I believe, my friends, caravans of rockets
Will head us forward from star to star.
𝄆 On dusty paths of the planets from afar
Our footprints shall be left as our marks. 𝄇
-Chorus of "14 minutes till launch"-
Introduction
Russian cosmological philosophy or cosmism is a branch of european Avant-garde movement that goes well beyond the futurist bounds of it and aims high for the very stars in the night skies. The idea of cosmism was initially develoepd by a philosopher, Nikolai Fyodorov during the reign of the Tzar in the 19th century and was later develoepd by artists and poets of the october revolution which came into fruition in 1918. This school of thought, however, is quite different from most futurist movements that generally portray cars, advanced forms of transportation and an industrialized society as the bright future. It goes far beyond the bounds of our home planet and strives to reach the ever expanding bounds of the universe, defeating humanities enemy- death and bring back all who existed before(yes including you) from death to further breathe life into the "unliving matter" of the universe. In short, make a united humanity the worthy soverign of the universe and reach infinity.
We often gaze upon the stars and wonder, can we as a species make it into the stellar future? We cower in fear full of uncertanty- A nuclear winter, climate disasters and all sorts of crisis' of the 21st century seems to be just around the dark allyway waiting silently to end humanity as a coherent developing civilization in one fell swoop. Although, in this piece of text, we will argue that the stellar future is not only something achievable, but something we can start laying the foundations for in this very decade.
Assessment of our current situation
P1. About equality and exploitation
As seen in the subtitle, our goal is to make an egalitarian spacefaring civilization, not to revive the 18th century colonial empire building of European powers at an interplanetary scale. In order to prevent potential expoloitation and as the infamous Elon Musk puts it, martian indentured servitude, we must send the exploitation we currently face to the dustbin of history in order to prevent it from emerging in the future.
one such source of such exploitation are gargantuan passive investment firms such as Blackrock and Vanguard. These firms, as the name suggests, do not actively trade assets but holds onto assets in a fasion called index funds. We've learned that firms compete against each other to further profits in basic economy lessons,however, that only applies in the theoretical field where we have human agents operating with absolute reason. In other words, that isn't the case.
Passive investment firms hold onto and buy hundreds or thousands of stocks resultting in them owning more than 5% in majority of firms. (5% is the minimum threshold to influence company decisions and since stocks are usually dispersed, 5% or more makes you the one with the biggest stake.) Although there is one thing that economists got it right; capital follows the profit motive and they do it very well. Following the profit motive, competition between firms under control of these aformentioned firms are less profitable than exploiting the workers, reducing the number of employees, cutting wages and giving more work to the remaining employees all coerced by the artificially maintained reserve army of labor. The reserve army preforms its duty by simply exisiting. Its existance alone is enough to cut wages, strike wage laborers with the fear of joining the ranks of the reserve army if they go on strike. Thus they accept their new wage and fall into agony while attempting to sustain themselvers and in some cases their loved ones and offspring.
One might question: doesn't exploitation means more stuff extracted from the workers which in turn means that more labor can be directed to colonization? This is in fact absolutely incorrect and we will not elaborate on why more exploitation and the profit motive is in fact bad for the human race and interplanetary colonization.
P2. Markets and dark underlying secrets
(See the case of Sears Holdings for furthur exploration of the topic)
The so called free market is a place where information, commodities are such are exchanged between independent economic agents in the most efficient and free way. Or so we are taught in textbooks. In fact, the "free" market is not free. Not to mention the boom and bust cycles, in other words, the destruction of capital occouring every 5 or 8 years.
Information is treated as a treasure which is to be guarded at any costs rather than a public good that anyone could access resulting in the redundancy of information and thus, storarge which has a real effect on the material world in the form of pollution. Commodities, especially IT commodities, have their quality( durability, battery lifetime,services etc.) deliberately lowered so that they are more frequently bought by consumers which doesn't need furthur explanation on why it is a waste of valuable resources and an active attempt at mass suicide.
The next topic we are brought to is the boom and bust cycle.
these catastrophic events include the destruction of capital, the workers who operate them which result from overproduction, something never before seen in the history of the human race before capital developed and accumilated the productive forces of the world to such a degree that supply exceeds demand.
However, the cyclic destruction of the productive forces does not only destroy, but reward the most wealthy of the wealthy with unimaginable wealth at the expense of literal human lives.
Challenges to overcome
The task of colonizing space is no easy feat a country or entitled firms could pursue. It could only be done with the collective might of humanity under a series of coherent plans aiming for the stars. how these plans are formulated and what institutions will govern them will not be discussed. Although we will list necessary elements to kickstart colonization:
1)Free education and healthcare for all
Full education and healthcare are basic human rights which everyone should enjoy. Despite this, the literacy rate of children globally is 48% which tells you that we're missing a number of potential geniuses or perhaps, Einstiens of today and more than half of the world(4 billion people) don't have access to essential health services which includes hospitalization,rehabilitation, newborn care and more. We cannot afford to lose potential Einstiens.
Monetary requirements for providing such services can be acquired from taxes which can be adjusted through popular decision.
2) More funds for general sciences
General sciences, unlike applicatory sciences aren't profitable at all- They will be researched, experimented for decades with no tangible outcome to transform into commodities like Iphones thus no sane firm will invest heavily into general sciences as it is the equivilant of throwing money away in the eyes of capital.Not to mention that they are horrendously expensive. Unlike firms however, nation states can formulated grand national strategies that would last for several years or decades and actually has the monetary power to fund such money hungry researches.
For instance, the Manhattan project- the project responsible for the first atomic warhead was not funded by General Electric nor any other firms,but done by the US federal government.
3) Intercontinental Planning
Unless you were living under a rock, you'd easily figure out the corperations,states and many more enage in economic planning as if there is no organization completely based on the market. Currently at least. Not to mention letting the market forces drive the yoke of colonization would prove to be redundant, further strangling our already heavily damaged ecology. Instead,what we could strive to do is to utilize the logistic, communications infrastructure laid by these agents while improving on them to make them more accecible to other economic agents not fortunate enough to have access to such infra and integrate them into series of plans starting with converting into less enviromentally hazardous methods of material and energy production.
These 3 factors will allow us to construct a ladder to go in and out of our cradle freely at our own will- an orbital ring.
Let's give the earth an oath ring!
Eveything on earth is cosntantly pulled at a velocity of 9.81m/s^2 or in other words, it's very expensive to put things up in space.
For almost a century and a half, theoreticians have come up with methods that are not subject to the limits of the rocket equation being space tethers, orbital rings and the infamous space elevator with the orbital ring serving as the least technologically challenging and an easily expandable option- a trait required to pull ever greater mass into space.It would rotate synchronous to earths orbital velocity which is 9.8km/s allowing the structure to act as a planetary crane complex, reeling objects up and down with mechanical motors, greatly speeding up the process and speed of extraplanetary projects. However, if you haven't realized already this is not a task that can be done before the 3 prerequisites listed above and definitely not in the comming decades.
Conclusion.
We have explored the exploitative conditions of today, the prerequisites of expanding beyond the Kerman Line, and a structure that will lend us a hand in constructing well... more structures. People today might be prone to fall into what is called Doomerism but i plead to you who are reading this not to fall into this ideology of suffering and strive to materialize what is possible. Finally i want you to put this quote to your heart: Must the stars go out in the darkest of times?