Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Locke, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (in space)

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Philosopher Rebecca Lowe joins us to explore how the ideas of classical liberalism can provide fresh insight into humanity’s activities in space. Our conversation explores the philosophical tensions between individual freedom and societal good, the instrumental and intrinsic value of space activities, and the uniquely accessible nature of space science and exploration. From a novel approach to lunar property rights and the opportunities to support human flourishing, Lowe offers a thought-provoking vision of how philosophical traditions can inform our cosmic ambitions. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/classical-liberalism-in-spaceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreier, the chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. Dr. Rebecca Lowe first caught my attention when I came across her paper called The Value of Space Activity. And this paper is interesting. It explores the concept of value through the lens of classical liberalism, the philosophical tradition that prioritizes individual freedom and flourishing with a limited but effective state. I was particularly struck by her unique application of theories from John Locke and Henry George

concept of land value taxation to pressing question of lunar property rights and making a broader argument for why we, humanity, needs to be considering the concept of property rights beyond Earth, particularly at the moon. Her proposal, I think, really cleverly balances incentives for lunar development while ensuring opportunities for fair access to resources. I had never seen anything quite like this before

and such an explicit application of concepts of classical liberalism seemed quite, I'd say relevant at the moment as we have a burgeoning, growing and more capable private space market than at any point in human history. She goes further in her writings that these types of philosophical perspectives

apply not just to, in a sense, the practical things, the instrumentally valuable concepts of economic activity or private ownership, but to the concept of the individual themselves, the idea of the experience of the individual through flourishing and freedom and intellectual growth. In other words, the value of space activity is also value intrinsic to the concept of knowledge itself. I was, again, quite intrigued. So I was delighted when Dr. Lowe accepted the invitation

to speak with me today on the Space Policy Edition. She is a, as you might have guessed, a political philosopher with a particular interest in the rights and freedom and equality of individuals. And clearly, she's also very interested in space and works as what I love this title, a consulting space philosopher for the consulting outfit Astroanalytica. She joined the show to discuss this paper, but also a much broader discussion of how we apply the concepts of philosophy into what we do in space. The varieties of value again derived

from these types of space activities. Why again establishing lunar property rights is actually a very pressing and immediate concern and this kind of unique role of space both as a domain of practical activity and I think very importantly for me as a conduit of feelings for wonder that's accessible importantly for me, as a conduit of feelings for wonder that's accessible broadly to functionally anyone who can look at a picture or even contemplate the activities of the cosmos. In other words, this means that space is simultaneously an instrumental good and that it's practical, but also an intrinsic good, right? That it's practical, but also an intrinsic good, right? That it's essential. Before we get to that discussion,

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It's more important, obviously, than ever right now that we are speaking up for space. And if you are a member, thank you. Honestly, just thank you for enabling this to succeed. And now my interview with Dr. Rebecca Lowe, starting now. Rebecca Lowe, thank you for joining us today at the Space Policy Edition. Thanks so much for having me, Casey. You write in one of your pieces, talking about space, that reveling in things that are non-quantifiably hard to explain, valuable for their own sake, is one of the great features of being human. And I want to open with that because I resonated

with that very strongly and frankly struggle with it as a person who advocates for space about how do you value the non-quantifiable. Do you think the idea of such concepts of non-quantifiable inherent value ideas has fallen out of favor in recent years or has this always been a perpetual struggle for our society?

Wow, I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a big question to start with. I think I'd say, I think I'd say sort of my first thing is something like, I think there's an easy answer to, or there's an easy way to make that argument, which is just simply, you know, name me another animal that can do that or something like that. It's a, it's a kind of descriptive point about, at least, I mean, I'm a big believer that we don't know enough about animals capacities, but in as much as we do know stuff, it seems like human beings are quite distinct in having this capacity. Do you feel like that as a valuation of society that's changed? I would assert that we've become a more quantified, measurement-focused, or even obsessive society, and things that we don't easily measure

have either intentionally or unintentionally lost value in a broader social discourse. Does that resonate with you? Yeah, I think it totally resonates with me. I have to be careful not to get onto my obsession of talking about consequentialism, which I think is a problem I have with a lot of modern philosophy, but also a lot of modern policy thinkers. They're very keen to assess value in terms of cost benefit analysis. I think there's time and space to that and it can be a helpful heuristic. But particularly when we get onto these things which are not even just the stuff I think which is impossible to value in that sense, but even the stuff which it is possible to do, but maybe just our measurement

capacity isn't quite there yet. Those things may change with AI, who knows. But there are some things for sure, which we can't apply cost benefit analysis to. There's another set of things which it'd be wrong to apply cost benefit analysis to, those two sets overlap, and I don't think they're identical. I'd say also though, this point about basic goods, I think for some people at least, there's a particular philosophical tradition that basic goods fit into. People might want to say that they associate it largely with the natural law tradition.

For some people, that's associated with religious philosophy. Some people want to say, I think particularly today, that maybe it's something that, for instance, Catholic philosophers focus on more. I think those are interesting claims. I think, A, particular traditions don't get a monopoly on truths about the world or ways of seeing the world. So I think it's a bit of a shame when people want to put themselves into silos and not think about ways of doing stuff. I also just think as a final point, though, it's a natural human thing to do this. I think I'm certainly saying in a piece I'm writing at the moment, I can't really think of anything that better ties together just the kind of intrigue and interest of all humankind

across time than looking up and seeing the stars. My bet is that every ancient Egyptian did that. My bet is every ancient Mayan did that. And maybe we're not good at discussing it. Maybe we're not good at, maybe people have these tendencies to want to measure it. But I just can't help but think it's true that that's something descriptive and valuable

about humankind. I mean, I'm from a Carl Sagan tradition. And that's, in a sense, how I became so committed to this field, this ironic idea that there's this whole scientific excitement of going into space or discovery or what have you, variety of things, but there's some unquantifiable internal state that it triggers. And to your point about ancient humans, I mean, at the end of the day, it feels like it's when you contemplate you as an individual against infinity, you arouse some interesting neurons firing in strange parts of your brain that I find rather interesting to

experience. I mean, you go on actually after that sentence, interestingly enough, and this is just something I think how we talk about this is so important. You almost go to apologize saying this is so earnest and and you know big emotional and that's what I love about this and I think that I mean that's in a sense this essence of this tension that I feel has developed maybe in a lot of our modern society but that space like it does with many fields exacerbates or intensifies the contradictions that are inherent in it because the domain is so strange. So going into space is simultaneously a rational, engineering-focused, methodical motivation for discovery and scientific knowledge and resource development and so forth.

