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SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic now offer tickets to space. But at what price! Exorbitant sums, real pollution… Enough to fuel criticism against all forms of space activity. But isn’t this an illustration of the “obscene” nature of space? We are simply repeating in the sky the mistakes and excesses we are accustomed to on Earth. In short, before rejecting it outright, let’s take the time to learn more about space tourism, its origins, and its projects.
‘Space tourism is far too serious a matter to be left solely to the companies that currently trade in it. Its analysis and regulation also fall under the responsibility of states and national and international space agencies, since space has been recognized from the outset by political and legal frameworks as a ‘common use’.
Does this mean that the tourist activities currently offered and those planned for the future could contribute to the evolution of space governance? That they would be capable of taking seriously both the common nature of this domain (as a place and as a set of activities) and individual claims of use?
This essay seeks to provide historical, legal, social and ethical material, in order to outline answers to these questions without reducing cosmic journeys a priori to the mere search for a little thrill for fools’.
From the Preface
A historian of science and associate member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, Jacques Arnould has contributed to the development of ethics in human activities in space. Since 2001, he has been the ethics advisor to the French space agency, CNES. He has published several books on this topic with ATF: God, the Moon, and the Astronaut (2016), Impossible horizon. The Essence of Space Exploration (2017) and Ethics Handbook for the Space Odyssey (2020).
