213 | Timiebi Aganaba on Law and Governance in Space

0:00:00.2 Sean Carroll: Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Space, as you may have heard, is the final frontier, but frontiers are tricky places, frontiers are celebrated in stories as places where there is a bit of lawlessness, a bit of jockeying for position, not necessarily clear on what the rules are all the time. So do we want space to be like that? Both thinking about space right now, there's a lot going on in space, there's a lot of satellites out there doing weather and communications and so forth, and there's also the future of space, so we might send more human beings into space, both space stations, but also the moon, Mars and beyond. So today's guest is Timiebi Aganaba, who is a space lawyer. She's actually much more than that. Timiebi has worked in government, in law practice, in consulting, and now as an academic at Arizona State University. She's originally from Nigeria and has also worked in the UK, France, Canada before finally coming to the USA, and she's an expert in exactly these questions of space governance as well as space law. Governance if we think of working together, there are both strict rules that are encoded in laws, but then there are also norms and expectations that we have.

0:01:18.0 SC: And space in some sense, we might want to be sort of a common resource to all of us, a common good as the economists would say. But of course, other people want to claim little bits of it for themselves. So how do we balance these things? This is a question for corporations as well as for nations and non-government organizations and so forth. And it is a frontier, it very much is, the rules are not settled, there are space treaties, the United Nations has tried to set up some basic rules, but the rules are influx, we're not sure where it's going. And this is a good time to think about these things with burgeoning private exploration of space. Timiebi, one of her previous jobs was the Executive Director of the World Space Week Association. And World Space Week is October 4-10 every year. So we're releasing this podcast at the beginning of a new World Space Week to celebrate exactly that. So with that, let's go.

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0:02:29.8 SC: Timiebi Aganaba, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

0:02:33.0 Timiebi Aganaba: It is my honor and pleasure to be here.

0:02:35.6 SC: We're very happy to have you here, space, the final frontier, etcetera, is a very exciting topic that we don't actually... It's ironically, more down to earth than many of the topics that we talk about here on the podcast. You're involved with law and things like that, but you... In the talk I heard you give, you drew a distinction between space law and space governance. What is the difference there?

0:03:00.2 TA: Yeah, that's a really interesting question, because I did my PhD in space law, my first job was as a lawyer, the Nigerian Space Agency. So over the course of my 15-year career, you see a lot about space law, and I will go to that as to what it is. But over the past five years or so, we're starting to shift our language to space governance, because law has a defined meaning, like its instruments that are binding, that people agree to, that if you breach them, there's some kind of accountability, etcetera. But governance is everything else that deals with how people operate and why they do what they do. So for instance, we could have a general principle or we could have a guideline, that it's not a law, but everyone follows it and everyone does it because it's in their best interest for a particular activity. We talk about the intentionality factors, and sometimes there's nothing forcing people to do a certain thing, but maybe because of the way they interact with each other, the way they get along, so that's kind of governance as well, right? So what inspires and motivates people to do certain things. And that's where I think the trend is going now, because we know that it's not so much about saying just because something is legal or illegal, people do or don't do it, there are other factors at bay, and that's what I study.

0:04:50.4 SC: Good, so if I can just oversimplify it a little bit to get into my head, I mean law, we have a set of laws and you obey them or you don't, whereas governance is maybe a bit more about thinking things through in a hopefully, collectively good kind of way without quite such hard and fast boundaries between yes and no.

0:05:10.3 TA: Exactly, and of course, if you... There's no proper definition of governance, and lots of people are gonna have different ways. Everyone's heard of corporate governance, so that would be like, how do companies organize themselves? Like do you have a board of directors? Do you have stakeholder decision-making? There are things like that on a formal level, but that's not what I'm talking about when I talk about governance, I'm talking about the inter-relations and the interactions between stakeholders when they decide what they should and should not do.

0:05:43.3 SC: Is there a bit of issue that we don't know who is in charge when it comes to space, and therefore laws are going to be harder to be the guiding principles?

0:05:56.6 TA: Well, it's not... Of course, when it comes to what countries are bound by. 'Cause if you're talking about space law, historically it's just been states, states have been the biggest actors in space. And of course, a state is sovereign, there is no authority that is higher than the United States government. There is no authority higher than the Nigerian government. So states have to choose to be bound, there's no authority above the state that can make the state do something or the other. People have said, Well, what about the United Nations? And we've all heard about the Security Council. The Security Council is that group of mega states that can kind of perfections on other countries and say, You can do this or you can do that. That is still not... It's obviously a mechanism that guides the behavior of states, but it's not like the police that... States have to do it, yeah.

0:06:58.2 SC: So yeah, so maybe it's a reflection of the reality that we are hoping that a whole bunch of different kinds of actors can get together to act the right way when it comes to space.

0:07:10.7 TA: Yeah. And of course, at the United Nations, that is a committee called The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, where there's up to 100 states that are members of that committee, and they basically... The first space law instruments were negotiated there, and states go every year to Vienna and discuss developments in space. So there is an international mechanism, so when people say, Space is like the wild, wild west, that's not true. There's a whole system of governance around thinking about this. The question is just, is the existing system that was established in the 60s and 70s fit for the kinds of activities we're seeing today, since the explosion of companies like SpaceX?

0:08:00.5 SC: Yeah, good. Okay, good, so that was very, very helpful. But I wanna get a lot of background in here because I think that probably different people have different ideas that pop right into their heads when you talk about space law or space governance. One question is, Are we mostly thinking about satellites in orbit around the earth right now, communication satellites, weather satellites, and what have you, and how to deal with those and space debris and so forth? Or are we mostly thinking about, Someday we'll have settlements on Mars and we gotta figure out how to govern them?

0:08:34.3 TA: Yes, now those are two very distinct things that people talk about. The things in the news, stuff like space settlements and things like that, there are a few people who think about the implications of that kind of stuff. And it is not that much science fiction because, for an example, SpaceX in their... They could say it was a joke, but in their terms of service for their Starlink satellites, for their communications outlets, they put a clause in there about how they would regulate Mars, and that Mars... You can say it's a joke, but that was a legal instrument that went out...

0:09:16.8 SC: I bet it was not a joke.

0:09:17.3 TA: To thousands of people. So the funny thing about law is that you don't know what things are gonna crystallize. You know what I mean? And there are some things in law, for instance, in international law, where if you don't object, you are bound. So people can come up with all kinds of crazy things and you don't even end up... So even though that's far out, but it's still there. But of course, what we are talking about is since the rise of mega constellations, which is basically companies and entities establishing these constellations of thousands of satellites, because satellites have now become super small and cheaper to launch, and instead of one massive one billion satellite, you can launch like hundred small ones, and so this is the trend now. So when you look at the fact that if you look at the United Nations register of objects that have been launched since 1950, there are about 11,000 objects on there.