But it's also a sublime experience that puts you in relation to the universe. And we can't talk about the latter part, it feels to me, as much these days because it's not as valued, because it's unquantifiable, because we've lost some maybe familiarity with speaking with, you know, crassly the right side of our brains. Is this what philosophy is for in a sense to help us merge those two? I think it's what philosophy should be for. I don't know if it's what contemporary philosophy is about. But yeah, I mean, I think one great thing about philosophy is it helps us to be precise. But another great thing about philosophy is that we just have endless opportunities to

talk about whatever we want to talk about. It's a kind of almost non-defined discipline, but which uses quite strict mechanisms, or at least the kind of philosophy I like, which is kind of, I guess, 20th century analytic philosophy. So it's a kind of, you know, you could write a paper in that tradition where you look at, I don't know the value of being alive, which is obviously a massive thing that, as you say, maybe isn't kind of standard topic for contemporary conversation, but you might well apply to it, you know, concepts like necessary and sufficient conditions. A lot of people want to make fun of philosophers for doing that, and a lot of philosophers

want to make fun of the kind of philosopher I am for doing that. But I actually think there's a lot of value to that kind of approach. It's an approach which says something like, look, we're going to take this concept, even though maybe it's kind of impossible to pin down. We're going to relate it to other concepts. We're going to think about, you know, is there something objective here? Is there something trackable here?

Personally, I find that, and I think this actually resonates quite nicely with what you're saying that we don't do sufficiently these days. I actually find this stuff super fun. I find the rigor of it, the challenge of it super fun. That's why I love philosophy. And I hadn't really thought about it before,

but I think that probably also tracks why I love space. It's the challenge, but it's a valuable challenge. It's not just, and I was thinking about this a little bit earlier with the beautiful Michael Griffin piece we were talking about you sent me. And I'm so grateful for you to introduce me to this. This is this wonderful speech where he talks about, you know, why is it important to fund the space program? You know, why should Americans pay their 15 cents a day? And he compares it to these reasons that have been given, you know, JFK saying, you know, we should do it because it's hard or mountain climbers saying we should do it because it's there. I love all that. But I also think there's another level, which is it's not just because it's hard and it's there, it's because it's hard and it's there and it's valuable. So we don't just do things just because they're there,

we do them because they're there and they afford some value. Otherwise, how do we distinguish between all the things that are there? And I think for me, both philosophy and space offer something along those lines. It's like completely expansive and infinite. But I actually think it's quite easy to say why it's important. It's embarrassing quite possibly. People don't use that language. It's like talking about love or something. Love is good. It feels good to be loved.

Who's going to go and recite a sonnet these days? Whereas that's kind of what you need to do. You have to be enthusiastic in a way that, I mean, certainly in England, everyone's a cynic. Everybody wants to. That's what I love about America. You do get enthusiasts. That's why NASA is that, I mean, certainly in England, everyone's a cynic. Everybody wants to, I look, what's the word about America? You do get like enthusiasts. That's why NASA is American, I think.

Not just money. I mean, it is money also, don't get me wrong. I've been very interested in the role that NASA plays as an expression of public values. And maybe along to your point of expressing this idealism, optimism and self-challenge and ambition to say, can we organize ourselves to tackle these things? And for the sake of learning something that's

on that red dot over there. And that's, in a way, very, as you point out, culturally representative, I think, of the classic American values. The role of space, I mean, you anticipated my next question was this, how your philosophy informs your approach to space. So did one pre-exist before the other or are they intertwined in your kind of educational and intellectual growth over the years?

I have an answer which annoys me as an individualist, which is I'm a product of my parents. My parents are both philosophers. My dad loves space. I have all these memories of when I was a kid looking at space with my dad. So I kind of fought against, not the space stuff, I've always loved that, but I fought against becoming a philosopher because I didn't want to just be, you know, go into the family business, but turns out is what I love the most. So yeah, I think, I mean, I like to think it's just a reflection of my own, you

know, inherent personality, but that's probably also a product of my parents' genes and my upbringing. I do genuinely think though that I can't think, I think if anybody tells you that they don't feel something when they look up at the stars, then I think they're not very self-aware or they're lying. I forget the exact quote, but the burden of an unexamined life in a sense. I can relate a story once I was working at the Planetary Society, I was manning a table. We had a piece of Mars from a Martian meteorite and we had a little sliver of it and we would say, you can come over if you want to touch a piece of Mars today, right? Like how often do you get to do that? And 99.8% of the people, you know, we were at some public event and we'd say, hey,

want to touch Mars? And people go, oh yeah, great. Awesome, how credible. And then you know, and the kids are, you know, and even adults, they'd like something would, you know, that flicker in their eyes. And I remember distinctly remember this one older man walking by and I say, hi, do you want to touch a piece of Mars?

And he stops and he looks at me and then just put the dripping with disdain says, no, and continues to walk on. And that was a very formative moment for me in that I realized that what I thought was some universal essence of being, of just, if nothing else, the cure. I'm not asking them to support the space program.

I'm not asking them to raise their taxes. It's just do you want to touch Mars for free? And apparently he was too busy to stop and do that. And that actually kind of brings me around to this larger tension. You note in Michael Griffin's piece, but just more broadly in some of the values discussions that you've had, which is the tension, I think, between the individual and the collective or the individual and society.

And this idea that these motivations that we do and value and justification we give for space generally break down to addressing one or the other with the favor being generally for the society, which tends to be more bloodless and practical, but missing something I think is very important. When you make these appeals to the individual aspect, the sense of adventure, discovery, curiosity, looking up at the stars and feeling something, you're making an assumption that

individuals, that that is a common existence and can we assume that or you know broadly within cultural influences or people who are just lacking, let's say I'm trying to be nice, something important. I mean are we making an assertion that isn't true when we appeal to some sort of individualist ethos of experiencing the concept of the cosmos? So the first thing I think I'd say and this actually comes back to your guy who didn't want to concept of the cosmos. I mean, so the first thing I think I'd say, and this actually comes back to your guy who didn't want to touch Mars for free. I mean, imagine that. Sometimes people's subjective preferences are really bad and wrong, like not just for

them, but just generally. Like I bet he went secretly like regretted it. And if he didn't, then I feel sorry for him. Not because I don't think there are, I think there are infinite ways to live a good life and not everybody has to be obsessed with, you space like us. But he didn't look like a happy person right I'm not surprised right so so one way of answering your question is that to say something like look what's good for the collective isn't just an aggregation of their subjective preferences there are some objective things that are good for the collective and one of those things is for

instance the pursuit of knowledge the achievement going back to the basic goods idea. And I think that's true, but another way of answering this question, which again, I think is not like a terribly popular position, but it's a position I genuinely hold, which is I don't think that individual freedoms or rights or goods are in conflict with the common good. I think I thought about this quite a lot when I was thinking about Locke. I wrote my PhD thesis on Locke and I was trying to come up with good analog-in type arguments with private property. One of the arguments I kind of landed on is this kind of common good type argument on which, and this is inspired by people like John Finnis, who is in that kind of natural law tradition, which is the idea of something like, look,

it's in all individuals' interests for other people to flourish. One reason for that is because it's bad to do bad stuff to other people. Another reason is there's a common good of all the groups we're in. So, you know, us having this conversation is a common good of that. Someone like John Finnis, this great economic philosopher, would say something like the common good is like the directive element in practical thinking for rational deliberation in our group. So our common good's good is in its shared purpose. And he would say something like, the common good is not in conflict with individual rights

