We are preparing to transform the moon and Mars. The public must have a say in this future |
This month’s splashdown of Artemis II was rightly celebrated as a technical achievement. Four astronauts traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and returned safely. It is an extraordinary thing to send people into deep space and bring them home again. Nobody should deny that.
But the real significance of Artemis II lies elsewhere.
The mission is a rehearsal for Artemis III, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century. Beyond that lie plans for a sustained human presence on the moon: infrastructure, industry and eventually a staging ground for Mars. These are not small or reversible steps. They are the opening moves in a long-term transformation of another world.
And yet the decisions behind them – about what the moon is for, how it should be used and what risks are acceptable – have been made with remarkably little public deliberation.
Governments and private actors are moving quickly. Nasa and its international partners are advancing agreements and missions. Companies led by figures such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are investing heavily in the technologies that will make large-scale activity beyond Earth possible. The Artemis Accords set out principles for how this expansion will unfold.
For all their importance, these developments have unfolded largely outside public view. There has been no sustained democratic conversation about whether we should establish a permanent presence on the........