How much is the moon worth, and to whom does it belong? A few generations ago, these questions would have seemed bizarre, but over the last fifty years they have become increasingly meaningful, even urgent. In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty decreed that ‘outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means’. In the twenty-first century, this famously utopian aspiration has been overtaken by events. The development of new spaceflight technologies means that the moon is easier to reach, and numerous state-sponsored and privately funded organisations now have the capacity to land spacecraft on the lunar surface. In fact, the moon is now so accessible that some scholars describe it as Earth’s ‘eighth continent’. The moon’s proximity – long the source of its fascination – is precisely what makes it vulnerable to colonisation, exploitation by extractive industries, and territorial expropriation.

There are obvious risks if this is allowed to happen: conflicts over territory, unsustainable resource management, and long-term environmental damage are all hazards in the rush to develop a lunareconomy. Can a deeper sense of the moon’s value help to avoid mistakes made on Earth? It might, for example, be possible to calculate the value of lunar resources to the terrestrial economy – in terms of the amount of rare minerals, precious metals, or other resources – and use this figure to galvanise debates about who stands to benefit from exploiting them. On the other hand, we should remember that the moon provides Earth with ‘ecosystem services’—that is to say, tangible and intangible benefits to human wellbeing and quality of life—on a grand scale. The lunar cycle affects both human and non-human behaviour, sometimes in ways that are not fully understood by natural scientists. The moon’s gravitational force is behind the oceans’ tidal pull that ultimately supports and sustains all life on Earth.

Putting a price tag on the moon is clearly impossible. Even if we were able to calculate the net effect of the moon on the terrestrial economy, we would not come close to capturing the moon’s value for humanity – its cultural, historic, and scientific importance must be taken into account. The Outer Space Treaty determines that space is the ‘common heritage of mankind’, prompting space archaeologists to argue for the preservation of important lunar landing sites and the creation of ‘space parks’. Here, questions of relative cultural value come sharply into focus: what would it mean to preserve the American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first footprints (1969) or the landing site of the Soviet Union’s uncrewed lander Luna 9 (1966)? For whom would they be preserved, and at what cost, given that few people without extensive training will ever get to the lunar surface?

According to the poet W. H. Auden, these traces of men on the lunar surface are valuable only as a monument to human vanity. He marked the occasion of the moon landing in 1969 with a bad-tempered poem that seems quite out of step with his era – dismissing the moon landings as ‘phallic’, Auden reclaims the moon as the territory of the imagination:

[G]ive me a watered
lively garden, remote from blatherers

about the New, […]

Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens

As for centuries of artists, writers, storytellers, and thinkers from every culture on Earth, the spectral presence of the moon is deemed valuable by Auden’s poem precisely because it is a blank canvas onto which an infinite number of narratives, images, and ideas can be projected – remote from humanity, unknowable, and priceless.

Questions

• Is spaceflight a good thing for humanity? Is it worth the money that nation states, wealthy individuals, and private companies invest in it? It could be useful to look at Gil Scott-Heron’s poem ‘Whitey on the Moon’ (1970).
• The Space Race and attempts to reach the moon coincide with one of the possible starting points that scholars have identified for the Anthropocene, namely the 1950s. What do you make of the argument for this ‘Golden Spike’ as the beginning of the Anthropocene? It could be useful to read about the so-called ‘Great Acceleration’ in order to answer this question.
• What stories, images, and ideas about the moon have been part of your upbringing? How valuable are they to you? Do they reflect particular cultural/social values?
• What would be your vision for the future of the moon, bearing in mind the technological developments outlined here? What would a lunar utopia look like?

Readings

Deudney, Daniel. (2020). Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity. Oxford University Press.

Gorman, Alice. (2019). Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future. NewSouth Books.

Messeri, Lisa. (2016). Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds. Duke University Press.

Geppert, Alexander C. T. (2012). Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan.

Poole, Robert. (2010). Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth. Yale University Press.

Entrena, U. C. M. (2017). Establishing a framework for studying the emerging cislunar economy. Acta Astronautica (141).

Author: Nicola Thomas