The Netherlands says it will sign Artemis Accords
According to a press release from the government of the Netherlands yesterday, it plans to sign the Artemis Accords, becoming the thirtieth nation to join the American alliance to explore and settle the solar system.
The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
Increasingly the entire western world is signing on, leaving China, Russia, and their few communist allies isolated on the other side.
Though this sounds good, we must remember that the west no longer stands as firmly for freedom and individual rights as it did during the Cold War. Instead, we increasingly see two alliances that are both more interested in promoting the power of the people who run each, rather than furthering the rights and dreams of their citizens. As I concluded in Conscious Choice:
It is therefore likely that the first few centuries of colonization throughout the solar system will not proceed peacefully or justly, as wished for by the good intentions of the Outer Space Treaty. Instead, the initial exploration will be a brutal legal nightmare for all involved.
Governments will scramble to grab as much as they can. And for private enterprise to succeed in space, the treaty’s restrictions on property rights will force those operations, very expensive, time consuming and extremely risky, to focus on maximizing profits so as to at least minimize the legal risks. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens will have few legal rights, because the rights citizens enjoy on Earth will not exist legally for them.
We are certainly going to explore and settle the solar system in the coming centuries. It is also likely that the citizens living there will have a terrible battle to obtain the same rights we on Earth have since the Enlightenment taken for granted.
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Bob says:
We are certainly going to explore and settle the solar system in the coming centuries
I like the optimistic outlook and mostly strive to remain so myself.
But……it’s getting increasingly difficult to do that. Evidence your periodic “The Coming Dark Ages” postings.
Would you put “certainly” at 100% ?
We’ve had various prior dark ages of varying durations that we managed to push through and advance the state of humanity (by many objective measures), although it did take centuries.
The rate of technological progress throughout those centuries to the present has been exponential, despite the dark ages setbacks. We’re rapidly approaching what many people consider a singularity, possibly within the next 30 years. By definition of the singularity, it makes prediction beyond that impossible. If you believe the threat of this Singularity (and the recent AI/transhumanisn advances makes me increasingly fearful the Singularity IS a real threat), then a centuries long spaceflight settlement with real biological humans campaign becomes doubtful, at least in the way we’ve all romantically and optimistically envisioned and dreamed about it.