You don\u2019t have to look far to see recent examples of how this is playing out, such as the US confirming it has deployed space control weapons<\/a> or one of Trump\u2019s top military advisors imploring the military<\/a> to be \u201cprepared to fight, endure and win [\u2026] from the seabed to cislunar space\u201d \u2013 the space between the Earth and Moon, including Moon\u2019s orbit. <\/p>\n The US is now warning about war in the moon\u2019s orbit. This is all despite the Outer Space Treaty to which the US is a signatory designating such celestial objects such as the Moon be used \u201cexclusively for peaceful purposes\u201d. <\/p>\n If space is a final frontier \u2013 the absolute limit of human knowledge, understanding and exploration, the last great opportunity for humanity to do things differently \u2013 how and why have we ended up here?<\/p>\n The long answer is a complex stratagem of wealth, power, desire and opportunity. The short answer is men. <\/p>\n Men, specifically the mostly straight, often white kind, dominate most parts of the space sector<\/a> at the most senior levels. When critical space technology is developed, men are the assumed users. A handful of nations and companies make a lion\u2019s share of decisions \u2013 often more unilaterally than they should \u2013 and are almost exclusively led by men.<\/p>\n Mark Bezos, left, and Jeff Bezos, right, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, in 2021. You might think you don\u2019t have a role to play in the decisions being made about whether to mine the Moon or colonise Mars. You might not feel you know enough about the kinds of tech we need to invest in, and for what purposes, when it comes to the future of scientific development. And perhaps you don\u2019t care about what countries and even companies can or cannot do in space. <\/p>\n But whether or not you think, know or care about these things, a small group of humans do feel they have the answers, and they are making calls on all the above and more. And I can tell you: they largely do not look like the more than 50% of the population who are women. They do not represent the full spread of nationalities or ethnic groups in the world. And they may not always have the best interests of human and planetary flourishing in mind when they make such decisions.<\/p>\n This is no coincidence. It\u2019s an example of the patriarchy at work \u2013 more specifically, the space patriarchy. Within the aerospace sector, we see the replication of gender-based power structures and patriarchal ideologies. <\/p>\n If space is a frontier to do things differently and yet we are so far replicating the same patterns of commerce and control, then the problem isn\u2019t just abstract: it has real, earthly roots and ramifications. <\/p>\n You see, space has been undergoing a few changes in recent years. Not all are good, and not all of us know what is happening.<\/p>\n Promise<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t always like this. The quest to explore space was once underpinned by the rhetoric of developing a truly global community. Government-sponsored spaceflights were mission-led and contributed towards international scientific goals and national interests<\/a>, including \u201ctechnological leadership, improving national security, creating high-quality jobs, or advancements in research\u201d.<\/p>\n Before the space race inaugurated by the Cold War, the beginning of the Space Age and the first quests for spaceflight in the 1920s and 1930s were squarely focused on the idea of space as part of the global commons. <\/p>\n It was a movement both highly transnational and collaborative in nature, with space seen as a \u201cpeaceful domain for all humankind<\/a>\u201d. Space represented many things to many people, but a core tenet was its promise. <\/p>\n The promise of exploring new worlds and new life forms. The promise of exceeding our earthly limits. The promise of testing our human ingenuity and potential, of creating better futures for all based on our new learnings and space technologies that could become part of everyday life. Maybe you have even dreamt of one day being one of the first humans to see a day dawning on a different planet.<\/p>\n Bright blue newly formed stars, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region known as N90. But that was a gentler time, at least in planetary terms. Now, we\u2019re going through an existential crisis on Earth \u2013 not in the sense that philosophy students use the term while reading Sartre, but in its most literal sense: we are in a contest for our own survival. <\/p>\n Catastrophic climate change, the degradation of established political systems and the global rules-based order and technological development rapidly outpacing our ability to understand it have all converged to create a profound sense of uncertainty about humanity\u2019s future.<\/p>\n Sure, some of the same benign rhetoric of the past around peace, prosperity and human potential is still being used when it comes to space, but the difference is that the incentives today are amplified. Space doesn\u2019t only represent the opportunity for humans to become a multiplanetary species \u2013 for Mars to become a backup drive for humanity<\/a>, as SpaceX founder Elon Musk puts it. It also represents the ultimate commercial payload.<\/p>\n Elon Musk, pictured against an image of the Moon, sees Mars as a backup drive for humanity. Space is inherently politicised and competitive: a domain in which vast sums of money can be and are being made, and power can be wielded in galactic proportions. And so at this present moment of crisis, those with the power and the opportunity are increasingly turning their eyes skyward, not to the heavens but beyond it, in the hope of making a buck or a trillion. Make no mistake: space today is big business.