because they're partly constitutive of it. And I think it's the same with individual interests. That's not to deny that some people think their interest is doing bad stuff or not furthering knowledge or not touching the Mars rock. It's just to say that if the thing I want to do to be free, if the thing I freely want to do, which I think is valuable for me, is strongly against the interest of all the groups I'm a member of, then maybe it's not in my good. And I don't have to be some kind of collectivist who means we all drive travants and we have no way to meet our individual needs and preferences to recognize that. It might be harder to work out what seem like conflicts, but I don't think, like from a starting off point, that those

things are necessarily in conflict is what I'm saying, I think. Sorry, that's a very long philosopher's answer. That's why you're here. I mean, is it in the sense that then we could appeal to this individual sense of meaning and value for something like space, but it doesn't preclude that some people just may not feel that because it doesn't force everyone to go into space or support space, at least in a consequential way in that maybe they get levied

a small amount of taxes, but it doesn't, not enough to prevent them from pursuing whatever dim and empty view of the world that they would otherwise have if they're uninterested in space. Is that, is that in a sense a way to think about what you're saying here? I think that's right. I also think like one easy way to fit the space example, particularly into this kind of framework is just to say, well, actually look, there's massive positive externalities of just some people going into space. By saying that we have a human interest in space exploration, doesn't amount to saying every single person should go into space. It certainly doesn't

matter. It doesn't account to saying that they've got an obligation to do it or anything like that. In terms of your point around, however, there may be being some costs for them in terms of, you know, their, their tax dollar or whatever, you're going to have to come up with arguments, particularly in terms of opportunity cost, because a lot of people are going to say, well, Rebecca, that's very nice, but you know, we need more money for the NHS, you know, so we have to be mindful to make justifications. Personally, I actually think it's quite easy to make arguments for space exploration. Maybe not in terms of the UK should have its own space program, although I have friends

who feel very strongly that we should. I think that's a harder argument. But that humankind should be doing space exploration, even though it's financially costly, I think is very easy to justify. Let's hear your justifications because I think this is, I mean, you write them in your papers, but this is why I invited you on, but let's address them in turn. Or maybe should we very quickly start, define the concept of classical liberalism? Because I think that's, is that accurate in defining kind of the intellectual background

that you're coming from and how you apply your philosophical approach? Yeah, well, I mean, that's a big question too. Yeah, I mean, my view is something like liberalism is a family of theories on which freedom is an important value. I make this distinction mainly because in the US political map these kinds of cultural, you know, concepts and moves and shifts. But in as much as I understand the kind of modern, modern derogatory term, liberal, or indeed a term that other people might want to embrace. I'm not talking about something like, oh, we need to have really high tax rates and also embrace some things that some people would call woke. I don't really want to get into what that might

count as, but I think what I'm talking about is something I guess you might describe as narrow in some sense. It's not like a set of policy prescriptions, although of course you could use this way of thinking to inform policy, and I think we should. It's just saying something like, this way of thinking to inform policy and I think we should. It's just saying something like, you know, freedom is an important value. There's a tradition of thinkers, people like Locke and Mill, who have written interestingly and importantly about these things. A particular strand of classical liberalism I'm interested in also has a focus on individual rights. Although, as I say, I think the very even more specific bit that I'm interested in doesn't see those as intention with the common good. It's a focus in a sense of the individual and the preserving the freedom of the individual.

Is that too crass of a way to put it, but just in a broad sense, it's an individual centric approach to human flourishing. I think that's right. But I think also one of the reasons why the individual is important within classical liberalism and could be, could at least I certainly see it anyway, points to an inherent egalitarianism within classical liberalism because it's saying, you know, you're important as an individual, I'm important as an individual. The reason that we're both important as individuals is the same reason because it's, we have

moral value as, as persons, as living things, which is a slightly bigger set of things than persons. And it's- Just like being alive and being human is a value. It's something specifically valuable. And with that comes some obligations, including some obligation for basically all respect. Respect in terms of not over interfering

in each other's lives, respect in terms of protecting each other in certain situations. Is that also a Kantian set the categorical imperative this idea that we have a right to exist or am I mangling my philosophical dim awareness? I don't think you're mangling. I mean there is an idea on which the categorical imperative is something that it's universalizable. So if you want to come up with rules, the rules have to apply to everybody. But yeah, I mean, look, certainly by the kind of, you know, midpoint onwards of the last millennium, philosophers started putting a different focus on individuals. Personally, I don't really buy this idea that, you know, back in Roman

times, the individual didn't exist or something like that. Certainly people talked about rights in different ways. Oftentimes, or almost always, at least a little bit later, these were seen as things that were owed to God with the rise of the individual within religious circles too, on which you can talk to God or learn about God by reading the Bible yourself. It doesn't have to just come through, you know, the church and priests. So, there's more space for individuals to do things and to be recognized as rights bearing creatures. I'm not really sure that that was entirely missing previous to that in human society. It sounds to be weird, this idea. Sometimes you read these things where people kind of suggesting that we were just one big gloopy mass who treated each other as part of the gloopy mass.

I'm not sure I buy that. It's certainly the case, however, in a more specific level that, for instance, women's interests or people of certain races' interests, they were treated as people with fewer rights, as people with less important interests. And of course, one of the wonderful things about progress is that we've moved on from that, not fully, but to a large extent. Well, this is, yeah, and thank you.

So I wanted to just define a little bit this perspective of using this classical liberal tradition with a focus on the individual and integrating it into values for space. And I think because that's a really, to me, I think it's an important and novel contribution to how we talk about it, which tends to be societally focused. And so, yeah, so I interrupted you the first time, but I'm curious, what would you say is the values of going into space that are I'm curious, what would you say is the values of going into space that are the, at least kind of your top tier, most easily justifiable ones that you go to? Wow.

So I think achievement, I think knowledge, I think it's fulfillment, which is a kind of maybe wider, slightly wider category than achievement. Fulfillment of experiential, like feeling fulfilled or? I think in terms of feeling like you've, so there's a subjective sense on which it's feeling as if you've led a worthwhile life, as if you've satisfied some kind of demand upon you to achieve the good, it's what Aristotle would call a kind of new pneumonia idea. I don't think people believe it that I do think fulfillment is both subjectively and objectively important. So I think it might well be the case that somebody feels like they've led a fulfilling

life but objectively they haven't. So the classic philosopher's example is finding pleasure and counting blades of grass or something. Maybe somebody might well feel fulfilled from having led a life in which they spent their time counting blades of grass. But I think on the same way that we might feel some pity for the man who didn't want to touch the moon rock for free, I think we would also feel some pity for that person. It's not a paradigmatic example of like a human making the most of their capacities and also the world in which they live.

So it's probably something like that. It's finding things that, and again, I think, and this is again a very typical classical liberal answer, you know, there's multiple ways to live a good life and other people shouldn't be imposing upon us a particular conception of the good life. The classic concern would be when the state does that, but it's not just the state that wants to interfere in our own pursuit of the good. So we should be mindful of also things like social norms or our employers or our families imposing on us our pursuit of the good, but that's not like I say to suggest that all pursuits just because they're self-chosen are tracking

something that's subjectively good. I could see also an argument that from that perspective, space just increases the number of opportunities to find fulfillment or find new ways to achieve a well-lived life, whether you're going into it directly or enabling it. Just it literally opens up a new expanse to find new pathways for the individual. I love that. Absolutely, I think that's absolutely true. I was thinking about this earlier, I was thinking about kind of comparisons

with climbing mountains and going into space. I think it's a good analogy, but I don't think it's perfect. Of course, the whole point about analogies is that they aren't perfect. Because I think one thing you might wanna say is something like the value of climbing the mountain to the person who, you know, really has that desire to do it.

