Europe’s Quiet Race to Space – European Space Futures and the Question of Public Ignorance

by Allesandra Penders

In September of this year, one week into joining the FutureSpace research project – just as the project celebrated its first anniversary – I found myself taking notes in a Strategic Foresight Workshop hosted by the FutureSpace team members, attended by many important actors in the European space sector, including members of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). Throughout, multiple participants voiced their surprise at, and concerns about, how little the public knows about space and our present-day space capabilities. Their observations are echoed in recent surveys and reports on the European public’s awareness of space-based activities, which indicate that although positive sentiments towards investing in space are most common, only a minor percentage are actually well-informed about European space activities (ESA, 2019; ESPI, 2023; Europe Barometer, 2014). When this point was raised, as a newcomer to the project and the Social Studies of Outer Space (SSOS) field more broadly, I certainly felt like a representative of this largely ignorant public. Despite a subconscious, common-sense knowledge that we are extremely reliant on space technologies as a society, I, like many others, do not often stop to think about the materialities behind such infrastructures.

Even if you have not been keeping up with space news, like me, you may have come across claims that ‘a new space race is in full swing.’ At present, there is indeed a wealth of public and private actors actively working towards ambitious outer space projects in the midst of intensifying international competition. As opposed to the Apollo era, the current period of space exploration – the ‘new space race’ or the ‘new space age’ – is characterized by the shift away from state-led space activities towards the rise of the private, commercial sector and subsequent public-private partnerships. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other so-called “NewSpace” private enterprises, aim to capitalize on the promise of outer space as a novel economic frontier – encompassing satellite communication networks, space tourism, space mining, human settlements on the Moon and Mars, and other socio-technological schemes (Tutton, 2018). These changes are consequently accompanied by issues such as space debris, as satellites are being put into orbit at an unprecedented rate (Starlink plans to have 29,988 orbiting satellites next year), leading to crowded orbits and potential collisions; ecological impacts and the continuation of colonial practices, as resource-rich celestial bodies become sites for resource extraction; or questions surrounding dual-use technologies, as space infrastructures are employed for both civilian/scientific and military/security purposes, (e.g. satellite imagery). Simultaneously, China, India, and Russia are each independently advancing military operations in outer space, as the U.S. pushes for returning astronauts to the Moon with the Artemis programme.

In other words, regardless of the ‘space race’ buzzword’s truthiness, it seems space has indeed once again – albeit differently – been framed to invoke narratives of international competition and antagonism, and importantly, of global winners and losers – with political and material effects in tow.

Europe is certainly feeling the pressure. The (illusion of) competition in the new space race narratives and the rise of NewSpace has evidently lit a fire under Europe’s space sector, as European institutions and actors seek to promote their own visions for human futures in outer space. In November 2021, the Director General of ESA stated his aim for “European footprints” on the Moon by 2030, which would “become a new economic space, and a new continent” of human activity (“Bis Zum Ende”, 2021). Additionally, consider the case of the joint Ariane rocket programme. Created in 1979 by 13 collaborating European nations, partially to ensure autonomous European access to outer space (Al-Ekabi, 2015), Ariane has been heralded as a symbol of successful European integration on a political, technological, and economic level (Harvey, 2003). Hence, its commercial success was arguably not prioritized, as the programme instead stuck to the geo-return principle, which ensured every nation participating in building different rocket parts received its fair share of industry contracts. However, today this principle and other pillars of European scientific, technological and political integration are increasingly contested in the face of the previously mentioned rise of American NewSpace actors. Due to the felt pressure of an unprecedented global competition for space launches and access to space, Ariane is now increasingly seen as too expensive and with a bureaucratic governance system too complex to keep up with the speed of disruptive innovation set by its commercial competitors. Consequently, narratives that Europe is ‘lagging behind’ and needs to ‘catch up’ in the global race have become widespread. In this uniquely crucial and transformative moment in the history of (European) space exploration, the FutureSpace project studies how space future visions are shaped by particular European value constellations and, in turn, how European outer space infrastructures and space policy are co-produced by these shared visions in advancing processes of political (dis)integration (Klimburg-Witjes, 2023). Following Ariane around to construction sites, policy conferences, foresight departments and trade fairs, FutureSpace focuses on the entanglements of the imaginative, material, and political dimensions of European space activities, towards understanding how futures of European integration on and off-planet are imagined and performed (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015).

In its first year, the FutureSpace team– Asst.-Prof. Dr. Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Dr. Joseph Popper, Philipp Kürten, and Kai Strycker – has already researched a variety of topics under the European space sector, including the issue of space debris in Earth’s orbit; sociotechnical imaginaries of strategic autonomy in controversies about Ariane; topographies of Earth-Space relations and scalar narratives in the European space sector. Following the European space controversies mentioned in the previous paragraph, FutureSpace research found that positions tend to polarize around two narratives for future integrations. The first urges for a more united European approach and a reinforced commitment to Ariane, organized under the framework of ESA. The second argues for a dis-integration of the existing European launcher program in favor of creating more agile alliances between the corporate sector and a few powerful countries. This debate further reflects important and prevalent tensions between unity and plurality, and between cooperation and competition. In both cases, the emerging NewSpace ecosystem is transforming the politics of space in Europe, and complicates the relations between the national, international, and supranational institutions currently responsible for European space futures (Klimburg-Witjes, 2023). In sum, the FutureSpace research is the first of its kind in linking the rocket, and the future imaginaries it inspires, to forms of governance, engineering practices, and value constellations in multinational infrastructure projects. In doing so, FutureSpace advances the state of the art in three areas, namely Science and Technology Studies, Infrastructures Studies, and SSOS, thereby contributing to novel and highly relevant interfaces between them.

