S01E02 - A Space for Humanity - Ethics and Governance for Living together in the Space Age

In this intense episode, we dig into the main issues preventing international and intercultural collaboration here on Earth which will prevent us from becoming a prosperous, inclusive, and peaceful multi-planetary species. In search of solutions, we begin with the power of law and then blast over to the ongoing space race between private actors and developing countries, uncovering who is really in power. Shattering conventional narratives along the way, we explore a supracultural code of space ethics, a way to ensure that space and its benefits for life on Earth remain accessible for all of humanity.

Our guest taking us on this journey of discovery is the bleeding-edge scientist Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty, Professor of Space and Society at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University.  

---

Space Forward: All right, so, our conversation here is on the topic of space governance, space law. You have described yourself as a British born of Nigerian heritage, Canadian by choice, and now live in the U.S - by the sense of the word a true citizen of the world. You're a professor of space ciety, at the School for the  Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University and alumni from the International Space University. You've worked at the Nigerian Space Agency, served at SGAC Space Generation Advisory Council, supporting the UN Program on Space Application and many, many other advisory boards focusing on space and gender equality and holding a total of five degrees and have been a TED speaker. And you're writing a book. What an incredible resume. What drives you? Why are you doing what you're doing and where is all this energy coming from?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: That's a great question. Thank you so much for that kind introduction and two things drive me. I was a poor, poor student at undergrad and it's really funny that they say sometimes that your failures are actually the things that set you up, because I ended up not doing that well in my undergrad and I just felt like such a failure. And I was I've been making up for it ever since. I thank God for that failure because it really drove me. And then secondly, I had a two month old son that passed away while I was doing my PhD thesis. And,  while I was in hospital with my son, I was writing my thesis and I kept thinking all the problems in the world that I'm thinking about, my son is the one that's going to resolve them. And that pushed me and it got me going. And even though I came out of the hospital with a PhD thesis and without a son, his legacy,  just just everything that I do is just remembering my son. So failure and loss. Interesting. The things that drive me.

Space Forward: That is very, very powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I admire people like yourself. If you could describe your life in a single sentence, what would it be?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Wow,  you don't start off easier.

Space Forward: Well.

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: I feel I basically would call myself an academic entrepreneur. And I got that phrase from Namrata Goswami, who is somebody that I really admire. And I call myself an academic entrepreneur because I didn't realize that academia was so entrepreneurial. There's no one to tell you what to do. You have to wake up each day and decide what you're going to do and how you're going to have an impact in the world. And that's what entrepreneurs do. But it's just that we have a bit of a different audience and we're driven by different things. But essentially it's waking up each day and saying, I am in control of my destiny. I can decide what I'm going to do today and how is that going to impact the world. I would say academic entrepreneur.

Space Forward: Wow, that is beautiful, beautifully put and. 

Is there something intrinsic in human nature that drives us to explore? I remember George Mallory put it famously “Why did you want to climb Mt. Everest?” when somebody asked him, And he said, “Because it's there.”. I'm curious to understand,  is this something more nuanced? What is your answer to why “Why Space?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: I find this question very, very difficult, and I think it's because I started my space career from a developing country context, which means that we haven't grown up with all these notions of, OK, there's a frontier and OK, we have to colonize and OK, we have to settle. I didn't grow up with that mentality and neither did anyone around me. It's very difficult for me to understand the sense of innate, needing to explore, needing to go out and settle the world. But what does drive me with respect to that is because I know and believe there are people who do feel that way. I kind of have to make sure that I protect everyone else from those innovators, because I think the thing is, when we think of innovators, we think a lot of us think excitement, but a lot of us think fear because those people, they they they don't want to be bound. Right. The whole point of innovation, the whole point of being an explorer is that you don't know what you're going to find and you just go out and you break things and figure it out. But the rest of us who are not like that are left behind struggling to understand what is it that these people are doing. And I think that's why law is so powerful, because it's kind of like it's the last tool that you have to put some kind of constraint. And I know that scientists and engineers, when they hear lawyers coming in the room, they're like, oh, my God, that person is going to spoil my project. But it's the only way to safeguard the rest of humanity, because if we just let the innovators go, they will actually destroy us all.

Space Forward: That is a very interesting statement. I like to establish a foundation for our discussion today, and this is where we're building on. That conversation that we just have overcome, in essence, “Why space”. 

Please explain to us briefly the discrete laws and their terrestrial analogs, which might apply to the Earth's orbit, to the International Space Station, empty space itsel, foreign celestial bodies like Moon, Mars, asteroids or comets.

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Right, it's really interesting that my Ph.D. in space law, my master's at ISU International Space University, focused on space policy and I now call myself a space governance expert. what are all these terminologies mean? And I think we use the more interchangeably, but they speak to different audiences and they speak to different processes. We all think we understand what law is. So law is basically the codification of rules and norms and everything into something that is binding mething that is enforceable. Right, either by the courts or by the police or or enforceable by someone. That's what we understand as law. And in space, we have,  these traditional international space law, which is where countries come together, they decide what will they be bound by and held responsible and liable for under international law. You have this core international space law and then Article three of the Outer Space Treaty, which is the main treaty that regulates the relationships between states and space, says that general international law also applies in space. Then we have to say, yeah, but clearly not all international law applies in space because space is a different context, right? There's no sovereignty in space. There's no peoples that we know of in space. We have to figure out, OK, how does general international law also apply to space? And then there's domestic laws. Right. Article six of the Outer Space Treaty says that states are responsible for non-governmental actors in space and also for continuing supervision and authorisation.