And they're managing to employ their, you know, well-honed skills. Maybe they have some particular interest in the particular rock formations, you know, some aesthetic kind of pleasure also in doing it. It's quite easy to justify it in terms of seeming as if it's giving a genuine objective, good tracking achievement to the individual. I completely can see that. But I think you're right because I think you're sort of implying that there's this extra level though when you go into space.

It seems to me that, for instance, it's not just that you get a different viewpoint and you are somewhere new. It's somewhere that nobody's been. So we can fly over mountains. There are places in the universe that we've never been. I think it's easier probably to make an argument that individuals spending their short time on earth going and doing the very, very risky thing of going into space. It's easier to see that that's valuable for human kind than climbing the mountain is. That's interesting. So this is a topic I wanted to explore with you. Yeah, you brought up this era. I was thinking of when I was reading some of your work about the era of romantic exploration. So going up to Mount Everest the first time or Shackleton's expeditions to the pole and or wherever, you know, kind of these extreme areas

of kind of on the cusp of mechanization and the cusp of modernity when there were still these vast unexplored areas of earth. And just by going and people taking these great risks, similar to me to what we're seeing with the rise of, I'd say particularly private space flight. And so this is this era, and this is what what again I found so interesting in your paper, trying to incorporate these new types of activities in space that were prior purely the domain

of governments. So we're opening up in a sense, this role of the individual now can go into space at a purely individual level. And I was thinking a lot about this with Jared Isaacman, who is the, at the time we're recording this, the nominee to be NASA administrator. He, to me, in a sense, by going with his Polaris Dawn and Inspiration 4 missions, these are missions that have risk, and they have a certain amount of uncertainty and daring that requires them, and would be otherwise completely unjustifiable from a NASA perspective. So he went and they did these really high elliptical orbits to go further into space than anyone since Apollo 17. Maybe NASA could have done that, but why? And it's like, well, it's pretty cool that they can do that.

And so it brought back this idea of adventurism. And that's what I was trying to tie back in terms of value. Can we learn anything from that era what you were just saying that there may be this distinct fundamental difference between space and anywhere on earth to begin with? But I almost wonder, the way that we talk about it or that was written about was those types of adventurism seen as perhaps an expression of the vibrancy and dynamism of the societies from which they came. And I wonder if at a certain level we see space the same way, that it's an indicator of some societal health or lack thereof based on what people are willing to do and make it back or sometimes not, but take on that, make a real good go at it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point. I think, first of all, I think we should all be grateful and very endlessly frustrating that people are down on, for instance, some of the private space flight stuff, because if these people are willing to not only risk their own personal wellbeing, but also spend their personal capital on stuff which will teach us things. The knowledge we find not just about those places per se, but scientific development and medical development.

Even enabling architecture to get more other things in space. Absolutely, all of these things. I mean, if you think alone, and I think this comes back to something you said before about space, you know, when I was reading, I was writing this piece recently, I read quite a bit about the kind of medical advances that have come from experiments done in space. And of course, there's this great point that just it's so extreme out there that it can be much easier to discover stuff

because you can run different kinds of experiments. It's also a great thing that I hadn't thought about earlier, which is that most of the people who go to NASA are pretty similar. So even just physically, they're mostly men of certain height, certain kinds of personal characteristics. The era of private spaceflight is an era in which, I mean, even just on the level of testing stuff, you get a set of people that's much more representative of humankind. We'll be right back with the rest of our Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio after this

short break. I'm Jack Corelli, Director of Government Relations for the Planetary Society. I'm thrilled to announce that registration is now open for the Planetary Society's flagship advocacy event, The Day of Action. Each year, we empower Planetary Society members from across the United States to directly champion planetary exploration, planetary defense, and the search for life beyond Earth. Attendees meet face-to-face with legislators and their staff in Washington, D.C. to make the case for space exploration and show them why it matters.

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Register now at planetary.org slash day of action. There are more billionaires, I think, than people who have gone to space professionally by governments. And so in some ways, even if you just restricted billionaires, the range of people now, of course, that being a billionaire is generally not an equal representation of who becomes billionaires,

but you're right. I mean, you can, and finally, you know, us chubby individuals like myself can finally have a shot of going into space or not having my boss, Bill would always talk a joke about, you know, astronaut application. It's like, how many PhDs do you have? You know, one to three, four to five, you know, what about if I don't? Yeah, and it theoretically could. And again, even wealthy individuals are theoretically gonna be a wider range of participants plus the enabling thing, which again, I find interesting in terms of opening up access just in the way, again,

like it was wealthy individuals for the most part who were doing those adventuring back in the day. Yeah, I'd also now, I think the first thing I'm gonna do after our conversation is go and look back at the big kind of peaks of these other previous achievements and think about what was going on in their societies because I like your point around, you know, vibrance, it's like societal dynamism. I guess one thing I'm thinking about, I mean, I think certainly in the UK,

some of this stuff was happening in the Victorian period, which isn't really a period I think of so much as, but maybe that's unfair. I need to go back and think about these things. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a thought that I had because it's. I like it. The connection to this era is expressly made, particularly in the mid 20th century, when early space advocates were trying to themselves justify space.

And again, you mentioned you hear it in John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation and at Rice University, like why would go climb the highest mountain? And again, you see this reflected in how Griffin talks about it. It's a way of appealing again, I think to the individual ethos of you can resonate with adventure, you resonate with that horizon, even if in a policy level, that argument dies, right? That does not get you anywhere in your public policy sphere. And you need to show also some sort of quantifiable, measurable payoff, and other

to help then garner those collective resources to create an event that is otherwise. And maybe this is why space was so weird in the first place, right? That space came out at a point in history where technologically and economically speaking, only governments could do it. You know, you will talk about this a little bit. You talk a lot about the outer space treaty and its role with property rights or lack thereof in space. It wasn't even, I mean, it just was inconceivable in 1967 that you would be having individuals claiming, I mean, actively being able to go into space.

And we may have had the strange inversion because of that, that we, because only governments in a sense occupy the space before, now it's slowly moving into the domain of the individual and private sector. You have these strange establishments of how we go about doing things and expectation. I go back to this a lot, this idea that space, as at least conceived here through NASA, is this elevated, higher minded, broadly universalist presentation that it is going, as I said, to this expression of values.

And the addition and development of private space, to me, has added an interesting tension to that because you start seeing individuals with all of their inherent idiosyncrasies and complexities and maybe irritations or if you don't like them politically or you start to associate the act of going to space now with people rather than a system. And it's a lot easier to dislike people or or inversely be inspired by people than it is a system. And so I think we're in the strange transition point that we're culturally working through to expand this concept of what goes into

space and why and then how that intersects with us as ourselves as individuals. Yeah, I think that's right. One thing I suppose I was thinking about, which I think definitely resonates with you what you're saying is that if you want to do this as a government, if you want to defend having a government agency doing those things, you need to align your goals with political goals, or at least if you're doing really big stuff, that seems. For instance, is the concern about space funding being tied up with what you would call if you were trying hard to defend it, defense spending, another way of talking about it would be war spending or military spending.