0:10:23.0 TA: And just SpaceX alone today have licenses for 40,000 satellites. So one company has more licenses to launch satellites than have been on the register of launch space objects in 1950s. So that goes to show where we're going. And so, yes, how do we regulate these mega constellations? How do we think about one of the implications of all of a sudden low earth orbit, that is the orbit close to earth, being populated by thousands and thousands of satellites? So that is the priority right now.

0:11:00.0 SC: That makes perfect sense.

0:11:00.5 TA: From a regulatory and governance standpoint. And then secondly, space situational awareness and space traffic management. How do we know what is going on in that environment and what are the right-of-way rules? Like if two satellites are coming close together, who has to move? We don't have things like that because we only had 11,000 satellites in space.

0:11:24.0 SC: Well also, not to be too much of a physicist, but I once took a boating lesson and I was told, Move to the right in the right-of-way rules. But in space, there's no such thing as to the right, there's up and down. And I don't even know how we're gonna resolve the symmetry of the situation here.

0:11:43.5 TA: Yeah, I mean, we did it with aviation, right?

0:11:46.5 SC: That's true.

0:11:47.3 TA: It's been difficult because people, we have the concept of the freedom of outer space. And this concept that space is like the high ground, and so whoever dominates in space has some kind... It's kind of like nuclear, it's some kind of super power. And so having an international authority or having... Or states giving up their rights has been something that has been hard for some of these super power states to get their head around. But what has happened with increased commercialization is it's just not gonna function if we don't have rules of the road.

0:12:30.3 SC: And let me just so I understand better, the implications of these 40000 satellites that SpaceX has a license to put up there, are they just completely passive and moving in fixed orbits, or they do have little tiny rocket engines on them, so they could adjust?

0:12:45.6 TA: Yeah, so I mean, when you look at when these small satellites first came, like when the innovations for it has happened, you know, many of the people kinda thought it was space junk already, because they only last... They last a year or something, and there was no propulsions, there was no... What do you call it? Navigation system or anything like that. So people were like, This is just like a disaster waiting to happen with all these tiny little satellites running around, un-maneuverable, but the technology is advancing because this is becoming mainstream. So they... I'm sure SpaceX satellites are maneuverable, I don't wanna speak about the technology or how it works, 'cause I have no clue, but with everything going on, I think no one is gonna be designing satellites right now that you can't really maneuver. Mind you, you saw in the news, there was all this stuff recently about this Chinese satellite that was coming crashing down to earth and think, Oh, rocket bodies that there's a threat of them. So some people are choosing to abide by best practices, but there's nothing forcing them to.

0:14:02.3 SC: Yeah. That's...

0:14:02.6 TA: And the risk is still pretty minimal of any damage, like happening to say a human or property at the moment, but clearly we know the risk is gonna increase.

0:14:13.1 SC: Well, I read a number that was... I forget exactly what it was for, maybe you'll have a better number, but the chance that if you're up there in a space station or whatever, that you will be impacted by a passing piece of space junk, is some thing like one in 300, which is on the one hand, small but on the other hand, pretty big. And it's only gonna get worse, right. One of 300 chances happen kind of often.

0:14:38.3 TA: Yeah. For me, I don't think it's about the past, I think it's about the future.

0:14:42.9 SC: Yeah, yeah.

0:14:44.0 TA: Right. It's about... You look at the trend and you look at where we're going. And yes, SpaceX had licenses for 40000. Rwanda has licenses for 300000.

0:14:55.2 SC: Okay. Just the start. Just the start, right, yeah.

0:15:00.0 TA: Yeah.

0:15:01.4 SC: And speaking of Rwanda, I do wanna talk about even before getting too much into the private corporations, the good old nation states and their role here, how many countries have active space programs?

0:15:15.2 TA: Yeah, at least... The last I looked, at least 70.

0:15:19.0 SC: Wow.

0:15:19.4 TA: Right. And they are... When people think of a space-faring country, they obviously think of America, China, Russia. And America space budget is like $50 billion. So they find it hard to imagine. The Philippines with a space budget of $12 million is also a space country.

0:15:45.2 SC: Right. And what...

0:15:47.0 TA: And I worked... I started my Create the Nigerian Space Agency, and the budget was $100 million. So there's... No one can define what is a space... I mean, you can say space-faring nation means I have a rocket and I can launch. Very few countries have that, or space-faring means I can launch anti-satellite missiles, which is the technology to be able to blow up basically space weapons.

0:16:16.0 SC: Yeah.

0:16:16.3 TA: Maybe only three or four have that, right? But are you a space-faring country if you know how to use environmental data that comes from satellites, and you can make applications. The UK, when they did their study of their space market, they put satellite TV channels, a space. Some people could argue that's not space.

0:16:42.6 SC: So that's why I was gonna...

0:16:45.2 TA: Is a GPS device space.

0:16:49.0 SC: I was gonna ask what the...

0:16:50.4 TA: If you wanna make your space industry bigger, then you can add those secondary layers to say, This device, this application is part of the space industry, whereas others might say, No, that's not space industry.

0:17:04.6 SC: So to countries like the Philippines and Nigeria have satellites, or do they use satellites?

0:17:09.2 TA: Nigeria had five.

0:17:11.1 SC: Okay. And they were launched by somebody that they paid to launch them?

0:17:16.4 TA: Yeah, the first satellite was procured from China. Nigeria was actually China's first international client. We set... Nigeria set their international business. So it was very interesting, that was when I was working at the Nigerian Space Agency, and it's just fascinating because from there China just went up with respect to the number of developing countries that they helped develop their space programs. And what was really interesting about that experience was that first satellite failed in orbit. And so Nigerians were so upset 'cause they were like... Another white elephant project that you guys are like... We don't even know anything about space, and you're going to buy satellites from the Chinese and they're getting lost in space.

0:18:13.3 TA: There's so much misunderstanding around space technology, the risks, what it does, what it is. And for me, I think the unique thing about starting my career in a developing country is I have a bit of a unique lens in the way I look at space, the first being, never underestimate the fact that people care or even think space is remotely relevant or interesting, 'cause space people really are like manifest destiny, we are explorers. And I'm like, You guys get out of your echo chamber or whatever, because just step out there, no one has even got a clue that GPS is from satellites, and that's one of the number one applications of space, or that if you use the ATM machine, your transactions happen because of satellites. People don't know these things.

0:19:06.0 SC: Do you think that developing countries should pour more money than they are into space?

