Interplanetary Institutionalization: Should Humans Become Space Faring?

Abstract

Humans stand poised to transcend economic, social, and ecological challenges arising from earthbound limitations by becoming an interplanetary species. The ethical commercialization of the solar system regions beyond Earth’s orbit offers a potential means for sustainably continuing population expansion, economic growth, and human well-being. Certain scholars propose that the benefits outweigh the risks and costs while others posit that the existential dangers are not worth the likely yet unknowable and unintended consequences of humans settling outer space. Nonetheless there is consensus that difficult institutional reassembling and high investment change must occur if humans are to become space faring. Our research asks should humans become space faring? Through our multidisciplinary literature survey, we gain insight about five advancing logics and other constraining forces.

Keywords: Commercialization, economic systems, entrepreneurship, institutional theory, new space, outer space policy