It also just reminded me though, this claim that an economist from my mind likes to make, which is something like, and I've heard other people make this too, I'd be interested to know your take on it, that the kind of politically motivated justification for NASA during the space race, which obviously was to beat down the Soviet Union, prove we're the best, reach peace through American winning, or however you want to put it, actually really kind of cost the development of space rockets. So the kind of technology that was developed in order just to meet that very specific goal prevented the more, I guess, iterative or multi-goal designed type of technology that

you might have seen otherwise. So I guess the classic example would be, hey, we just need to get there. It doesn't matter if we don't get back. Now that wasn't quite how NASA did it. Do you think that's a fair claim? Whereas if you compare that, for instance, with the Musk approach, which is super iterative, it's super like, hey, we can waste stuff. We're just going to keep on trying and trying and trying. Eventually,

we'll get to a point and then we'll go from there and we'll try and try and try. Whereas the very kind of, hey, we've got this specific political goal. We need to beat the USSR. We don't really care that the thing we're designing won't then be well suited to go to Mars, to go to Jupiter. Is that a fair claim that that's a cost of... I think there's a kernel of truth there. I would disagree though, because NASA, I mean, during Apollo, perhaps. And yes, the goal was to get to the moon and get a human back and cost...

So I'm a big Apollo fan, so most of the stuff I say will be heavily biased. Well, but to that end though, I mean Apollo fan, so most of the stuff I say will be heavily biased. Well, I think but to that end, though, I mean, yes, they did design that with cost as no object. And then when Apollo was one and the political support melted away, the cost as no object was no longer decided to be borne by the by the country. But I think there's been this interesting mass clean wipe of the idea that the space shuttle was a reusable,

the first reusable spacecraft. And the goal, I mean, despite how it was implemented, the intent was to do exactly what your friend is talking about, to have this reusable, lower cost, high frequency access to space that would, you know, make space flight routine. And it was, you know, it was going to supposed to be the only launch vehicle for the entire US fleet, including commercial systems. And obviously it never made there because in a sense, what I think the kernel of truth is is that Apollo itself made NASA this symbolic representation of the nation. And that failure is not an option is a consequence of that connection.

That if NASA fails, it's not just NASA failing, it's some symbolic statement about the state of the country. If the space shuttle explodes, which it did, there would be congressional oversight, major news. Is the US capable of doing these things anymore? They're not allowed to fail. And because of that, the iterative aspect that you highlight could no longer be tolerated. You know, you look at those early rocket tests of the 1960s, and they're blowing up all the time. And they just, all right, we're building three more.

And I think that's, in a sense, maybe the kernel is that NASA was burdened by the incredible success of Apollo, but then was never provided the same resources ever again. And so they have ever since this Apollo mindset baked into the essence and the self-identity of the agency without the resources to pursue that. And then they've been constrained by, we have to succeed in what we're given. And so the shuttle was an amazing proof of concept and various iterations that never came to be at the shuttle would have been fully reusable. But the political requirements of selling that at a time when the US was, it's almost again,

kind of to my point about maybe space as indicative of the health of a society that, you know, the early 70s with Nixon and a lot of pullbacks and a lot of disruption and exhaustion from the Vietnam War, there just wasn't an appetite to do a big space thing. And so it had to sell it to everybody and then they kind of arbitrarily kept the budget. So I think there's maybe the kernel, but they tried and at the end of the day, I think there's maybe the Colonel, but they tried. And at the end of the day, I think it's more of a function of the institutional incentives that exist for a public agency versus private agency, which is where I think we've seen the real innovation happening in.

I think the other point to make, I guess, is just that the opportunity cost wasn't like, hey, the private guys are going to go and do it. Yeah. I just don't think that's the case. I think the private stuff is happening now because, because of the public stuff that happened. It was, it was explicit policy starting in 1984 with the commercial space act. And then, you know, NASA investing in functional investing in space. I think similarly though, actually on that point of opportunity cost, I also think people miss.

So one thing people want to say about, you know, the billionaire splashing their cash going into space, they want to say they should be spending it on X instead, but I often think that just isn't the opportunity cost. They're not going to do that. They might spend it like on a, you know, another motorboat or another island. I don't think they're going to spend it on whatever person over there's particular policy priority is. I mean, some of them might, right.

But I think we, I think we sometimes miss that just because something is an alternative option doesn't mean it's a possible or feasible alternative option. Indeed. And they tend not to get as much press for building that second super yacht than as they do for launching into space. And I'd rather personally have them launch into space than build a second yacht. 100%. 100%. And again, I think this goes to that tension of individualist appeals. And this is why, again, seeing it

through this classical liberal perspective ties it, I think, into a deeper intellectual and philosophical tradition. I want to bring into this discussion now your interesting, I wouldn't call it a paper. There's a whole report article, like a long piece you wrote for the Adam Smith Institute about the idea of how we could approach property rights in space

from this Lockean perspective. And I guess you also Georgia style, which I think I was learned about for the first time. But can you briefly outline your idea for how this could work within the potential confines of the outer space treaty and why you think this is an important aspect of how we proceed? Yeah. So I mean, I guess I came at this from thinking I'm interested in space and also my interest in property. I'd been thinking a lot about like lock and property rights,

where my PhD thesis is on. And I came to the conclusion that we have a very short amount of time to determine as humankind a justified and effective means for allocating property rights in space. The case of the matter is that the Outer Space Treaty from the 1960s, as you said earlier, when that was ratified, when that was being written. The idea that we'd be where we are now was science fiction, both in terms of the stuff that states are doing and the stuff that individuals are doing. Of course, most of the individual stuff, the private space, is heavily dependent still on state funding, whether it's in terms of procurement, whether it's in terms of actual grants. I think certainly outside of America, that's very much the case.

I'd say also probably still in America. I think it's the case that the kinds of activities that are now starting to happen in space, however, whether it's the space junk problem, whether it's some of the things that are happening on the moon, we're gonna soon just see people starting to claim stuff. We know this from human history.

There's a kind of natural instinct in favor of first come first served, the person who gets there. Even if it's not morally justified for them to have a claim, it's pretty hard to compete against that. And more it can be, it just gives them an interest and favor. And I think if we're not careful, then either autocratic leaders of nations or billionaires who are bringing us fast value by going into space, again, they start land grabbing, we can debate all day about how bad that is. But if we want to do things in a different way, and particularly, I mean, I come at this from the point of view of just being interested in good ways of government.

So I'm interested in what would actually a good system of property rights look like. On earth, it's really hard. It's very murky. You have all these chains of ownership that have bad links. You think you own your garden, but it turns out the previous person stole it from someone else. You think you own that watch, but it turns out that we just don't know who owned it back in 100 years ago. I'm not saying that those things are completely impossible to reconcile. We come up with

ways of doing that. But the really interesting thing about space is that people haven't made claims. They certainly haven't made claims by being there. And legally, there is no way to make claims. And I should say, I haven't been thinking about this in as in as much detail since I, I thought about this in a lot of detail. I read a lot of the space law stuff back when I was writing that paper a couple of years back, but I found a lot of the space law literature quite frustrating. There were people saying, you know, this treaty can only be interpreted in this way and not any other way.