0:19:13.1 TA: Oh. Don't trap me on this one. [laughter] I don't believe in spending money for the sake of it. You have to be able to articulate and you have to be able to justify. And there are studies that kind of say for every $1 you spend on space, this is what you get back. What I believe is clear about space is it's marketing and inspirational potential. So, the moonshot ideas, I think the word moonshot came from even space. The whole, you set a goal that is clear, that is audacious and big. You set resources to achieve that goal. Space is just really good for that. You say to your people, we need the best and the brightest to do this thing that sounds so unachievable. And by putting your efforts towards that, you are always constantly thinking about how do we bring this back to earth? How do we apply this in other areas in other sectors? So, if Nigeria said we wanna go to the moon, I don't particularly care about the moon, but I know the first thing you need, Aerospace Engineering Programs in universities. Primary school students that have even heard of astronomy. So those are the kind of things that I like about space.

0:20:37.5 SC: I do like that... We just had the 10th anniversary of discovering the Higgs boson at CERN at the Large Hadron Collider. And one of the analogies that was frequently brought up as to why we should do this, why we should spend $10 billion to find the Higgs boson is because it's inspirational much like the space program was. And on the one hand, I think that's true, but on the other hand, nothing is quite like the space program was like that was and maybe is. It's inspirational in a very tangible, different way than finding a new elementary particle is.

0:21:15.3 TA: Right. Right. And then people have to remember the context, context matters. We were in the context of a cold war, right? In the context of this race for the world, the hearts and minds of the world. It's a very different context. And so, if you don't have these contextual things, then it's not, people have to recognize then that a lot of the inspiration with space comes from mythology, things that... Concepts that are not even real. And so it's that mythical nature of space and ego and all these things that made it successful. And I'm not saying that those are the same qualities I want to imbibe, moving forward because I don't think it works today. So today the narrative is all about things like what are the biggest problems that were facing and what can space do to help solve them?

0:22:21.6 SC: This is jumping way ahead of where I want it to be, but do you... Are you sympathetic to the idea that we should spread human life onto other planets as part of a safety mechanism to make sure nothing bad happens to the only intelligent life we know about in the universe?

0:22:39.8 TA: Absolutely not.

0:22:41.8 SC: Okay.

0:22:41.9 TA: [laughter] You know I don't. I think earth is very resilient and I think that that energy should be placed on making sure whatever it is you're trying to avoid by going out doesn't happen...

0:22:58.7 SC: Yeah. Okay. Just wanted to check.

0:23:00.7 TA: On earth. That's what I think. I have completely nothing against the people who wanna go out and explore and do all those things. I am a cosmopolitan, I've lived in five different countries because, I know that every time I've moved countries, I developed myself, I've gained a new perspective. So why not go to Mars? Why not do all those things? Yeah, sure.

0:23:29.9 SC: Right. Got it. I think I understand that's a very good distinction to draw. But before we move on, I just wanna get, you mentioned that there's lots of countries that have space agencies, but it's also pretty top heavy, right? Like, who are the major players in literally launching rockets and satellites into space?

0:23:46.4 TA: Yeah. Okay. So the ones that everyone has heard about, Russia, China, the US, then you have India, the UK, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Europe... European countries, a lot of them have space programs. And then, Japan, so all of the major countries, all of them have space programs. But interestingly, the majority of countries are from a developing ones that have space programs, and all... I don't wanna say developing, I don't know what developing means, but emerging or you know countries like the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, Egypt, like these countries all have space programs too. And it's very diverse. The United Arab Emirates allocated $800 million to space last year. And, I just saw this proposals for this Luna Colony kind of like space tourism activity in Dubai that is based on space, which is gonna cost $5 billion. Again, do we call that space industry? They might say so because it's part of the inspiration about like having this massive Luna colony that shows that space activity, that shows what life on the moon could look like. I mean, is that space or is that entertainment, or is that education? I don't know how you wanna frame it.

0:25:16.0 SC: But it does point in the direction of why it behooves us to get our ducks in a row vis a vis governance and space law and things like that. It's gonna be a mess if we don't figure out what the rules are ahead of time.

0:25:28.5 TA: Yeah. Because the environment is completely diversified. So, can you... You can imagine when the laws were created, we had two actors capable of going to space, only two. Today we have 80 countries, we have private companies, we have universities, like students are sending things up there on their own. So, it's completely diversified. And so if... And completely connected to earth. So if we don't think about governance as it evolves, and as part of that, the key issue of governance is sustainability. Because that's the one thing we did not have when we were developing all the other governance regimes in the history of the world. Was to think from the beginning that human impacts, every activity, human impacts it, and it impacts the ecosystems, the people around the social justice issues. So sustainability needs to be built in from the start. And space is one of the unique places that if we are serious, we can really use it as a model.

0:26:46.8 SC: Oh, explain what you mean by that.

0:26:52.4 TA: People believe there's going to be a massive economy in space. That means infrastructure, if we find resources up there, that means space mining, right? If they believe in these settlements, all those things need governing rules that haven't been developed yet. So are we just gonna develop them in the same way we've developed all the other rules? Or do we say, Okay, let's look at how mining is regulated and let's look at all the environmental impact from mining. Let's look at the social justice issues, the human rights violations and all that, and let's see how we can avoid that if we are gonna have this new economy in space.

0:27:36.8 SC: And I guess the worry is that while we're trying to think about this, someone just rushes out there and does things. So maybe this is a good chance to talk about the private initiatives in space. We all know about SpaceX, and you mentioned the constellations of satellites, but there's other players in this field.

0:27:56.6 TA: Yeah, there's new, there's a lot of activities now around, how you do address the sustainability issues. So how do you do on orbit, I've forgotten what it's called, like fixing satellites, satellite servicing. So instead of just sending a satellite up there, and then when the fuel is gone, it's gone. Can we actually do you re-fueling? So you have Orbit Fab, who are like a re-fueling company, and then you have Astroscale who are a de-orbiting company, like to bring your satellite down. So there are all kinds of activities around the sustainability thing. And then, those are the ones that I am most familiar with. And then there are ideas kind of around energy. So how do we figure out how to use the energy of the sun?

0:28:53.9 SC: Oh, yeah.

0:28:54.6 TA: What they call it space powered, solar powered energy or whatever. So there are some ideas around things like that. Yeah.

0:29:03.3 SC: And are those, well, I was gonna say, are these companies generally playing by the rules? But maybe you should first tell us what the rules are. I know there's some UN treaties, but are there accepted statutes of space law that everyone agrees to?

0:29:18.5 TA: Yeah, so we have, what everyone knows about is the general constitution like document, which is the Outer Space Treaty. That basically gives the overarching principles about how states should operate. And companies are kind of off the hook because unlike areas of international law, generally space activities of private companies are directly attributable to the state. So, states are responsible for any activity.

0:29:55.0 SC: Oh, I didn't know that.

0:29:55.8 TA: So it's very complex for a state. And even things like liability, the liability provisions, the liability convention that covers if there's any damage that is covered by space activities, got nothing to do with the private company that has the activity. It's purely the state.

