out there in floating cities. There are even some of the Lagrange points, like L5, between the sun and the Earth, where you could build a space city and it could hang there for various reasons to do with gravity.

He says, look, I know this won't happen for a couple hundred years. But I also know that it will happen. And he is designing things and putting things into place that can be built on for the future. Because he's starting now. You know, he says there's no point in a suddenly trying to invent stuff in 200 years. We're going to start now, even if we're not going to see it. It's the old thing about planting a tree. You know, you won't sit in the shade, but your grandchildren will.

So that sort of stuff's going on. And there's all sorts of theoretical stuff. And there's a line in the wrote in the book about, I don't think we should be constrained in our imagination. And again, this is the fun bit. You know, I mean, the book essentially is about astropolitics and international relations, but there's room in there to explore lots of fun stuff. And I say that I don't think we should be constrained, even by science, when it comes to our imagination in what might come. And there's a great quote by, I think it's Arthur C. Clark, the sci-fi writer, who said something along the lines of, we can have us about as much

conception of what there will be in the distant future as a fish can understand electricity. And I think that's true. For example, if you'd have told someone three or four hundred years ago that there's these weird waves, they're invisible, but they're in the air. And if you put your voice near to one of them, somebody 10,000 miles away can hear you, they'd think you were utterly mad. But that's the sort of imagination that we need to have and that we should not be constrained, even by the idea that nothing can travel faster than speed of light, because the quantum world is challenging Einstein on that, as I understand it. So we've spoken about there's stuff happening now. There's stuff that could happen in hundreds and hundreds of years. What do you think, if you were to,

I guess, paint a picture, what is the next step of astro-politics? What do we see happening? Okay, short term, even more satellites going out there, which is problematic in one way, but also incredibly helpful for humanity in looking at climate change, looking at where to grow crops, looking at coming pestilence on certain regional areas that we can plan for, looking the other direction, looking out for the asteroids which could harm us, and all this sort of stuff is happening right now. Amazing medical experiments are going on, which again will help. humanity, we're getting closer and closer to be able to put fields of solar panels in space

to reflect 24-7, because there's no day and night, solar energy down to Earth. And so even when it's dark, the solar fields collecting the energy on Earth can still transfer it to the grid. So we don't need the batteries because at the moment, as you know, we're struggling with the battery power to maintain to keep the solar energy. So I think all that's in the very near future, I think. The timeline of Artemis and the Chinese, well, Artemis is a man and a woman on the moon,

2026 now, followed every year by more, moon-based by the early 2030s. And I think these things are probable. Once you get past that, I'm afraid you are just into the fun stuff. But once we are established on the moon within a decade, attention will then turn to using as a launch pad for Mars. And I'd be surprised if we're not on Mars by 2040. A million people by 2050?

No. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Tim Marshall talking about astropolitics. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarket. kits and newsagents, as well as on your preferred app store. Alternatively, you can come and find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal.

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