Overview

"Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. President Trump wants a ""Space Force"" to achieve ""space dominance"" with expensive high-tech weapons. The space and nuclear arms control regimes are threadbare and disintegrating.Would-be asteroid collision diverters, space solar energy collectors, asteroid miners, and space geo-engineers insistently promote their Earth-changing mega-projects. Given our many looming planetary catastrophes (from extreme climate change to runaway artificial superintelligence), looking beyond the earth for solutions might seem like a sound strategy for humanity. And indeed, bolstered by a global network of fervent space advocates-and seemingly rendered plausible, even inevitable, by oceans of science fiction and the wizardly of modern cinema-space beckons as a fully hopeful path for human survival and flourishing, a positive future in increasingly dark times.But despite even basic questions of feasibility, will these many space ventures really have desirable effects, as their advocates insist? In the first book to critically assess the major consequences of space activities from their origins in the 1940s to the present and beyond, Daniel Deudney argues in Dark Skies that the major result of the ""Space Age"" has been to increase the likelihood of global nuclear war, a fact conveniently obscured by the failure of recognize that nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are inherently space weapons. The most important practical finding of Space Age science, also rarely emphasized, is the discovery that we live on Oasis Earth, tiny and fragile, and teeming with astounding life, but surrounded by an utterly desolate and inhospitable wilderness stretching at least many trillions of miles in all directions. As he stresses, our focus must be on Earth and nowhere else. Looking to the future, Deudney provides compelling reasons why space colonization will produce new threats to human survival and not alleviate the existing ones. That is why, he argues, we should fully relinquish the quest. Mind-bending and profound, Dark Skies challenges virtually all received wisdom about the final frontier."

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Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever,' wrote the rocketry pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1911. 'If humans are indeed in an infant state, then it also stands to reason that many-if not most-of their visions of the future are essentially infantile as well,' writes Deudney today. His closely reasoned, deeply disturbing, and always fascinating treatise warns humanity to resist dreamy temptations to colonize-and most likely militarize-the solar system and to pursue instead 'space for earth. * Walter A. McDougall, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age * I am a dyed-in-the-wool space cadet of long standing, so I am 'the enemy' as far as Deudney is concerned. Yet, this amazingly well-researched and thoughtful book provides a deeply sobering geopolitical reality check for the space expansionists. It is absolutely important that the expansionist program be challenged by the arguments assembled here, and so far there has been no such challenge, or at least nothing nearly so well-informed and bracing as this. Deudney has fired the opening shot in what could one day become the central debate about how humankind charts its future. A landmark achievement from perhaps the most original thinker writing in international relations today. * Barry Buzan, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics * Deudney forensically examines the techno-political worldviews on which various kinds of space expansionism rest. He then systematically takes the arguments apart, showing the dreams of space expansionism to be science fiction, military adventurism, and the vanity projects of billionaires. After his tour de force, we are led back to where we began, here on Earth. An essential book that has been a long time coming. * Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University in Canberra, and author of Defiant Earth *

"""Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity [is] a learned, massively documented screed expressing what I think will probably soon become the prevailing view in academic circles"" -- John Wilson, Englewood Review of Books, The Lamp ""Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity is a painstakingly researched, historically informed and theoretically sophisticated analysis centered on the disarmingly simple question: Is space colonization desirable?"" -- Byron Williston, Boston Review ""Deudney forensically examines the techno-political worldviews on which various kinds of space expansionism rest. He then systematically takes the arguments apart, showing the dreams of space expansionism to be science fiction, military adventurism, and the vanity projects of billionaires. After his tour de force, we are led back to where we began, here on Earth. An essential book that has been a long time coming."" -- Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University in Canberra, and author of Defiant Earth ""I am a dyed-in-the-wool space cadet of long standing, so I am 'the enemy' as far as Deudney is concerned. Yet, this amazingly well-researched and thoughtful book provides a deeply sobering geopolitical reality check for the space expansionists. It is absolutely important that the expansionist program be challenged by the arguments assembled here, and so far there has been no such challenge, or at least nothing nearly so well-informed and bracing as this. Deudney has fired the opening shot in what could one day become the central debate about how humankind charts its future. A landmark achievement from perhaps the most original thinker writing in international relations today."" -- Barry Buzan, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics ""Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever,' wrote the rocketry pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1911. 'If humans are indeed in an infant state, then it also stands to reason that many-if not most-of their visions of the future are essentially infantile as well,' writes Deudney today. His closely reasoned, deeply disturbing, and always fascinating treatise warns humanity to resist dreamy temptations to colonize-and most likely militarize-the solar system and to pursue instead 'space for earth."" -- Walter A. McDougall, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age"

Author Information

Daniel Deudney is a professor of political science and international relations at Johns Hopkins University. He has written extensively on international theory, political theory and global issues: nuclear, space, environment and energy. His book Bounding Power: Republican Security from the Polis to the Global Village received the 'Book of the Decade' award from the International Studies Association.

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