<\/p>\n Still a global commons?<\/p>\n In terms of underlying goals, today\u2019s space sector in many ways isn\u2019t that different from the 20th-century space sector \u2013 but the scope of what\u2019s possible has changed. <\/p>\n Whereas once sending a rocket to Mars was the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity, now colonising our second-closest neighbour is not beyond imagination, with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)<\/a> and the China National Space Administration (CNSA)<\/a> planning missions to the Red Planet in the 2030s. <\/p>\n Musk, who is aiming to get there first, has called it a \u201cfixer-upper of a planet\u201d<\/a>, as if we can whack in some heating and gain a strong return on our investment. (Perhaps heralding a new intergalactic age of climate change, SpaceX\u2019s website<\/a> says of Mars, \u201cIt is a little cold, but we can warm it up.\u201d) He sees settlement of Mars as \u201clife insurance\u201d<\/a> \u2013 an opportunity for humanity if we destroy the planet we\u2019ve already got.<\/p>\n These are not new ideas. Space philosopher Frank White, who coined the term \u201cthe overview effect\u201d \u2013 the paradigmatic shift in perspective and values that astronauts experience following spaceflight \u2013 argued back in 1987<\/a> that space \u201cmay be the key to human survival and evolution and perhaps even more than that\u201d. <\/p>\n In 2008, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking declared <\/a>that \u201cour only hope for long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth\u201d.<\/p>\n But the \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d philosophy of Silicon Valley is coming to dominate as private companies vie for power and control when it comes to space \u2013 and it seems as though what was once a global commons could become more akin to a battle arena.<\/p>\n Even if Musk\u2019s key rival, Jeff Bezos, founder of space technology company Blue Origin, is reported to criticise some of Musk\u2019s visions as \u201cunmotivating\u201d, Silicon Valley techno-optimistic visions for space as a place to offshore heavy industry similarly \u201coffer little to the flourishing of humans and the planet\u201d, as sociology professor Richard Tutton notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the US has also shifted its vision for space. While military entanglement in the US space sector has always been a feature, the Trump administration\u2019s declarations of space as a \u201cwarfighting domain\u201d<\/a> is new. In establishing the US Space Force as the sixth branch of the US Armed Forces, Donald Trump declared<\/a>, \u201cIt is not enough to have American presence in space. We must have American dominance.\u201d <\/p>\n Despite the rhetoric that space is or has been about scientific discovery, realising the promise of humanity and the collaborative opportunity of a lifetime, space has always been about power, (para)militarism and privatisation \u2013 and this is only accelerating under Trump. If you noticed that most of the space leaders, scientists and authors I\u2019ve quoted so far are men, then you\u2019ll understand why: the notion of conquest in space is premised on patriarchy.<\/p>\n Where are the women?<\/p>\n Space has had a history of being weaponised on the whims of world leaders \u2013 from the nuclear brinkship of Kennedy and Khrushchev in the early 1960s to the anti-satellite and missile-defence programs pursued by the US and Soviet Union during the 1980s. <\/p>\n Monash University Publishing<\/p>\n Yet the past few decades have firmly reinforced the geopolitical reality of space as a tool of military leverage, surveillance and superiority \u2013 at the same time as space has also fallen hostage to capitalist extraction, where various individuals and corporations with huge amounts of wealth and power seek to dictate the agenda.<\/p>\n And this is why this compounding crisis should matter to everyone on Earth \u2013 even if you don\u2019t care about rockets and Moon rovers. Because what we do in space is about who gets to consolidate power and wealth on Earth.<\/p>\n A new space race is emerging at an international level as states and private individuals jostle for access to the most valuable orbits and lunar resource capture and it has implications for all humanity. It matters who sets the agenda, whose values dominate and who is excluded from what we do in space.<\/p>\n Importantly, we cannot assume that technological progress is matched by social and political progress in this critical technology sector. NASA\u2019s recent Artemis program seeks to return humanity to the Moon for the first time in about 50 years through a series of crewed and uncrewed missions. Its crewed missions were originally pitched<\/a> as achieving an important global first: \u201cFor the benefit of all humanity, NASA and its partners will land the first woman and first person of color on the surface of the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n Come 2026, and while Christina Koch<\/a> made history as the first woman to \u201creturn to the Moon\u201d via flyby as part of the Artemis II mission, women have been scrapped entirely from Artemis III, despite more than half of NASA\u2019s newest astronauts being women<\/a>. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/file-20260929-60-plspnc.jpg\")
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\n NASA AND THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY\/AAP<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/file-20260929-50-fajvua.jpg\")
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