0:30:16.1 SC: How do you figure out what state is responsible for what a company does?

0:30:20.4 TA: Yeah. So the launching state, first of all, you have to figure out who is the launching state. And there's four criteria for launching state, the country who physically launches the activity or who procures the launch of activity or whose facility. So you look for a launching state. And then there's also a state of registry, which is the state that puts on the United Nations register that this satellite is from our country. And they should know all that because those people would have to have gotten a license from the country. So the country should know all the satellites or space objects that are registered under its registry.

0:31:02.7 SC: And is that part of the space treaty or some other law that you have to register to put a satellite in orbit?

0:31:08.9 TA: Yes, so the registration convention, which is the law that applies to satellite, which maybe only has 70 or 80 signatories out of the over a 100 that have signed the Outer Space Treaty, so not everyone is a signatory to the registration convention, says that you have to register as soon as practicable.

0:31:29.4 SC: Ah, [laughter]

0:31:31.4 TA: So you could say probably a lot of spy satellites have not been registered.

0:31:35.6 SC: Yeah just not practical.

0:31:38.5 TA: Because it's not practical. This is the thing about law, right? You have these strong obligations and then they'll like put [laughter] if possible. [laughter]

0:31:51.7 SC: And have the companies generally been obeying the rules that do exist?

0:32:00.7 TA: Yes. I would say so. Because they were only required to do what their license requires. And just this week, stuff has come out, the FCC Federal Communications Commission, and now saying that before there was a rule of something like 25 years that your satellite can just hang around there. And now it's like five years.

0:32:26.9 SC: Oh, okay.

0:32:29.5 TA: So it all comes down, at the end of the day, the way private companies are bound is through the licensing procedure. Now, what's really interesting is not all activities have a licensing procedure yet. So for instance.

0:32:50.5 TA: If you wanna do space mining where'd you go to get a license?

0:32:54.7 SC: I don't know.

0:32:57.6 TA: Like if you, if you wanna launch an earth observing satellite, a satellite that has a camera that looks on earth, you go to NOOA, the Oceanic administration office and you get a license. If there's gonna be a camera on there, there's like a different kind of license. 'Cause I mean not a camera like a video. 'Cause I remember once someone wanted to do video from space.

0:33:17.9 SC: Sure.

0:33:19.4 TA: So then they had to think about well is the video the same as the camera?

0:33:27.0 SC: Do corporations have spy satellites of their own?

0:33:31.7 TA: So corporation... I mean they're not gonna call it spy satellites but they corporations. I mean the Iraq war was called the First Space war because that war was like completely enabled.

0:33:46.4 SC: Yeah.

0:33:46.5 TA: Like for the first time totally by satellite technology.

0:33:50.5 SC: But I'm just wondering if...

0:33:50.8 TA: And some interesting things happen. Like there's like rules called shutter control. So like these companies are bound by like because space is a national security thing. If the government kind of turn... The government wanna know everyone that has bought imagery from you and I think during one of these wars that the US government ended up getting like a sole contract. So don't sell it we will give you a contract to buy out all the data. So that you won't sell it to anyone else they do things like that.

0:34:24.4 SC: Sure yeah it's good to be the government. Do you think that being one of these space-faring companies is lucrative right now? Or are they base or they're more interested in getting prepared for the future?

0:34:36.6 TA: The margins are pretty small.

0:34:38.5 SC: Yeah it's expensive to do space.

0:34:42.8 TA: Yeah the margins are pretty small. But some people can see an outsized competitive advantage through marketing for instance. Like, because for some reason if you say you're a space company people think that's innovative. Like if you see over the... During Covid it was crazy with all the specs right? With all the investment that just saying you're a space company like no one cares about the returns. What are you actually doing? It was just like.

0:35:11.7 SC: Space.

0:35:12.2 TA: We just got a ton of money in the space industry 'cause it's like space. And so I'm doing my MBA right now because I'm just like you know what? I can't be one of those people that's like a space person that doesn't know like what a financial statement means and what return on investment means and 'cause you talk to all these space people that are just like I've been watching Star Trek since I was two.

0:35:38.1 SC: Oh yeah. [laughter] Yeah that'd be me.

0:35:43.8 TA: And I'm like, yeah that doesn't mean you can run a space company right?

0:35:47.0 SC: No, not enough. So I mean are they, are, is the income that the space companies do get is it mostly from government contracts or they hiring themselves out to other companies who want some space info?

0:36:02.6 TA: Yeah so I mean there is a myth that space commercialization is just now because we've had telecommunication satellites since the nineteens right. And so that has been where most of the money has come from. So like television broadcasting through satellite telephony, even earth observation is like a new market.

0:36:27.0 SC: Sure.

0:36:27.8 TA: Right like when the Landsat environmental satellite came out in the US they tried to commercialize it and just no one was buying. So they ended up making it free [laughter] and then tons of people were using Landsat data. And then really it's only in the last 10, 15 years where we've also added data analytics to that business model. 'Cause people are like, I don't know what to do with all this data. I can't even read it. And there are markets for instance, like ooh it's skipping me RADAR, right? That Canada is famous for. How many people can read RADAR data? It's not even optical right? It's like so now you have analytics people are like okay I don't care that it's satellite I care that I have the information. That big location based services was a big one where companies were basically just being like, we can tell you how much revenue your competitor is making by watching the car parks. Like the parking lots and extrapolating by how many cars are there how much revenue your competitor's making. So these are the kind of new activities that came up commercially over the last like 10, 20 years.

0:37:48.0 SC: And I guess it's a good place to segue into rather than what the law is and what companies are doing right now, but maybe what the principles should be behind doing this kind of thing. I mean, there's probably some utopian view that space is a common good that we should all be sharing. And then there's probably some down to earth views that said, No, I want my bit of it. [chuckle]

0:38:09.6 TA: Yeah. This is called Lex ferenda. Lex lata is what the law is. Lex ferenda is what the law should be.

0:38:16.9 SC: Oh, I like that.

0:38:17.4 TA: The first thing is there's a lot of confusion about these two principles because people merge the two and at the end of the day, you can only rely on what law is and you can dream about what law should be. And so I have three things that I focus on when I think about the Lex ferenda. And the first one is that no regulation in every other area of international law pretty much leads to exploitation. Over exploitation, so we like to say, Well, space is like the high seas, anyone can go and fish and the fish doesn't belong to anyone. But there are so many regulations about fish stocks.

0:39:05.2 SC: Yeah.

0:39:06.9 TA: Right? And so the capitalists who are kinda like, Well, we should be able to go do what we want. It doesn't make sense in the long term. The second... So that means the first thing is, yes, we need more laws.

0:39:20.2 SC: Yeah.

