Modern academia, proudly marching with Lenin!

Yesterday I linked to a student newspaper article at the University of Alberta advocating more regulation over all space activity, focused on replacing private ownership with collective ownership while simultaneously imposing Marxist racial quotas to get rid “old white men”.

Today there was another story from academia demanding similar regulation. On January 12, 2024 there was a public panel discussion at Arizona State University (ASU), where four academics argued for the need for more government regulation of space. The description of the panel’s goals at the event’s website gives us a good hint of the goals of these academics:

Space exploration and utilization is a rapidly expanding sector, and there is growing consensus that the complex space governance system must evolve with it. Faced with this dynamic nature, in this fireside chat, with leading experts in space governance, policy law and space science, we present a clear framework for conceptualizing the space governance system as a tool for discussions on space law and policy, demystifying its structure and the actors, instruments and collaborations within it. We then consider key debates in the space policy field within this framework from a global and transdisciplinary perspective.

This is typically bad academic writing, designed to intentionally hide its meaning. One of the panelists however translated it most bluntly in this quote from article about the event:

Delgado López is an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She discussed how one of the main hindrances in the way of space governance is the lack of regulation surrounding the topic. “Law and regulation isn’t necessarily catching up,” Lopez said in an email.

Another panelist, Lindsey Wiser, who is a Ph.D student at ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, apparently wants regulation of what private citizens or companies can mine in space.

“We’ve also talked about, for example, protection of space environments versus the expansion into space environments. So, protection of the lunar surface, or the Martian surface, or asteroids or even orbit protection of those space environments,” Wiser said in an email. “We want to do science free from contamination. We want to keep them available to all.”

In other words, government should strictly control mining, and regardless, everything should belong to everyone anyway.

Winer and other panelists were also worried about the new satellite constellations being launched, and wanted to regulate or restrict them if possible.

“Timiebi [Aganaba, the panel moderator] and I had talked about quite a bit … about mega-constellations and satellite contamination versus a pristine sky, and the different stakeholders engaged with that,” Wiser said at the seminar. “There are lots of really fantastic pros, with the idea of large satellite constellations getting access and communication to more people around the world. There are downsides for astronomy, or for communities and cultures that value having a pristine sky without seeing satellite streaks going across it.”

Aganaba is an assistant professor at Arizona State University. Based on a podcast interview from two years ago and available here, she seems to have little understanding of the real (and vastly overstated) impact of these satellite constellations on astronomy. She also seems to think that astronomers have a fundamental right to a dark sky, superseding the rights of everyone else. The idea that maybe astronomers should look for other options (such as telescopes in space above the satellites) completely eludes her.

She also appears somewhat obsessed with race. As she noted in that podcast, “We need to be more inclusive.” Though she did not say so directly, she clearly placed a higher priority on race, not achievement. Something must be done to make sure blacks get a slot in space, even if they have done nothing to earn it.

All these quotes, as well as Aganaba’s interview, revealed to me an amazingly shallow perception of the space industry by these academics. They each tend to spout out word salads based on cliches, with no real understanding of the facts with any depth. Often this shallowness causes them to actually misstate facts.

This shallowness illustrates why these people and their ideas should never be allowed anywhere near any space regulatory body. All they apparently do is sit in their ivory towers on college campuses, arguing how they know best. Such activity should never be considered the right reason for giving great power to someone.

Yet, we must fear them, because without doubt they will be enlisted by the power-brokers in government to create new regulation. It is what these power-brokers want, and these academics are ready and willing to give it to them.