Spaceship Earth

Time: 4:30 p.m.

Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University

Abstract. Why did scientists and lay people alike in the 1970s talk about the Earth in terms of a Spaceship? And in what way did this frame the environmental debate? With a point of departure in the famous earthrise image, this lecture reviews the history of “spaceship earth." The photo came to represent a dream of a globe in ecological harmony, yet it was taken by a crew of astronauts sent out in space to demonstrate the superiority of the United States in a world divided by Cold War tensions. Spaceship earth was not a vague analogy or metaphor, but that it reflected instead efforts to build a closed ecosystem within the spaceship in order to secure the health of astronauts. In other words, the Earth was literally understood as being construed as the spaceship and the environmental havoc was caused by humans not behaving like astronauts. Environmental ethics became an issue of trying to live like astronauts by adapting space technologies such as bio-toilets, solar cells, recycling, and energy-saving devices. Technology, terminology, and methodology developed for spaceships became tools for solving environmental problems onboard Spaceship Earth. Spaceships came to represent the rational, orderly, and wisely managed contrast to the irrational, disorderly, and ill managed environments on Earth.

Peder Anker is Associate Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.