Virginia Tech academic: Stop sending humans into space it s imperialist | The College Fix
Yet another university academic is warning about continued human space exploration due to its imperialist mindset.
Savannah Mandel, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech and an outer space anthropologist, adds to what seems to be a trendy argument about investigations into outer space.
According to Virginia Tech News, Mandel s book Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration argues that rushing to send more humans to space [&] mirrors an imperialist mindset that harms Earth s humanity and environment.
Mandel (pictured) said the space industry is highly bureaucratic, highly politicized, and highly technical, and the more she learned the more she began to question the utility of continued manned space operations.
She said she wants a systemic change in human-led space efforts, one of which is the inclusion of more social scientists at NASA and elsewhere.
Mandel noted that when she worked at Spaceport America she would list all the pop stars going on Virgin Galactic flights, but would also note the poverty statistics for the local area.
It was such a stark contrast, she said. When I went to [Washington] D.C., and started working in space policy and science writing, I saw how militarized space exploration was and how colonial the rhetoric was around it.
This raises the question of whether it’s still colonialism if there’s nobody there to colonize. I suspect the answer is yes, indeed it is. Before you say it’s not, be sure to carefully investigate your university’s free speech policies, such as they may be. Somebody should also inform Elon. If there’s room, perhaps he could include a DEI commissar on the first Mars mission. In any event, there is I suppose the chance that the alien bacteria or whatever it might turn out to be, could be naturalized and so vote Democratic wherever is most needful. Lots of deep issues here for tenured professors to explore.