Then of course, everyone else say, you know, it must be interpreted in this way and not this other way. But I've pretty much came to the conclusion that there was going to be needs to be some kind of shift unless we just want first come, first serve to be the way in which space ownership is governed. And I found this an opportunity to think about some of the stuff I'd been thinking about, property rights more generally. I came up with what I think is a pretty decent mechanism that could be applied. I think it'd be quite hard to do it in practical terms. I think there are all kinds of questions about who would set it in motion, who would enforce it. Those are questions I'd like to

say for lawyers rather than philosophers. I think there are also many other ways of doing this. As you mentioned, my approach was pretty heavily influenced by Henry George. So I'm a big fan, as indeed are probably most people, of the Georgian land value tax approach. It's famous, I think, amongst policy ideas for being something that the value of it is seen by people from all different ends of the political spectrum. So this is the basic idea. You know, land is a special form of ownership. It's a scarce natural resource. It's got a fixed supply. You might also want to say some other stuff like it's part of our shared ecosystem.

It meets our needs. And then this more general idea, which the land value tax thing is particularly hung upon is that, you know, it doesn't really get changed that much regardless of what we do to it. So therefore, we should be equally taxed for owning it. This prevents counterproductive approaches on which you effectively penalized for doing good stuff to the land. So I took this way of thinking about things and thought, what if we were to come up with a framework for some temporary conditional ownership of space, land plots on which, you know, as long as you

are doing justifiable stuff, we can frack it off what that means, then you shouldn't be penalized for being productive, but you should be competing for the opportunity to have access to that land. And my kind of ulterior goal was something like, is there a way we can set this up such that it enables more people to compete? So there's vast amount of value to be derived as long as the prices are set right from the few people who could do it

and really want to do it. I bet you the people who currently are able to do that would pay a lot of money. The question is- Yeah, again, just to emphasize, the idea is that you are almost leasing the rights to the land and then you pay a tax or some sort of fee for utilizing it that then goes into a common fund to enable...

Pretty much. So you basically pay humankind for the opportunity to use the land because we say you say something like we equally own it now, of course, you know You have to find someone to administer the fund for humankind But you know again problem for the lawyers and then you know depending on how many people you've got competing and Fending what the you know demand is you work out a pricing structure and then I kind of put these other little sort of I guess caveats in, which would be something like, if you want to take into account some of the other features of

land use and land value, so if points around, you know, conservation, because whilst it's the case that the underlying value of the land is going to retain its value on some level on the Georgia account, still the case you might damage the surface. It's the case that while you're doing that stuff, other people can't be doing stuff there. There's a zero sum element because it's a God's fixed supply. And particularly when it's the case, not only that you're competing with other people who can compete, you're competing with the other people who just don't have the capacity. You know, the average person on earth has just as equal, I'd say a kind of potential right to use that stuff, but they just can't even get there. So the question is, how can you maintain that capacity? you know, the average person on earth has just as equal, I'd say, a kind of potential right to use that stuff, but they just can't even get there. So the question is, how can you, is there some mechanism which you can address those things? And I think you could have some kind of rebate system

on which the rent you would pay would be reduced. So again, you think of it in terms of pricing, I don't really mind how you think about it. If you were serving these goals, say there's a penalty or think of it as a rebate, it doesn't really matter. So that if you're already doing stuff with the land, that for instance, helps other people to compete by furthering scientific knowledge, if for instance, the kinds of experiments you do enable greater access to resources in some way. Could be building landing pads. You could be extracting ice water.

There's all kinds of, I think there's exactly, there's all kinds of things. Then beyond the kind of set of things which could also add value in the sense of like, I don't know, asteroid mining, it's also the case that you could just tap into people's desire to use this land and find some way of making an equitable pricing system that only doesn't exploit them but also doesn't kind of preclude

other people from losing the land. Something like that. Anyway, I mean, I set it out in the paper I also talk about in Reason magazine. But those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. Like I said, I think there's other ways of doing this but if we don't get on and have a think about these things, people are just going to grab the land. I mean, they're already effectively doing that, or at least they're trying to shift the international legal situation by effectively putting in place a kind of Yuskogan's norm. So one way you change the legal situation internationally is by treaty change. That's quite hard to see happening really at the moment, or by

coming up with a new overriding treaty. I mean, good luck getting, you know, Russia and China and America to agree on that stuff. The other way is that you just change the norm by you just make it the case that something is standard and it's recognized. I think that's what the Artemis Accords are. That's not just my own view. I think a lot of people have that view that they're trying to shift the norm in favor of. And if you're a cynic, you'd say in favor of the people with the first move of advantage, which, oh, just happens to be America. I'm all for American, don't get me wrong.

Kind of both. But again, that's that expression of values, right, of the societal values. But that's interesting to me because I think you're seeing this to a degree in particularly mega constellations where the regulatory environments way behind people. They're just barreling ahead. I think for that exact reason to say, well, now we occupy the space figuratively and literally, we're going to be the ones kind of setting now what you're going to tell us we can't do that it's too late. And I think to your point that this is a really interesting way to think about this in terms of again, that's

what I found so interesting from a taking a classic like an individual, I use the word individualist, but I know it's much more complicated than that. But this classical liberal tradition and applying it to what can we do as incentivizing individuals to behave in a way that still has some justice and equity for the everyone because I think that goes back to you said, everyone has an equal kind of rights to it because every individual has the rights,

you know, kind of the shared set of rights. So I think you can't be a proper individualist unless you're an illegalitarian because I only matter as an individual because you matter as an individual. That doesn't mean that you get to tell me what to do or that some boss gets to come along and like, you know, form us into a collective.

It just means that the reason that I have rights, which protect my individual interests and my individual freedoms. It is the same reasons that you do also. I'm definitely an individualist and I'm definitely a classical liberal, but I think inherent in that is a deep kind of egalitarianism. Not in the sense of everyone needs to have the same stuff or even everyone needs to have the same opportunities, but certainly in this sense of basic respect, of basic, hey, I have these things because I'm the same kind of thing as you are. I think one of the interesting things again about space is that the domain itself is so physically different than the Earth that when we start to apply theories

that we've developed on Earth, we start to see where we've made fundamental assumptions that may not always be true. And generally, I've always thought of that in the scientific sense, right? So one of my arguments for discovery science, exploratory science, is that do we really know how planet formation works because we've studied geology and Earth?

