Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
The crew of Artemis II have travelled farther from home than any human beings in history.
Indeed, it could be argued that Hansen have restarted history. After half a century of confinement, humanity has resumed its march to the stars.
And who could fail to be moved by that?
It’s an awe-inspiring achievement. And, yet, for all the vision and skill and sheer bravery of those involved, there’s a question, which, if nowhere else, ought to be asked on this website: is space exploration conservative?
Let’s not forget that the origins of this great endeavour are, quite literally, communist. It was the Soviet Union — a brutal totalitarian state — that put the first satellite in space (Sputnik 1) and the first dog (poor, doomed, Laika) and the first man (Yuri Gagarin) and the first woman (Valentina Tereshkova).
Of course, it was the Americans who put the first man on the moon — but at a cost that, at its peak, consumed 5 per cent of US federal spending. On both sides of the Cold War, space exploration was a profoundly statist project.
The British conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, distinguished between two forms of human association, universitas and societas: on the one hand, the organisation of individuals in service to a common goal; on the other, adherence to a common set of rules that allows each person to pursue his or her own goals. Naturally, Oakeshott favoured the latter and saw profound dangers in the former. Even in a democratic context, manned spaceflight is dripping in universitas. Consider John F Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University:
“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon… We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…”
Stirring stuff, but one might ask: who’s “we”? Note also the universalism that, in places, peeks out from behind JFK’s gung-ho Americanism: “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.” When Neil Armstrong set foot upon the moon, he didn’t just do it in the name of the USA, but “for all mankind”.
The spirit of utopian liberalism is also reinforced in the fiction of the era. It’s hard to think of a single tale of humanity among the stars in which sovereign nationhood hasn’t given way to one-world (or inter-planetary) government. Above all, there’s the Star Trek franchise — in which liberal ideas of progress have triumphed across all the Earth and far beyond. Anything identifiably conservative — patriotism, the free market, religious faith — is either consigned to history or othered as some hostile alien threat. NASA, of course, is not Starfleet; but for decades the two organisations have shared a remarkably similar set of vibes — right down to the branding.
And yet there’s a twist. Over the last decade, the whole notion of manned spaceflight has undergone a vibe shift to the Right. That’s due to two men in particular: Donald J Trump and Elon Musk.
This will annoy a lot of people, but fact is that DJT is the new JFK.
At the start of his first term in office, Trump signed-off on the Artemis programme — and if all goes well, his second term will conclude with the Artemis IV and Artemis V moon landings in 2028. Perhaps his greatest legacy will be the portentously-named Space Policy Directive 1, which replaces the airy Obama-era language about setting “far-reaching exploration milestones”, with a hard-edged commitment to “exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the Solar System”. Specifically, it authorises the return of humans to the Moon — and, thereafter, a manned-mission to Mars.
If that seems a trifle ambitious, it’s nothing compared to Elon Musk’s vision for the future. Last year, he suggested that “perhaps our purpose is to make the mind of a sentient sun”. By that he means a vast constellation of satellites, to be controlled by AI to provide a limitless supply of (solar) energy for AI and its ongoing development.
And he’s got a point. Given the extraordinary resource demands of the AI-based economy, we are going to hit — indeed are hitting — some hard planetary limits. In space, however, those limits fall away. To keep the global economy earthbound would be to prove the “degrowth” activists of the green Left ultimately correct.
Musk isn’t some idle theorist.
He’s actually building the industries necessary in not one, but all the sectors needed to realise his vision: AI, robotics, satellites, solar power and, of course, launch systems. In the process, he’s already transformed the economics of spaceflight. Thanks to reuseable rockets and other innovations, costs have plummeted. In 2021 prices, the cost of using the Space Shuttle to lift each kilogram of payload into low orbit was over $50,000. But now, using the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket it’s less than $2,000. Unsurprisingly, the spaceflight sector is experiencing extraordinarily rapid growth — with 2025 another record year for launches. What used to be the most statist of human endeavours is now propelled by free enterprise.
So in that respect, spaceflight really is conservative and becoming ever more so. Perhaps that’s why parts of the Left are souring on what JFK called our “greatest adventure”. It’s not just the involvement of Right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that they hate, but the very nature of the underlying project. Academics and activists are now using the language of imperialism and colonisation to problematise mankind’s expansion into the rest of the solar system. The flaw in that critique, however, is the notable lack of indigenous populations for the folk back home to sympathise with.
So, no, the woke objections aren’t going to fly. The same goes for the environmental objections. Spaceflight is very much not carbon neutral and each rocket launch does damage the ozone layer — a genuine concern given the rapid growth in launches. But there is a solution, which is to explore space from space. In 2028 Artemis V is scheduled to begin the construction of a permanent base on the moon. By developing the dead worlds of the solar system — and the yawning voids between them — we have an opportunity to move every polluting industry from the only living planet that we know of. So environmental pain in the short term, in return for what could be the greatest possible gain.
One final thought: Elon Musk has spoken of making mankind a multi planetary species. Jeff Bezos wants a trillion human beings living across the solar system. But can such ceaseless, hubristic expansion really be regarded as conservative?
Well, in one key respect, it absolutely can. It would ensure that if the Earth suffered a catastrophe — like that which wiped out the dinosaurs 70 million years ago — human beings would survive elsewhere. The light of consciousness — which, for all we know, is unique in all the universe — would shine on. I’m not sure there can be anything more conservative than that.