0:39:21.3 TA: And I'm not just saying that just 'cause I'm a lawyer. The second thing is, we have to look at space, and this is what I presented at the Santa Fe Institute as a complex system that is adaptive because, we don't... It's very complex as you're adding all these actors and all these activities that no one fully understands, whatever regime you have, has to be adaptive to new information. But from the equity standpoint, know that adaptiveness is kind of a tool for the powerful and the strong. Right? Like when you're weak, you're like, you don't really wanna hear someone say, Oh, we've set rules for everyone to follow in this game, but we can change it whenever we want.

0:40:17.9 SC: [laughter] Right.

0:40:18.2 TA: Right? That's a tool for the powerful. So the first thing to do is recognize that it is a complex adaptive system, which mean, by recognizing it that way, we have to consider equity and the social dimensions and who is affected by this concept. And then my third Lex ferenda point is benefit sharing. So like you say, people think that space... The general opinion is that space is for the benefit and interest of all countries and for all humanity because it doesn't belong to anyone. But the challenge is, if you have all these ideas of commercialization and like settlements, how can you do that without property rights and without ownership rights? It just doesn't... Modern society doesn't work without people being able to say this is mine, don't come here, or I can get the police to put you in jail.

[laughter]

0:41:14.8 TA: So my only answer... I can't answer how we fix that, 'cause that's like a humanity problem, is that we should just negotiate a benefit sharing regime. How will we offset this idea, the space is for humanity while allowing people who have the strength and the resources to capitalize and do all that, but be able to give back? And I have no idea why it's so challenging for people to think about this in the space context, because everywhere else, you have benefit sharing. Even if you decide to go mine in Guatemala, you have to pay royalties, right? Like every mining company has corporate social responsibility requirements. They have to build schools and give their workers houses and things like that. The last time I said this though, when I was like, I used the example of Guatemala, the human rights people were like funny. They don't even do that.

0:42:19.1 SC: [laughter] They're supposed to do that.

0:42:21.9 TA: But they're supposed to do that. In space, we don't even wanna say...

0:42:25.2 SC: They're supposed to do that.

0:42:26.3 TA: We don't even wanna say, They're not doing that, they're supposed to do that. We're like, Why should we do that?

0:42:31.3 SC: So the idea would be... This is interesting, I've never heard this one before. So the idea would be that if some country, the US or whoever else, Nigeria, I don't know, sets up a settlement on the moon and starts... I don't know, mining it successfully in a commercially productive way, you would want there to be a mechanism by which the benefits of that were shared, not just amongst the people who did it, but more widely?

0:42:57.5 TA: I like get it, that they're gonna say, Why should I... That's gonna stop commerce if I have to give my proceeds away, but I was sitting on a flight... I was on a plane with somebody, I talk about space everywhere.

[laughter]

0:43:13.2 TA: And I was badgering the guy next to me, telling him about this benefit sharing problem. And he told me about Section 37 of the Toronto Planning Act that basically talked about community benefits. So if somebody wants to build a high-rise building in Toronto and Canada, and they get a license that they can build four stories, and then they figure out, Oh my God, this place is amazing, lots of people will wanna come here, so we wanna build 10 stories. They have to offset those extra stories through community benefit arrangements to say how will the local environment, because obviously the density is gonna increase, there's gonna be more people than if you just had four levels rather than ten. So there's more people to serve, there's more people that are gonna be upset or hurt or whatever, so that's like these groups in Toronto that are like benefits sharing groups that sit and they say, Oh, maybe we should have more parks, maybe you guys can give us a school. That's the kind of thing that I think would make sense. Like if you are... Maybe we can say, okay, you can have X amount of these minerals, but anything over that, what are you gonna do to help the rest of the world? And they're really scared that you're gonna say you have to give money.

[laughter]

0:44:48.9 TA: But I've not seen any evidence that anyone is gonna say, Okay, you spend a billion dollars building technology to get to the moon, all that hard work to mine the resources, and you have to give us everything. I don't think anyone's gonna say that. I think what people are gonna say is, We've seen the hard work that you've done. But guess what, if that thing is worth a trillion dollars, you cannot keep it all because it's not yours, it belongs to humanity. So what are you gonna do to humanity for humanity.

0:45:24.2 SC: How do you imagine...

0:45:24.3 TA: That's what corporate social responsibility came from.

0:45:30.7 SC: What's the best way to potentially get this into action? Would it be like a United Nations kind of thing, or an international treaty?

0:45:38.7 TA: So I put this on Facebook in a space flow group, so it's not like a journal article. But I was thinking, I was the Executive Director of the World Space Week Association, which basically the UN in 1999 established a declaration that said that we should celebrate space for one week, October 4 to October 10, every year as World Space Week.

0:46:02.0 SC: Okay.

0:46:02.8 TA: So I was the Executive Director of the organization that was established to bring that into effect. So basically, when I was Executive Director in 2016, I think I had 90 National coordinators around the world, right? And they would be in charge of different countries. And then people would do different kinds of events in those countries to celebrate World Space. So all this was just from a UN declaration that was just a statement, so and that's not a law. And a lot of these people who are doing these events are volunteers. But I feel like even just a simple statement like that could set up, there should be an organization like The World Space Week Association that is for benefit sharing. And people... And the first thing that people are gonna say is, Who are the beneficiaries? Because the difference with the Toronto Planning Act, it is obviously, the citizens of that municipality in Toronto, but in space, you're saying humanity, so who has in law we call it standing.

0:47:12.5 SC: Right.

0:47:13.4 TA: I think it's fair enough to say anyone who self-identifies must be a beneficiary. So like this is the club, right? This is the club, this is the Space Benefits Club. Do you think you're a beneficiary, join the club. And the benefits that we get through this club maybe things like companies send their swag here, or they do educational programs, that online courses, or anything like that. This is just where you go to get the benefits.

0:47:48.3 SC: And maybe it's sort of the flip side of that SpaceX Starlink footnote in the contract that you mentioned, where they say, This won't apply on Mars. 'Cause, they wanna do whatever they want on Mars. If you establish... I'm just spit-balling here. Tell me if I'm crazy, if you establish something like this, just conjecturally, aspirationally right now where there's no trillions of dollars flowing in, and people are willing to say, Yes, that's a good idea. Then when the trillions of dollars start flowing in, you can say, Well, you know, we agreed to this in the past, so let's try to stick to it.

0:48:21.2 TA: Yeah. I mean, I'm the only person who's ever said this, so I haven't thought about it fully, but my model comes from... So I'm on the board of the Space Generation Advisory Council, which I don't know if you've heard of them, is the biggest youth group, space advocacy program for youth in the world. And that same 1999 declaration established this Space Generation Advisory Council, and this is now the biggest used group in the world. I mean, Amazon when they did their... Not Amazon, Blue Origin, when they did their flights of the billionaires, gave Space Generation Advisory Council $1 million.

