Following the first workshop in our „The New Space Age“ series at the Schader Foundation in January, we (the SichTRaum network, that is) just had our second workshop, this time on space sustainability, a topic that I myself keep coming back to. And despite a mass transit workers‘ strike, we had the best hybrid workshop I can remember. Over at Heise Online, Hans-Arthur Marsiske has again provided a very nice write-up (in German). Our third and final workshop in October will be on visions and utopias, a topic that has come up repeatedly during the first two events already.
Schlagwort: Outer Space
I may not be going to outer space, but I will be going to Bonn to talk about outer space, which is pretty great, too. 24 May, to be specific. CASSIS (the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies) at Bonn University is organizing a lecture series called „Reach for the Stars“ and they’ve invited me to come and give a talk about an environmental perspective on outer space. Here’s the pitch: The problem of space debris has been known to experts and politicians for decades. As early as 1978, the dangers of a collision cascade of satellites and…
The „New Space Age“ series continues! On 27 March 2023, the second workshop takes place at the Schader Foundation in Darmstadt. It’s still possible to sign up (apart from the ESOC visit, where the deadline has passed) at https://www.schader-stiftung.de/veranstaltungen/aktuell/artikel/das-neue-weltraumzeitalter-zweiter-workshop. The focus of this workshop moves from issues of space safety and space security to the no less important challenge of space sustainability. Numerous satellites are placed in orbit by public organisations and private companies. Their remnants later orbit the Earth as space debris and endanger other objects or future space stations. At the same time, moons and asteroids are becoming…
In 2021, Carlo Diehl and I published an article called „The Territorialization of the Global Commons“ in the Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, the journal of the IR Section of the German Association for Political Science. The official version is here and an ungated version is over at ResearchGate. We compared governing regimes for five commons: the high seas, the deep seabed, the atmosphere, outer space, and the poles. Our finding was that the two „classical“ modes of governing these spaces beyond national jurisdiction – division into sovereign territory, and internationalization – had been supplanted by what we call „functional territorialization“,…
Last week, I had the pleasure of convening a workshop on space policy at the Schader Foundation in Darmstadt. Marieluna Frank and Arne Sönnichsen have written a brief summary of events over at the SichTRaum Network website. In addition, Heise online features a short article by Hans-Arthur Marsiske, who took part in the discussions. And finally, the WeltraumWagner podcast has just put a two-hour episude about threats to satellite infrastructures featuring some of the discussions at the workshop. The next workshop will focus on ecological approaches to space and how to govern the orbital commons. It is scheduled for 27…
The world is entering a New Space Age. Much like the original Space Age of the 1950s to 1970s, we are poised on the brink of momentous changes – not all of them good. Instead of being a forward-looking symbol of hope, the New Space Age is characterized by ambiguities, conflict, and contingencies. It is in this spirit that I am co-organizing a workshop series at the Schader Foundation (Darmstadt) together with Stefan Selke from the Public Science Lab (Hochschule Furtwangen). The goal of the series is to discuss social science perspectives on space and spaceflight. When compared to technical…
There is the fundamental problem in space of what should count as arms at all. Due to the physical conditions in orbit, where every object moves with enormous kinetic energy, almost all space technology is considered inherently dual-use. This has always complicated arms control discussions, so that in recent years there have been increasing attempts to talk less about weapons and more about certain types of behaviour that are considered threatening (e.g. unannounced approaches), for example in the Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities put forward by the EU in 2008. Arms control discussions have been deadlocked for a…
I’m happy to announce that since December 2022 I am an Associate Fellow at the Research Department International Security at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF/HSFK). There, I will mainly contribute my expertise on space security and emerging technologies to expand the Department’s growing profile at the intersection of science/technology and peace/security. A secondary focus will be on Anthropocene security in the global commons, which builds upon my earlier work on territorialization and regime dynamics.
Outer space is quickly losing its „niche“ reputation in political science and international relations. When talking to colleagues there seems to be a greater awareness and appreciation of the importance of outer space for terrestrial global politics. This is also reflected in publication trends, as the figure below indicates. It shows the number of publications containing the string „outer space“ from the Social Sciences Citation Index, specifically from the Political Sciences, International Relations, and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences categories. While 2019 was a bit of an outlier, there is still a clear increase in the number of publications over this 25-year…
I seem to have an unstoppable logorrhea that this blog must satiate now that I’m off Twitter. Don’t get used to it, the posting frequency will certainly drop over time. But right now, I want to try a mixture of open science and personal note-taking. As indicated in yesterday’s post, I participated in a panel discussion on the governance of space debris. From the discussion, I have several thoughts stuck in my head that I want to write down here to get rid of them for the moment while preserving them in some fashion, so I can refer back to…