![]() Their thing is to try to get independent of that. For them, it’s very tough, because they depend on others for all resources. One of the most compelling things to me about The Expanse is the brutality of that space environment, and how easily it’s manipulated to control people. “But then there is, of course, human conflict. “Even 10 years ago it was a much more, maybe naive,” Cameron reflects, “I just kind of thought, well, we’ll go to space and open up these new states for human thought and philosophy and art and all of that. And if someone breaks a Moon Treaty up there if someone wants to explode a nuke on the Moon, who’s going to stop them?” But the people who actually get there and mine it in the first place, they’re going to be the super-wealthy or heads of government, or people working for them, so the wealthy will just get wealthier. “Suppose everyone has access to resources on the Moon,” she continued. If Jeff Bezos puts a colony on Mars, Amazon will control it.” Fellow space anthropologist Savannah Mandel has described the risks in strident terms, telling Frankie magazine in 2021: “Whoever owns those space settlements gets to make the rules. For over a decade, hopes in the west for space exploration and settlement rested on the private sector. The last launch operated directly by NASA and not contracted to a commercial operator was in 2011. A map showing every object in our solar system, zoom in to see Earth, Mars, and in the pale blue ring Ceres, Pallas, Eros, and the other locations in the Belt. Presumably, the insurance premiums were eyewatering. Born out of billionaire shitposter Elon Musk’s long-held ambition to plant mankind on Mars, he was beaten to the 66-mile high club by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, who led Blue Origin’s first crewed flight in July 2021 personally and then went back in October with the 90-year-old William Shatner. Warnings about unregulated corporate adventures beyond Earth’s atmosphere grew in intensity when in May 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to put a crewed flight into orbit. The exploitation of Belters by Inners (inhabitants of Earth and Mars) that underpins grievances in The Expanse aren’t new themes for science fiction to explore, but they are more relevant than ever. The idea of big business wielding all-but-unchecked power over the lives of settlers and spacefarers has been a concern of science fiction long before Nostromo’s sealed subroutines. So opens Leviathan Wakes (2011) by James S.A. I like this concept.” Space Incorporated: Scratch SpaceX, Get Protogen? “A hundred and fifty years before, when the parochial disagreements between Earth and Mars had been on the verge of war, the Belt had been a far horizon of tremendous mineral wealth beyond viable economic reach, and the outer planets had been beyond even the most unrealistic corporate dream.” “ Heinlein said, when it gets so crowded that you have to carry an ID, it’s time to move. But I think going beyond our planet, at least offers opportunities for new ways of thinking, and new philosophies. I don’t think the ultimate solution for our problems. And they have conflict and I think that’s going to be the case. “They go to space and it doesn’t fix all of humanity’s problems. “What’s so compelling is that it’s so plausible,” he says. Smith in his homemade pressure suit for Discover Magazine. Corey track perfectly with the current thinking of anthropologists. ![]() In particular, the extent to which shifts in language and culture, depicted on screen and in the books by James S.A. The author of Principles of Space Anthropology: Establishing a Science of Human Space Settlement and Emigrating Beyond Earth Human Adaptation and Space Colonization is reflecting on The Expanse shortly after the conclusion of Season 6. Perhaps most important of all for man’s future, there will be groups of people setting out to find a place where they can be free from prying eyes…” Outside, the open frontier will beckon as it has beckoned before, to persecuted minorities escaping from oppression, to religious fanatics escaping from their neighbors, to recalcitrant teenagers escaping from their parents, to lovers of solitude escaping from crowds. Near to the sun, space will belong to big governments and computerized industries. Dyson’s From Eros to Gaia (1992): “Space is huge enough so that somewhere in its vastness there will always be a place for rebels and outlaws. ![]() Smith – archaeologist of early humanity, explorer of Earth’s frozen extremities, homebrew spacesuit engineer, and professor of Anthropology at Portland State University – emails over a quote from the late physicist and mathematician Freemon J. The evening before we’re due to speak, Cameron M. Warning: This article contains general spoilers for the first four seasons of The Expanse.
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