Who We Are on Earth

Cross-posted from The Next 30 Trips on Substack. Subscribe here.

I used to have a large poster hanging behind my desk that said, “Our future in space will be determined by who we resolve to be on earth today.” It’s a quote from the author Jared Angaza, and one that I really like. For simplicity, though, I always paraphrased it as:

“Who we are on earth determines who we will be in space.”

This quote always reminds me that going to space will not magically solve the ills of the human condition. We won’t suddenly stop fighting, polluting, or doing any of the other million things that make life on Earth difficult. Hell, we’ve had people continuously inhabiting the ISS for right around 23 years, and yet here we are with the same old problems.

Still, space exploration is held up as a panacea that will cure our collective ills and lead us to a glorious new future. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it.

Garbage Wherever We Go

Beyond the fact that we’ve already had humans living in space continuously since the year 2000 you don’t need to look any further than the extreme reaches of our own planet to see how things are likely to go. Antarctica, which is governed by a treaty similar to one proposed to govern the Moon, has major issues with garbage.

Take just the sub-headline from this article written way back in 2009:

On the 2 percent of Antarctica that isn’t covered in ice, the juxtaposition of man-made refuse and Planet Earth-worthy wildlife tableaux is far from rare. But cleaning up that prime real estate is complicated by the nature of the debris, much of which is deemed “historical” and thus unmovable.

The bolding is mine. There are plenty more examples. Can’t you just see that headline applied to the Moon a couple decades from now? Further, there is no clear economic case for cleaning up trash on the Moon, and it will be extremely expensive to do. Just look at some of the battles we’re having about space debris in Earth’s orbit. NASA calls LEO the world’s largest garbage dump.

And it’s not just refuse or mechanical detritus to worry about either. At some point, people will die on the Moon (hopefully from old age). Garbage and dead bodies are piling up on Mt Everest right now and there’s no plan to deal with them. Why would going 230,000 miles further away to a place with no atmosphere and limited gravity make that challenge any easier?

Sure, you’re saying, but how can you pollute a dead rock!? Well, I’d argue that the Moon is more than a dead rock, and worth protecting even if it is. However, regardless, at some point garbage piling up from landers, probes, our permanent colonies, and those that want to go mine will cause logistics issues for countries and companies, the same way it has on Everest, Antarctica, and in LEO. And though the Moon is far away, it’s something we can all see here on Earth. What happens when that view changes for the first time in human history?

The People

When we think of national heroes, we often think of astronauts. These select few are often the best of the best and represent their countries and communities proudly. By and large, they’re fantastic models for humanity.

But what about the rest of us that work in industry further down the food chain? We’re just people with normal people tendencies. Working both inside SpaceX and then closely with dozens of other companies through my old company has shown me the reality is much more complex. Without naming names, here’s a quick rundown of typical aerospace behavior:

• Watching managers call otherwise smart and talented people stupid and “fucking worthless” for not being able to build something perfectly on the first try.
• Chatting with CEO’s that worry more about their media appearances and ensuring they can sell shares on the secondary market, while ignoring that their fundamental technology doesn’t work.
• Stressed out, overworked teams that make poor decision after poor decision, relying on ego and the misapplication of the quote “failure is not an option” to drive them onward.
• And finally, my favorite, intoning “space is hard” when their mission ultimately fails, before turning around to lambaste their teams for the failure.

Sexual harassment is also rampant, both within the industry and in the settings that look the most like how people will be living someday on the Moon:

The howling winds and perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter were easing to a frozen spring when mechanic Liz Monahon at McMurdo Station grabbed a hammer.

This is the chilling opening paragraph of a story from last week describing the epidemic of harassment happening at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. When we see how bad things already are across the industry, how can we naively believe they’ll magically get fixed when we’re living in space?

Outside of grandiose vision statements about ‘making space for all’ or ‘serving humanity’ I haven’t seen many who are committed to making things better for the humans working in industry right now. Nor have there been many earnest attempts to have the makeup of the industry match the makeup of the humanity it’s supposedly meant to serve. The aerospace industry remains nearly 70% white and 90% men.

So, while there are dozens, if not hundreds of fond moments I can point to out on a launch pad late at night fixing a rocket, or on a landing barge hundreds of miles from shore preparing for a landing those were the exceptions, not the rule. Chances are, if you’re in the industry, you see these too.

This type of stuff happens everywhere, of course. That’s exactly my point - the space industry is not some magical alternate reality where people behave and strive to be their highest selves. But in an industry that claims to be made up of humanity’s best, taking us to the shiny new future, shouldn’t there be a humble, consistent drive towards that ideal?

As I’ve written about before, the idealistic end toward which we strive doesn’t justify the poor means. The means are what matter and are what define us in the end, and our means continue to fall well short of what we can do because we value the wrong things in pursuit.

So, What Do We Do?

I’m certainly not advocating that we stop exploring space. Quite the opposite: I think space exploration should increase. Launch the mission to Venus, NASA! I can’t wait!

Instead, the point is that the only way to deliver ourselves to a higher place is to do the work in the best way we can right now. Landing on different rocks further and further from home won’t mean much if it uses us up to do it. Conversely, if we learn to transform the way we work, the systems that we operate in every day, and the way we treat each other while we do this work, then it won’t actually matter if we never make it to the Moon again, or further on to Mars. We will have transformed ourselves and the way we live on this planet right now.

The space race is a mirror that we hold up to ourselves to see what we’re capable of, to find out where we are at in our evolution and what we’re made of. This is true both on the societal level as well as at the individual level when we’re tested constantly by issues big and small, technical and self-inflicted, as we work towards our goals.

I remember wondering if I had what it took to succeed in this industry, especially falling ass-backwards straight out of grad school into the middle of a push to launch the first Falcon 9 from Vandenberg almost ten years ago.

Now, a decade later, having just fully exited the company I sold two years ago, I worry less about the technical challenges and more about how and why we take these challenges on. I have been around long enough to know that if you throw money and energetic people at just about any problem, it’ll get solved. But it’s rare that the way in which we solve it has everyone’s best interest at heart.

Who we are on earth is absolutely who we will be (and already are) in space. That will continue to be true no matter whether we’re working towards the Moon, Mars, or some other lofty goal. Wherever we go, there we are. Or, as I liked to say to clients at my old company:

There’s no point in going to space if we’re all miserable when we get there!

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