Although living in outer space could offer an opportunity to achieve greater freedom in life, it also offers the chance for tyranny if we don’t plan ahead. Speaking on his paper at the Edinburgh Futures Institute conference on The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty, Charles Cockell of the University of Edinburgh, described the need to take individual freedoms into account in engineering. These concerns apply to spaceships, the Moon, Mars, and a host of other celestial bodies.
Back when I worked on regulations for the FAA, the engineers always had lists of factors that hazard, fault tree, and other analyses had to take into account. Cockell suggests that liberty should be one of those factors in order to mitigate tyranny in space.
He observes that between spacesuits and the need for contained habitats, people’s freedom of movement will be curtailed in ways that would make the worst Earth dictators envious. Outer space, in fact, may be more “tyranny-prone” than we would like. The natural environment will not provide oxygen, water, or food. The external environment is immediately lethal. Potential isolation from Earth could restrict settlers’ access to information, and curtail economic opportunity.
Cockell’s not completely a pessimist. Outer space could offer freedom from government bureaucracies, restricted space, and entrenched ways of thought. The lack of oxygen or food in outer space is not tyranny in and of itself, of course. It’s just the way things are. Their denial could, however, result in oppressive social conditions.
Fortunately, we can use engineering to mitigate tyranny. First, let’s recognize that if we centralized control of resources, the design could give someone greater opportunity to control those resources and thus other people. Cockell suggests that freedom engineering would multiply the means of production, diversify providers of vital requirements such as oxygen, and create the opportunity for overproduction of each vital requirement.
Freedom of movement could also be an issue. Settlers will need spacesuits and contained, pressurized habitats. Other than terraforming (for the win), no technology can overcome this basic need. Someone who can control access to this technology has an ineluctable means of control. How could freedom engineering mitigate this hazard? Design for reliable spacesuits, an oversupply to prevent shortages, easy donning and doffing, and designing for long duration excursions.
And then there’s oxygen. We need it second by second. Without it we die. Whoever controls the oxygen can control a population, even if just by threat of withholding the supply. Fortunately, the possibility of personal oxygen machines just got tested. NASA’s MOXIE takes atmospheric carbon dioxide and turns it into oxygen. If each habitat had its own MOXIE, it would reduce any single person’s ability to gain control. Again, Cockell recommends maximizing production, as well as simplifying the extraction technology, diversifying the means of getting oxygen, and using the atmosphere rather than permafrost where possible. MOXIE, for instance, wouldn’t help on the Moon or the asteroids. MOXIE needs a zirconium catalyst to function. This means no tyrant wannabe should control the catalyst, highlighting how freedom engineering requires us to look at the whole industrial process.
Such redundancy would enhance safety as well as liberty. Even without consideration of abstract ideals like tyranny-avoidance, engineers seek to avoid single points of failure and ensure redundancy.
He also discusses the fear of violent disobedience arising out of the fear of depressurization leading to more controlling behavior, and isolation leading to economic autarky. Watch the whole thing or check out the paper. You can listen to his full talk here at 1:43. I also recommend his study of isolated governments. It was interesting.
In the meantime, I have a strange desire to re-read Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.