Probably, you know, well, we go to Mars, we can start to test if that's true or being you know, wherever, like we can actually stress test these theories and say, what did we inadvertently take for granted? And what I liked again about reading some of your work is that I think that applies to some of these philosophical traditions too. Where can you, if you take this, a tradition developed, again, I imagine, you know, they weren't intentionally saying, oh, well, we'll think of an earth philosophy,

it's just philosophy that's existed. And start applying it to these other areas where, you know, oh, we took the concept of error for granted. Like that's a, you know, it's something we assume we all have here on earth. You can see again, it brings out interesting ideas and theories and maybe interesting challenges. So that was, I wanted to kind of talk about this concept

of the egalitarian and individualist kind of perspectives of classical liberal in this history of, I'd say John Lockeke if I can accurately say that mapped on to a domain where I think so far and even with I'd say to some degree with with individuals and private space we've seen It's still a pretty collective effort and I you know We look at the the nation states that are fundamental still You know the vast majority of spending and and activity in space is through nation states. But also, you know, Elon Musk with SpaceX has 10,000 people, he

himself isn't doing it, right? It's it's thousands and thousands of people working, same with any other person going into space. And when you're in space, you have a ground crew and communications requirement, you have this so many people required to enable one's continued existence in space or to do anything in space. And so does that in some way challenge the application of a perspective of classical liberalism to something that is almost inherently collective in its application of actually pursuing it? Sure, it does. I mean, I think as long as we're kind of choosing

to do that ourselves, I don't think there's anything inherently opposed to, you know, working together, collaborating. I mean, there's going to be questions about the kind of conditions of corporation and the reasons that we're collaborating. If we're collaborating because the government has allocated these jobs to us

and you and I are the space scientists, even if we're not scientists, even if we don't want to go into space, then I've obviously got a problem with that. I think choosing to band together to do good stuff is a great feature of humankind. I'm kind of with Aristotle the way, you know, with social creatures. I think if you don't have space in your moral philosophy for the individual and the individual worth and individual value, and particularly if you want to aggregate out people and suggest that goals should be determined in terms of the quality of aggregation or the truth should be sought in that way or the right action should be judged in that way, I'm going to

have a lot of problems with that. But I think, aside from anything else, it's also the case that, you know, the mountaineers of the past depended on other people. Sometimes those other people get overlooked. You know, we hear about the Edmund Hillary. We don't hear so much about the Sherpa. I like the, it makes me also think a little bit about there's that famous line. Isn't there about everyone at NASA helping get America to the moon, you know, the

janitor and the administrator. What's your job? I'm helping getting someone to the moon, you know, the janitor and the administrator. What's your job? I'm helping getting someone to the moon. Exactly. I like that. Yeah. And the key is, I guess, individual choice, I guess. Is that the, is that the kind of the unlocking that?

Just not, so one, one way of looking at this stuff, I mean, look, there are different ways and different traditions of talking about this stuff. Some people want to say that this kind of liberalism is about non-domination. So it's about people not forcing stuff onto you. Some people want to say it's about having the opportunity to determine the good for yourself. But I think an easy way of it is just coming back to this point around determining what the good is for yourself in line with some objective standards, not the grass counting. And if you can imagine a society in which there's not just space for us to do that, but we also come up with institutions and norms which enable us to contribute to society through

doing the things that we find valuable. That's going to entail also things like access to education, access to training, some kinds of shared awareness of valuable goals. If you live in a society where science isn't valued, it's going to be pretty hard to be a scientist because you are going to need the kinds of resources that probably aren't available just to you as an individual. You're going to need networks. As smart as you are, you're going to benefit from having your ideas tested by other people. You're going to have to have a space in which you can say ridiculous things. We don't come to scientific conclusions without

people getting stuff wrong and also without people challenging the status quo. So there are going to need to be some conditions of cooperation which people are going to have needed to feed into in order to achieve things as individuals and a lot of the value of achieving stuff as individuals will have positive effect on others. There also may well be however conflicts, particularly if there are limited resources. We live in a time though, where it may be the case quite soon that some of our resource problems vastly reduce because of AI and other technologies. Personally, I think that's not going to take away questions about distribution and questions about productivity even actually, just because we reach a time of effective non-scarcity

of goods doesn't mean that we're going to retain that time. It doesn't mean so actually coming back to the private property stuff, I think private property is barely believing in a world of relative lack of scarcity, partly because of the allocative value of private property systems, partly because I just don't actually think it means, I mean I think you can't eat an apple without having a private property right in it, but that may be a controversial view. But also because I think as, and again, particular strand of classical liberalism I like is one in which political rights are really important. The control we have over how we live our lives isn't just as individuals, it's also as members of groups. And if we

don't have a say in that, in the stuff that's our business, then we're being wronged. We're being deeply wronged. And I think one thing we should have a say about is how our property systems are structured. And if private property is a justifiable and effective way of managing resources, creating resources, allocating resources, et cetera, And I think it is both justified and effective. I think it's wrong as a matter of our democratic rights to deny it. Sorry, I've gotten a little off topic, but I think it's wrong. Yeah, no, absolutely. Again, it's just fascinating how many avenues I think we can inform how we

approach this. And again, I think that the key almost again, that this is relevant now because of the addition of private individuals rather than just nation states and so the as the activity and so this is I you know, the the title of your recent paper is called the value of space activity again which I thought was a nice way to encompass the variety of things now that are happening not just nation states and We have to start in a sense Thinking about this more carefully and maybe just accepting it. There's a lot of still unproven and uncertain aspects here. And I think there's a whole separate discussion about if you live in one of these places, how you can manage both the relationship between individualism and having your rights impinged

if you can open a window and kill everybody, or if the air you breathe isn't endless supply of. I think that's where, but those are probably theoretical enough for now that we can leave them as problems for the listener to work through. But to start to wrap up, I'm interested in this idea. Then you open one of your papers with this concept of space activity as a source of human

happiness. And, again, I like that framing of it because bringing in happiness, again, is one of those feelings that maybe we don't talk about enough. And again, this concept of a well-lived life or the Aristotelian idea, I'll say flourishing because I can't say the Greek version of that word. And I was wondering again about how we argue this and establishing this value because I think we, you know, in your paper too, you talk a lot about what I would characterize as instrumental values, if that's correct way of using the word in terms of, you know,

here's the space medicine and economic activity. I like the idea of increasing the tax base. SpaceX has probably created a lot of new taxes to go into people. I don't know if it's paid for itself, but you know, it might eventually. Is intrinsic values, are those boring to talk about? Are those because we just accept them? Or is it just the idea of instrumental values just more important to establish or just how we naturally conceive of them? I mean I think one thing is that there is a little bit of a risk I think when we talk about intrinsic values that we slip straight into talking about things that are actually instrumental values. So people say things for instance like, I don't know, like knowledge is, knowledge has got intrinsic value

because it helps us to learn things. And I think there are some people who want to talk about it in terms of furthering our basic capacities or capabilities or something, which is maybe a good way of doing it. I think for the purposes of, you know, trying to justify space exploration, it's, it's sufficient just to say something like, look, intrinsic value is just stuff that's valuable in itself. Instrumental value is when you use something to a further end. And it's definitely the case that the really easy arguments for, or at least as I see it, for state spending are instrumental. So you can say, you know, the defense programs, that's probably the easiest one.

