In Episode 146 [13] of the CounterVortex podcast [14], Bill Weinberg protests the unprovoked imperialist attack [15] on the asteroid Dimorphos, and rants against the sacrosanct dogma of space expansionism. The much-hyped [16] asteroid threat is clearly being used as a cover [17] for militarization of space to achieve global hegemony on Earth—and for eventual corporate pillage [18] of the heavenly bodies. Finally, a long-overdue voice of space skepticism emerges from academe, with the book Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity [19] by Daniel Deudney [20]. But hubristic notions of "space communism" have also been seen on the political left, as discussed in the book I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism [21] by AM Gittlitz [22].
Both utopian [26] and dystopian [27] visions of space colonization were explored by Ursula K. Le Guin [28]—the latter providing likely inspiration for James Cameron [29]'s hit movie Avatar [30]. The utopian vision was first charted by the early Bolshevik writers Yevgeny Zamyatin [31] in We [32] and Alexander Bogdanov [33] in Red Star [34]. It was generations later embraced in rock music of the hippie era—most notably the Jefferson Starship [35] and Black Sabbath [36]. The perils of looking to space for human salvation have been explored in fictional form from Out of the Silent Planet [37] by CS Lewis [38] (1939) to The Three-Body Problem [39] by Liu Cixin [40] (2007). The critique was also put forth by Lewis in expository form in his 1958 essay "Religion & Rocketry [41]"—in which he paradoxically takes a Christian moralist path to an anti-imperialist position on the space question which is more truly progressive than that of many "leftists."
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Production by Chris Rywalt [42]
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