0:49:08.0 SC: That's something [chuckle]

0:49:10.2 TA: So what I'm saying is this small thing that wasn't a law, that was just a declaration that we should have this youth organization became an incorporated non-profit organization that has the big... Maybe 5,000 to 7,000 students and young people that are part of it, and got $1 million from one company. Why not do that for a Space Benefit Organization?

0:49:39.0 SC: Yeah. Alright. Well, we'll see. I think that once we appear on this podcast, it'll take off. I think this will do it. Everyone will agree, a lot of influential listeners. But this is almost too good. So the utopian, Let's see what we should do kind of attitude, but let's think about the challenges we have right now up there in space, you already mentioned space junk and space debris. I mean, there's also the actual possibility of conflict, military conflict, or something like that. We have a Space Force now, I don't know what Space Force does, but I think we have one.

0:50:14.2 TA: Yeah [chuckle] Yeah. So I mean... So that is the... One of the focuses right now on talking about what is responsible behavior in space. Everyone's talking about, what are the norms of behavior. Because right now it's like... I mean, for me, it seems pretty clear what is responsible behavior or not, but actually responsible is... Depends on who you talk to, right?

0:50:40.8 SC: It's tricky, yeah.

0:50:44.0 TA: Like, I mean if a satellite is coming close to yours is that an act of war? So no one knows what this means, if you jam someone's signals such that it... Their satellite doesn't work temporarily, is that the basis of an attack, a military attack?

0:51:07.3 SC: I don't know [chuckle]

0:51:08.9 TA: So, we need to clarify whether the laws of war apply in the space context. And now that we're talking about things like space forces, the US didn't... They say that they were responding to the actions of our adversaries in setting up the space force. But others would say by them declaring a space force, and it being the most biggest news is them making... They actually made everyone else have to have a space force.

0:51:44.3 SC: It's how the escalation works, yeah.

0:51:45.9 TA: Right? So it's definitely a priority right now, and the interesting thing is that the US this year just did that whole thing of saying there should be a ban on these anti-satellite tasks, right, being able to blow up satellites, but it's just interesting when countries say things like this when they've already spent years developing that technology and like years doing what they like and now 'cause other countries wanna do it too, they're like, This is bad.

0:52:20.9 TA: The idea now is what we're saying is, and you can tell that they don't think it's bad, because no one is saying that we shouldn't do it at all. People are kind of saying we shouldn't do it if it causes space debris. It's not like an outright band, like, don't do it at all. But it's things like making declarations that you will not be the first to blow up someone's satellite. Not that you will not blow up someone's satellite. So people still want to maintain that Article 2 and Article 51 of the UN charters, right to self-defense.

0:53:00.3 SC: Sure.

0:53:00.3 TA: Right? Because if you completely give up the ability to test weapons that can be used in space, then if this really is gonna be the place that is gonna be like a trillion dollar economy is gonna happen, I mean, no one is gonna rely on just peaceful...

0:53:22.3 SC: Good will. [laughter]

0:53:23.4 TA: Negotiations Right?

0:53:25.5 SC: And I didn't actually follow it very carefully, but wasn't there a recent incident where a satellite was intentionally blown up? Was it China? I don't even know.

0:53:33.4 TA: Yeah, I think the last one was probably India. Yeah. But the inter... I mean, China's done it, and when China did it in 2008, that was just crazy because it caused a bunch of debris. What people didn't see was the US action and response was rather interesting. I think maybe like a week or a month later, the US blew up its satellite that they said, Oh, look, it's tumbling out of control.

[laughter]

0:54:04.4 TA: But look, we blew it up and there was no space debris caused. So if you're just looking, then you can... 'Cause the US are gonna say, See, we blew up a satellite, but we didn't cause all this debris. Others could look at it and be like, They were making a signal on a statement.

0:54:23.0 SC: Yeah.

0:54:25.4 TA: Not just about space debris, but like, you can't threaten us.

0:54:28.2 SC: We can blow things up too.

0:54:30.4 TA: With your capability because not only can we blow things up, we can blow things up and not have a diplomatic chaos around it. Right?

0:54:38.0 SC: How did they manage to blow something up without getting space debris.

0:54:42.7 TA: So it's all about, I guess it's all about calculating where you're gonna do it.

0:54:48.3 SC: Oh, okay. So it was close enough to the atmosphere that any debris just blew up or what? Or burned up?

0:54:50.8 TA: Yeah.

0:54:51.7 SC: Yeah. All right. I'm learning things. This is great. [laughter]

0:54:55.3 TA: Yeah. And then it's interesting because I love the case of India, because when India started, it was the model for space for earth, space for sustainable development. None of this ego driven crap, it was like, we are developing space to monitor our fisheries, to help our fishermen. And then what, 2016, they had the first mission to the Moon, Chandra mission that cost something like $50 million, like nothing.

0:55:28.1 SC: Yeah.

0:55:29.2 TA: And then last year they had an anti-satellite test.

[laughter]

0:55:37.5 TA: So all that to say is that space is still seen by most people as flexing.

0:55:46.3 SC: Right. The rules aren't there yet. So we can use it for symbolic demonstrations.

0:55:49.2 TA: Yeah.

0:55:51.5 SC: Yeah.

0:55:52.9 TA: Yeah, I mean, if you looked at Twitter, the Indians did have a lot of pride around that ASAT test.

0:55:58.3 SC: Yeah. I mean, the United States had a lot of pride when we put people on the moon. Yeah.

0:56:02.0 TA: Yeah.

0:56:04.6 SC: And it does... It comes back to this, the safety issue, right? Once all this debris is just... The amount of debris is just increasing. And I mean, maybe I should ask, how much is the very concept of safe travel through space, something that is very important as far as space law is concerned? I will... Let me make one confession, which is that, of course, I knew about the two space shuttle disasters, the Challenger in Columbia, but I hadn't ever heard in my little American bubble of the Soyuz 11 disaster. Do you know about this one? The only...

0:56:40.0 TA: No, tell me.

0:56:41.0 SC: The only time officially speaking, when people died in space, rather than coming back or going. Soyuz 11 visited the first Russian space station in 1971, and there was some explosion and all three cosmonauts died on their way back. And they landed...

0:57:03.2 TA: Wow.

0:57:04.3 SC: They didn't even know. They lost communications. The spacecraft landed and then the rescue team knocked on the door and they were all dead. I didn't, I had never heard of that.

0:57:13.3 TA: Oh, no. No, I didn't know that.

0:57:16.3 SC: Yeah. So people have died in outer space. That's what I was trying to check. But presumably the first time this happens on a commercial flight or a mission to Mars or something like that, this is gonna be a very, very big news story. Is this something we worry about in space governance circles?