Having established the glaring relevance of understanding contemporary outer space infrastructures and the significance of research into this topic, the question remains: Why do I – and evidently, so many other Europeans – then know so little about such important space-related endeavours? Intuitively, one could easily suggest plausible reasons for the public’s ignorance about European space endeavours, such as the inherently “complex nature of space and space-related activities, including space science, -policy, -technology, and -applications” (Pieterse, 2020, p. 15), which is difficult to communicate to lay persons. Or, perhaps this ignorance is a byproduct of the modern ‘attention economy’, in which an overload of accessible information has led to increased difficulties of ‘breaking through’ in media environments – an issue that has been discussed by many researchers of science communication (Jamieson et al., 2017). To be sure, for the average citizen, it is difficult to gauge which space-related headlines warrant attention or concern, or which new launches are considered illustrative of a progressive development in space capabilities, as opposed to merely conducting ‘business as usual’. Particularly, considering real-life space exploration has become “an unexciting endeavor” for the public, as evidenced by a lack of ‘iconic’ moments in the collective memory, as opposed to the Apollo generation (Geppert, 2018, p. 310). Even the more ambitious promises for space exploration that have the potential to garner public interest – often attributed to NewSpace companies – suffer from the effects of a delayed payoff, and in today’s competitive attention economy, small incremental updates and long wait times for noteworthy results lead to a boy-who-cried-wolf condition, in which the public sentiment becomes: ‘You know what? Just let us know when we get there.’ From ESA’s perspective, one can imagine how a lack of public awareness and enthusiasm for space results in a lack of public funding, inhibiting the work that ESA could carry out. From this perspective, in line with much of the work in science communication and public engagement research, public ignorance is an undesirable risk. However, one could argue that public ignorance may be beneficial for ESA in certain cases, as awareness also comes with nosiness, questioning, and criticisms. For example, to remain evasive of public backlash, ESA may prefer that people remain unaware of issues surrounding space debris or dual-use technologies. But even in the case of less contested space endeavors, one can imagine how public awareness is not preferred, for example in questions of resource allocation. Although writing about the American context, Pieterse’s (2020, p. 20) observation about the irony in the public engagement with space is applicable here: “[The people] expect [the national space agencies] to be leading within the space arena, but express their outrage at the resources allocated to it, whilst indifferent as to the value of space technology.” Perhaps it would be in ESA’s best interest to let its space activities fade into the shadows of public consciousness so as to not remind them that public funding is being funneled into space exploration as well. (For reference, a survey from a few years ago indicated that the European public’s estimations for public resource allocation into space activities are already around twenty times higher than they actually are (ESA, 2019), a gross overestimation that cannot be easily corrected when public communication is already lacking.) Therefore, rather than an unintentional ignorance springing from contemporary communication conditions, is there a strategic and purposeful element to keeping the European public oblivious about what ESA is up to?

Indeed, my intuition is corroborated in the following excerpt from an interview^[1] with an ESA official:

“People do not know much about space, but they are not against [space investment]. If explained, then they say ‘Oh, it’s good, fine – do it.’ (…) We are in a good and comfortable position with this portfolio, that it’s not objected and challenged. (…) As long as we are not hindered to do our work for Galileo^[2], Copernicus^[3], and so on, [and] nobody knows that on the street, then it’s fine. And we should keep that on such a non-excited level.”

As evidenced by earlier sentiments, and as the Ariane rocket has been referred to as “the most boring rocket” (personal communication), I believe it is safe to say ESA successfully maintained this public non-excitement. Additionally, it is important to note the discrepancy in the interviewee’s claims that, on the one hand, once the purposes of space activities are explained and made known to the public, people tend to be okay with these activities being carried out, and on the other hand, keeping the public generally ignorant is beneficial as it evades obstructions to the work done by ESA. What is particularly interesting here, is also this notion of ‘non-excitement’. This maintained ignorance among the public is thus not one produced through secrecy or the withholding of information, but rather, it is an obliviousness produced through strategic boringness. It is a strategy of not communicating information to an audience by employing boringness under the guise of communicating information to an audience – or the Terms and Conditions approach.

Such preliminary musings remain underdeveloped for now, but warrant future research. As the FutureSpace project continues to shed light on European space futures, it is important to consider the public’s role in the shaping of such futures, especially if space remains represented as a shared common, for all humankind. During my remaining time as an intern at the FutureSpace project, I return to my initial ignorance – my impetus to join FutureSpace in the first place – and take it as a starting point rather than a hindrance to my entry into the SSOS field, as I aim to provide a first foray into this exploratory topic of (strategic) public ignorance and the European space sector. 

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^[1] This interview with an ESA official was conducted in 2019 by Dr. Nina Klimburg-Witjes for the research project “Making Europe through and for its research infrastructures” at the University of Vienna.

^[2] ESA’s Galileo mission is Europe’s independent global navigation satellite system.

^[3] ESA’s Copernicus mission consists of a constellation of satellites providing Earth observation data, monitoring the planet’s environment and climate.

Author Biography

Allesandra Penders is a master’s student in the interdisciplinary Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology Research Master programme at Maastricht University. Allesandra previously completed her Liberal Arts and Sciences bachelor’s programme at Maastricht University (University College Maastricht), with a Social Sciences/Humanities concentration focusing on STS, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and (Digital) Media Studies. As part of her current master’s programme, Allesandra is doing an internship at the University of Vienna in the FutureSpace project, working as a research assistant.

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