When we make our home on other worlds, who will be in charge?
Will it be an emperor, like the main character in “Dune: Part Three,” the final movie in a trilogy based on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi saga? Or a billionaire, like the space mogul who plays a key role in setting up a Mars base in “For All Mankind”? Or a rebel alliance, like the revolutionaries in “Star Wars” and “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”?
Jacob Haqq Misra, an astrobiologist who literally wrote the book on space sovereignty, suggests that it’ll be none of the above, at least during the initial phases of extraterrestrial expansion.
“You’re going to have Earth cultures represented, and ideas about Earth governance represented, and what will emerge is sort of a mishmash legal framework of agreements for how to coexist peacefully,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “That’s maybe not even so bad.”
During our podcast chat, Misra laid out what sounds like a sensible perspective on the future of space politics, based on earthly precedents rather than starry-eyed assumptions about the final frontier.