0:57:32.9 TA: Yeah. I mean, when the first space tourism companies like Virgin were establishing, and there's this class of people called space flight participants, that is the legal status of these space tourists. And the big thing was in the experimental licenses that the states gave to these companies, the standard was basically informed consent. So it was basically saying to the people like, These companies will not be liable in the event of if you die.

0:58:07.3 SC: Yeah.

0:58:08.1 TA: Because you have to have informed consent and know what risk that you're getting into. So, and I think there's a number of years that you give the company. So they say, Okay, you have this protection for X amount of years, and then we'll relook at the situation. So that's kind of like how they work that. And then obviously with that, there's enough data that you can now get the insurance market in, if possible. But of course, they need a lot of data to be able to do anything. No one wants, like completely ignorant about the risks factor.

0:58:51.7 TA: But the interesting thing is, I'm actually on the board of a company called World View Enterprises, which is a stratospheric balloon company, that is a tourism company that is going to take people to the edge of space, so it's not gonna be in microgravity, but it's going to go to the edge of space, so you will be able to see the curvature of space because they kind of realize that enough people want to go to space but don't wanna sit on a rocket and take that kind of risk, but I think they sold a couple of thousands of tickets to go to the edge of space. So people are definitely interested, but I don't think people are interested in that level of risk, and of course they can't afford it, but...

0:59:35.3 SC: Would you buy a ticket?

0:59:37.8 TA: For World View Enterprises, I already got my ticket. I already reserved my ticket. Yes.

0:59:42.3 SC: You got your ticket. Yes. You have a date, or is it still...

0:59:46.6 TA: So what's really cool about this is that they are actually the space ports that you will be leaving from... From the wonders of the world. So from the Serengeti, from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. So I'm going from the Great Wall of China, and the first ones are gonna be from the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and that should be by the grace of God in the next couple of years. Okay.

1:00:12.5 SC: That's right next to where you live, and you had to go out all the way to china to make this...

1:00:17.5 TA: I'm not gonna go on the first one.

1:00:19.0 SC: Okay, fair enough.

1:00:23.6 TA: I'm not that brave.

1:00:26.5 SC: Let someone else work out the bugs. Yes.

1:00:30.3 TA: Yeah.

1:00:31.1 SC: I guess the other thing to talk about as far as space governance is concerned, is just the protection of the environment out there, in space, which I'm sure is a huge deal, but first, remind us, for those of us who have forgotten or don't know about the tar degrade incident, which I know it was kind of fun.

1:00:50.0 TA: So the big... The closest thing we really have to environmental law is Article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty, which kind of says, You can't do activities that have harmful contamination, and if you do, you have to do consults, there's a duty to consult. But Article 9, with this harmful contamination, it was more about biological contamination, like if you take a specific bug into space from earth, will it confuse the science because people might think that it was a Martian bug, when it's really something that you took from earth, so Environmental Protection has mostly been around planetary protection, that has been a trend recently that... I don't know if you heard about the Viasat case. So Viasat took the FCC to court and basically said that they should have applied the NEPA Act, which is the National Environmental Protection Act to SpaceX satellites, that they should have done environmental impact assessments on most satellites.

1:01:53.7 TA: So people are trying to say we need to have more environmental law concepts, but it's classically been based on planetary protection, and what happened was this non-profit organization, Arch Mission Foundation, basically put tardigrades these kind of resilient bugs onto the spacecraft of the Beresheet mission, which is an Israeli mission, and it ended up crashing on the moon, and then they basically came out and said that they never told anyone that they put these tardigrades on the moon. So it was really interesting for us international lawyers because... Yeah, NASA'S response was, there was no breach of international law. Right, and it's just like, But how can there have been no wrong by putting these bugs on to someone else's mission that no one knew about it, and then they crashed on the moon.

1:02:52.6 SC: Did they know that this craft was going to crash on the moon was that intentional.

1:02:55.7 TA: Nobody knew that it was gonna... It was a risk, but it wasn't meant to crash.

1:03:00.4 SC: It wasn't meant to crash. Yeah.

1:03:03.4 TA: It wasn't meant to crash, but then the guy came out Nova's his name basically saying, Yeah, we were kind of just testing environment international law, and we didn't do anything wrong. So that is the thing about the innovative spirit, it's just kind of like break it and then find out what happens later, and nothing happened, there was no implication of that.

1:03:27.1 SC: And I guess the idea is the tardigrades are famously sturdy. Maybe they could survive on the moon for a little bit.

1:03:35.2 TA: Yeah, they're gonna say there was no actual risk because the moon is not really protected, 'cause pretty much people say there's nothing on moon in terms of life, and secondly, they put it in some kind of resin and it's like tracked. So the idea is that it's not like they were just freely floating tardigrades that were alive, so that we didn't... There's no risk. We didn't actually do anything, but it's just interesting when people do these tests to just figure out the boundaries of the law, and the US, NASA also doing it with these contracts for space resources that they're using to represent legal precedent that it's not illegal to do an in orbit transfer of resources. So they awarded a company a contract for $1, so these guys have got a contract from NASA to buy Luna soil for $1 or $10 or something like that, and NASA are gonna use that on the international realm to say, This is legal precedent, that it is not... That it can do an in orbit transfer.

1:04:56.1 SC: So there's...

1:04:56.9 TA: Which is something that is crazy.

1:05:00.0 SC: But why is that an in orbit transfer? Do they do it in orbit.

1:05:03.4 TA: Because the will... The company will take the soil and then they will put it somewhere, and they will tell NASA, We have now given you, through this contract, we've given you this soil, it now belongs to you... That's a legal transfer of ownership.

1:05:19.0 SC: Okay.

1:05:19.1 TA: It's never been done in space.

1:05:20.2 SC: And these are all just trying to establish the precedent is not 'cause anyone cares about this particular transaction...

1:05:26.6 TA: It's legal precedent.

1:05:27.0 SC: Or this particular part of...

1:05:28.6 TA: Which can be scary. For me, from an international law perspective, sounds a little bit monopolistic, because I mean, me an African company would never have been able to get a contract for $1, 'cause I need money to go there. To build the spacecraft, to be able to launch it and get there and figure out the technology to do this. So I can't even be in that discussion about the legal precedent because you gave someone a contract for $1.

1:06:00.8 SC: I mean. Realistically there will be a mess right? I mean people are just gonna go to the moon and claim it or claim parts of it. That's almost inevitable.

1:06:14.9 TA: Yeah maybe I mean, if we look at history yes. If we look at history. The difference is, I think one of the unique things about space is the only place where it's freaking hard to get to.

1:06:31.3 SC: Yeah.

1:06:32.7 TA: So it... So the challenge is kind of less because at the end of the day if one of these people just decide well we're going I mean how are you gonna actually stop them?

1:06:48.2 SC: I don't know. Yeah.

