Comparative Book Review: Bleddyn E. Bowen, Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space (London: Hurst and Company, 2022) and Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Abstract

While analysis of space and space policy in relation to national security and human spaceflight remains a niche academic area, there have still been a growing number of books and articles to explore and detail it. It is this increased pace of activity that has led to a space domain that is contested, competitive, and congested leading to more opportunities for confrontations and even conflict. For the most part, if these examinations are not laudatory, they are at least encouraging in terms of the types of activities they have advocated including not only those associated with national security and defense, but the mining and exploitation of space-based resources and even the colonization of outer space and other planetary bodies. This should not be all that surprising. Since the opening of the space age, popular culture has portrayed space as a place with unlimited opportunities for discovery and adventure. This early fascination with space’s potential has today morphed into billionaire space entrepreneurs extolling the potential and possibility of moving humans to outer space and to Mars. But, the extension of such activities, as on Earth, has not come without criticism. The increased pace of activity in space has come to a pinnacle in recent years with the success of commercial space companies, like SpaceX, the privatization of space activities more generally, the creation of the U.S. Space Force, new plans in China and Russia for human spaceflight to the Moon, and a return to the Moon for the United States and its partners in the Artemis program. At the same time, space also comes with a darker side, one that is more visible than its proponents would like to think regarding conflict in space, weaponization there, and the possible extension of human driven exploitation in that domain. While concerns over an outbreak of kinetic conflict in the space domain that threatens to pollute near Earth orbits and make operations in space difficult tend to be the foremost of those, two new books also illustrate the dangerous underpinnings of space exploration and exploitation: Bleddyn Bowen’s Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space, and Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. These two books come at the topic of space from quite different directions that seemingly have little in common. Rubenstein’s shorter, eminently readable exploration delves into historical and religious themes throughout history, highlighting their role in colonial and imperial actions that today also serve to justify the actions of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in space. Bowen, on the other hand, offers a detailed exploration of the politics and physics of space warfare today. Despite Bowen’s play on religious rhetoric with the phrase “original sin,” religion is left much to the side whereas it is the central focus for Rubenstein. However, the argument these two authors put forth is much the same; that is, space today is tainted by its often-unacknowledged relationship with techno-