I mean, again, we come back into my concern about dissents actually secretly hiding militarism, but in a world in which, you know, we've got aggressors, then we need to be able to defend ourselves. That's a pretty easy argument and anybody who doesn't think space is a part of that needs to go and read a bit more stuff about space. The medical stuff, the scientific stuff, I think those are also pretty easy arguments to make. Personally, I think the exciting things, and I think you're absolutely right,

we're not good at talking about these things, partly because I say because philosophically, it's actually quite a complicated concept. But partly also your nice point you began with around people just feeling a little bit uncomfortable about it, talking about... Is that because we don't have enough humanistic education anymore? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Quite possibly. I think quite possibly I also wonder it's something you made this nice point when you were talking earlier about the About the Mars rock you said, you know All these people are going past and they all wanted to touch it and you said even adults and I think you touched upon something Really profound there which is your children have this sense of wonder don don't they? They're not embarrassed about trying new stuff and showing their feelings about how

beautiful things are. They might not be so good at expressing those feelings, but, you know, children have this sense of curiosity. They like playing games. They love learning stuff. You know, little kids always ask you why. Great philosophers. As we get older and we maybe get more constrained by the norms of our society,

we have all these expectations on us. I think it's very sad. I think, you know, I go around saying things like I love space and sometimes I think people look at me as if they think I'm some kind of child or something. I have absolutely no embarrassment in admitting that I think space is really cool. I also think dinosaurs are really cool. And on some level, I'm still exactly the same as I was when I was seven. And I like, you know, reading about space dinosaurs. And one of the reasons I like doing philosophy is because I can, you know, find a living sometimes writing

about this stuff. And because I think the children are right, this stuff is amazing. The amazing thing about being human is being able to learn stuff about our world and that includes stuff outside of our nearby orbit, the literatures. And these things like stuff, which is so far in the past that we can't know about it, like stuff which is spatially far, so both temporary and spatially, like, you know, who knows what's going on at the other side of the universe. I just struggle to think that we don't have some natural intrigue in those things. But as adults, many people are not very good at expressing that or admitting it to themselves.

I think we're trained to suppress it and I wonder if it's just, I sound like an old man now, I guess I am becoming an old man, but the idea of the culture being dominated by irony that's hardening into cynicism as a way to maybe process the endless torrent of information that we're presented with now as through our technology. And you hit on something there that I've really thought about quite a bit of something like space and space works for me, other things work for other people. I think space probably could work for a lot of people. But pushing your brain to feel wonder when it is otherwise mired in irony and cynicism

is a really refreshing feeling. And it reminds someone like me, when I feel that, that there's more to existence than this constant. Maybe, again, I'll crassly just say left and right brain, you know, my left brain existence that I'm otherwise, I'm typing all the time, I'm reading all the time, you know, I'm consuming content and whatnot. We don't have a lot in our world anymore that's unknown or mythical or broadly hitting on these right brain feelings that we are still there. But and now I think maybe unhealthily express themselves in a variety of ways. And space as a way to trigger and push our brain

into states that it's no longer used to being in as again, I children are don't have that. So they get to have that all the time. They see my daughter will see like water boiling in a pot and just have her mind blown. It's actually pretty cool when you look at it. And I think that that's in itself to me, one of the instrumental goods, I guess you can correct me. This is where I kind of like, it seems like that's maybe good for an individual that space to me literally pulls us out and up to,

with the rest of the world really literally pulling us down and into our phones that are obsessing about what other people are doing and Space serves as this counterpoint to that and to me that's right healthy way. I think that's right I mean, I think it may be it's a character thing I find like my mind's blown almost every day by stuff I read or stuff I learn but I think you've got to be open to that and maybe it's easier for some people than other people It's also a point about demands on your time. So you're talking about your daughter. I don't have any kids

One reason I don't have any kids is because I wanna have my free time to read philosophy. And I think there's also just a- Not a lot of that in my life right now. Yeah. So I think there's also, it's like reading fiction. It's harder to justify reading fiction if you've got a kid who needs to be fed.

Partly because the kid needs to be fed, therefore you need to make sure that your income also will cover the kid's needs and all of those things. But also because your kid is there wanting to ask you the questions about water, but not just wanting to ask you the questions about water, also needing to have dinner made for it and her, him, and you know, so I don't like calling children it, but you know what I mean? And that's just the case in societal terms as well. Yeah.

That most people, whether they want it or not, end up living a life in which they're prioritizing, you know, the kind of structural stuff, which means that they have income, means that they have societal respect, means that these other things. It shouldn't be the case that that's in conflict with having a sense of wonder and having a sense of awe. But sometimes the kinds of deep responsibilities people have, particularly if they're carrying responsibilities, might just take up quite a lot of space in your mind. And that's a great point. And I wonder, again, this is why space can be so compared to particle physics, which I find, you know, almost as equally exciting, but visually far sparser.

And I think maybe that's the key of why I resonate and see space as such an important role feeding back into a society in that it can very quickly trigger that for you without having to sit and read a lot of it, right? So you see a picture from the James Webb Space Telescope, you see a picture on the surface of Mars, and it just shortcuts right to your brain, right, through your ocular nerves, and you can feel that maybe even for a minute in a way that you don't have to have anyone explain it to you. This is one of the reasons, founders of my organization, Planetary Society, Bruce Murray, had to fight, fight, fight, fight in the early 1960s to include cameras on spacecraft because they weren't seen as scientifically valuable as some of the other instruments they can

put on. And his whole argument was like, this is how the rest of the country will experience this. And he could not have been more correct. And for all the importance of those squiggly lines that those scientific instruments return, they don't hit that. Again, this other kind of that individualistic experiential aspect that I think at its core, maybe we're both hitting some point of agreement of like, maybe is the essence of this and everything else is justification. I think we totally are.

And actually, you've already thought about this before, but I think the visual accessibility of the wonder of space is something that makes it deep egalitarian. I'm sure that's also something that feeds into this point around why we have this shared interest. You're right. I mean, I don't know so much about particle physics, but the small amount I do know, I find endlessly interesting. But yeah, there's going to be much more, you know, there's going to be greater demands on my time to learn and the opportunity cost also. I could be reading philosophy and to be a good philosopher, I should know stuff about

science. But I don't need to be putting down my, you know, book of quine to look up and see the moon out the window. And neither did the, you know, the ancient Egyptian who was busy, you know, building the pyramid in order to go back home in six months time to feed his family. It's something that's immediate and it's something that's deeply accessible to anybody who's fortunate enough to be able to go outside and have sight, which is the majority of people who've

experienced life, sadly not everyone. There's no mediation required. I think that's the point, isn't it? Yeah. Space is the Protestant tradition of sight. Yeah, I know. I know. That's right. No priestly cast required. Yeah, exactly. There you go, individualism again. There we go. Rebecca Lowe, what a delight. Thank you so much for speaking with us today.

We will link to your papers on the show and your sub stack. Tell me the name of your sub stack and how people can find that. It's called the ends don't justify the means. You can find it by typing my name. Ends don't justify the means, Substack. I'm a subscriber. I enjoy it a lot. Thank you so much for joining us this month.

Thank you so much. I've so enjoyed it. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio, but we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and the planetary society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show.

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Me, Casey Dreyer and Merck Boyan, my colleague, composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership based and anybody, even you, can become a member. They start at just four dollars a month. That's nothing these days. Find out more at planetary.org slash join. Until next month, add Astra. Thanks for watching!