1:06:48.5 TA: So that's why a lot of people would kind of just be like, You know what I'm not even gonna be in this fight. And the thing could just happen by basis of people just being like, This is not even my fight but I'm here to tell developing countries it is your fight, because they've decided that by 2040 space is gonna be worth a trillion dollars. ASU right now is leading a mission to the first metallic asteroid the Psyche mission, which they say is worth like $10 trillion if you actually figure out how many resources are there. So Africa it is your fight. Because don't come and tell me in 30 years time that you've been left behind. And then you want handouts because I'm telling you right now the space economy is coming. And if you are not at the table right now before the rules are being developed you will get left behind and no one's gonna give you nothing. [laughter]

1:07:45.3 SC: I guess the other difference is that unlike other parts of the world there's nobody living there. So we're not gonna have exactly a replay of colonialism or stuff like that. But probably some of the same issues are gonna come up because as you're implying the rich get richer by all this kind of thing right. I mean they're gonna be able to get there first.

1:08:04.3 TA: So what, what we... What we say is there's no colonialism in space, but coloniality exists.

1:08:10.5 SC: Ah okay.

1:08:12.1 TA: So colonialism is the practices whereas coloniality is the mindset. So all that is to... 'cause of course the first thing they'll say is why are you guys talking about colonialism? There's no indigenous people there. But coloniality is just as dangerous right. A mindset of manifest destiny and domination even without practices is harmful.

1:08:40.0 SC: Do you think that if a private corporation based in let us say the United States establishes a base on the moon the United States will claim that as part of their territory?

1:08:51.8 TA: No they won't claim it as part of their territory. But what I love about these countries is that the flag...

1:09:00.7 SC: Yeah the flag is the first thing we did.

1:09:00.7 TA: The flag is the symbol of territory and the flag is what they used to say, We are not claiming territory boom flag [laughter] That's what I love about these countries. That's... They're gonna say something and they're gonna use the very symbol. That... That is just like okay.

1:09:28.5 SC: And then what if...

1:09:30.1 TA: So they say, they say the Artemis Accords says you can establish a safety zone. You can't own this land but you can establish a safety zone around your property.

1:09:47.0 SC: Oh, okay. That's what I was gonna ask next yeah.

1:09:52.1 TA: But it doesn't... They love to say but it doesn't mean keep out zone. So I mean and so what it... When... When I talk to people they say what it means is that it's a consultation zone. So like a notification and consultation zone. So there's rules, if you are gonna be like 50 yards from my spot we gotta have a discussion.

1:10:14.8 SC: Yeah.

1:10:16.3 TA: But you use the word safety zone and then you tell people why do you think that means a keep out zone? Of course they're gonna think it means a keep out zone. And then they love to say, Well when people heard this they just started speculating before we actually explained to them. And I'm like, So why did you just say it and not explain straight away when you said, Oh people can have safety zones but it's not really a zone. It's like just no, they said, Safety zone, silence for like three months. They let people speculate and think all these crazy things and then they come out and say, What are you guys talking about? [laughter]? [laughter],

1:10:58.8 SC: I guess I mean maybe one.

1:11:00.3 TA: I'm not against the US's position by the way.

1:11:01.8 SC: Yeah I know I do get it. Maybe the last thing to just to get on the table is how realistic all this talk is. Like you said, it's very hard to get to space, it's dangerous right? The actuarial tables do not look good. If you think about the dangers associated with going to space and we already have things here on earth we have the bottom of the ocean. We have Antarctica that are pretty hard to get resources from et cetera, even though they might be there. So I mean is this something we're... We're realistically talking about for your and my lifetime people getting resources from space and bringing 'em back down here?

1:11:47.2 TA: Not bringing them back down here but everyone is talking about in situ resource utilization.

1:11:51.2 SC: Okay.

1:11:53.2 TA: Finding resources in space to help us be able to stay in space and not have to take things from earth to space. So I mean already 14 countries have said their plans.

1:12:06.6 SC: Wow.

1:12:07.2 TA: The US Artemis Program that just launched last week, is essentially... The whole point of it is to establish a permanent presence in space. So by virtue of the fact that... The International Space Station was the first permanent presence in space, but now we're gonna have them in stationary locations. And so if you look at Antarctica where people have that, no one has decided to live in Antarctica permanently. They still see it as like... They have territories there and they have scientific outposts. So the question is, is space just gonna be like that, where it's like a bunch of people have scientific outposts. So maybe... I mean, I think NASAs plan is one... The US's plan is 1000 people a year living in space.

1:13:00.6 SC: In space? Living in space?

1:13:02.9 TA: Yeah.

1:13:03.2 SC: Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah.

1:13:05.5 TA: Something like that. Yes, that...

1:13:06.5 SC: Living in... That's satellites or...

1:13:09.0 TA: Sorry?

1:13:09.3 SC: Is that on the moon or on satellites? What is...

1:13:10.8 TA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that. Or I think maybe the UAE might be the only country that actually has in its strategy actually about people living and working in space. So some countries do have it, but it may not be like when we imagine cities in space, it may be like these outposts, like in Antarctica. That I can foresee very easily.

1:13:34.3 SC: Would you go?

1:13:36.7 TA: Absolutely not. I'm not going anywhere near a rocket.

1:13:40.3 SC: So balloons, you're okay with, rockets are... Is a little dangerous, yeah?

1:13:44.4 TA: Yeah.

1:13:44.9 SC: I think that's fair. Alright. I always like to end on an optimistic note, and I think you've portrayed... You've given us a lot of reason to be optimistic anyway, but one of the things I like best about everything that is implicit in what you say is just how international and human and global the whole thing is. Maybe you just wanna put that into your own words or add something else, but this is ultimately a project for all humankind, not just for this or that company or country.

1:14:13.9 TA: Yeah. I'm sounding like a cliché, a broken record now, but I almost always end my talks with the words of Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn from the Center for Science and the imagination at Arizona State University, and they basically say, "Space is not a void, but a canvas for the human imagination. So all the questions about policy, politics, logistics, are merely scaffolding for a deeper set of questions about who we are and who we want to become as a species. So we explore the universe, not just because we are curious, but because of what that curiosity will do to us, and how we will grow to match our expanding sphere of understanding." For me, that quote just says it all. Space is a construct. Space is a product of the imagination. It doesn't have any concrete tangible thing, because if you say to an aerospace engineer, What is space? They might tell you about rockets. If you say to someone who is a data specialist, they will tell you space is about the vantage point from earth. If you talk to an indigenous person, they will tell you space is about the stars and our relationship to how we navigate. So it's a construct. And that's why, as somebody in the School for the Future of Innovation and Society, I look at space as really... Not really a technological challenge, but a sociological one.

1:15:57.4 SC: I cannot improve on that. Timiebi Aganaba, thanks so much for being on Landscape podcast.

1:16:00.0 TA: Thank you.

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