That is through licensing regimes that states develop on the domestic level. And then, of course, there are policies which is basically,  the set of options that states have or actors have to determine what is it that they actually want to do. This is where you're different. Stakeholders come in to determine what kind of activity should be done. And then the last level is basically you're non-state actors. Your advocacy groups, your coalitions, how do they come up with non-binding codes and standards that we can now use? This is the framework and I personally call this governance because I think that all these are part of a system that interact, and stakeholders interact and interrelate between all these different subsystems of the governance system. It took me a long time to get to this point because I kept hearing space law and policy. But I was like, well, what is policy? What is law? And in the international context, it's even more complicated because there's no enforcement. Some people would say, is international law even really law? Is it more just politics? Space governance is very interdisciplinary because you have these sociological aspects. You have to think about the policy aspects as well as the legal aspects. That's the landscape in which I think about the regulation of activities, the regulation of actors and how they all collaborate and work together to achieve stated outcomes.

Space Forward: I'm interested on expanding on a word that you just mentioned. International law is is as vague per say as to that the complexity on who and where it applies is relative based upon where you are and what you're doing in the case of space. Which law or which framework could apply to somebody that if in the future reference a crime is committed on board the International Space Station, a spacecraft to the moon, because currently geopolitics, each and every single nation has their own version. What do you think from the governance structure that we just talked about? 

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Right. Article eight of the Outerspace Treaty says that the state of registry, that is the state that registers either a space object or people, retains jurisdiction and control over that space object and over its personnel. That means through registration, the state can exert its rules and and its laws. And but, of course, registration, as we know. Well, maybe people don't know. Registration has to be done as soon as practicable, which means that it may not be practicable for a state to register. Which is why we know that we don't know completely what's in space. But I think,  essentially what that means is that the even though people think that maybe we can have new rules in space, the state will never give up its sovereignty. It will always want to connect back to the state. And that's why when Elon Musk did the stalling terms of service that said that Mars is a different environment and Earth laws wouldn't apply,  is not really considering the fact that, well, he's registered in the United States. He has to get a launch license from the United States, and that means US law is going to apply to his rockets and is going to apply to his,  his habitants.

Space Forward: From a context of knowing that the sovereignty of the state cannot be sort of deemed in this manner, it is the primary objective of every state to ensure that their laws are withheld or or a claim to spur any execution of activity. I'm very curious to understand as to where do the rest of the stakeholders come into play. You write like, for example, there are so many international legal initiatives that happen on a week to week, on a month-to-month basis. Who are these players?  You've mentioned a couple of them. And who are the most influential here? Who has the largest amount of power?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: And this is again, why we talk about moving from law to govern international law to international governance, because there are international law only applies to states and in some contexts increasingly to individuals, but not to non, not to non-state actors. And we're seeing, the inter into agency group on space debris. For instance, the IADC came up with the space debris mitigation guidelines that states now that people are now adopting. And you have powerful nonprofit organizations like, say, the Secure World Foundation, who do a lot of work bringing different actors together. You have confreres, which is talking about,  space traffic management and and all these different actors. And they're all becoming a lot more powerful because they can lobby, they can lobby the state. for instance, all this work that we've heard of with the Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 in the U.S., which basically made space mining legal, that basically came about because of lobbying from the companies who wanted to exploit space.  if these companies and actors are becoming more and more sophisticated, they know the channels in which they can go through to get their rights upheld. And even youth groups, Space Generation Advisory Council, we know how powerful the SGAC is because they have their tentacles everywhere. 

As people are figuring out how to coalesce, how to organize themselves into coalitions and into groups, we're seeing now that the state ends up having a responsibility to make sure that they have consulted with a wide range of people, and particularly because article six says that the state is internationally responsible for the activities of all these people. They have to listen to them. And that is unique in international law because in international law, states are not usually directly attributable for the activities of their non-state actors, but in space they are directly attributable. So even if they have no fault, so long as you can attach a nationality to a space activity, that country will be internationally responsible.

Space Forward: You put it beautifully, the complexity of these relationships creates a landscape that we haven't seen and haven't experienced before. It begs the question, who’s really in power? Who has the most political capital to be able to exert leverage? There was a talk I was watching by a professor at Princeton, Professor Steven Kotkin, and he stated, who has the most leverage? That kind who is able to exert more leverage on on the international landscape and the Astropolitics landscape and the governance landscape

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Right, and it's interesting, because I read a paper that was saying that the actual space race is between private actors and developing countries because the state, the strong states and now using their private actors to act as proxy. Right. If we think about what SpaceX, for instance, all that development was paid for by the government and the government just decided we're going to support our private sector to do the things that we want to do. But of course, in developing countries, they're not there yet. it's still the state in those countries. now, this is a company like SpaceX that has the power of a state in another country.

Space Forward: Would you say that space is a way for emerging countries to stand up, to gain ground and to catch up to that the previously known as as governments who have been established in space?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Well, it's really difficult, because these private actors want to hide behind the fact that they're not mentioned in the laws. Right. like I said, it doesn't it doesn't say that some people would argue, planetary protection laws don't apply to SpaceX because SpaceX is not mentioned. I mean, because private actors are not mentioned whereby these other countries who are not acting through private actors have all the state responsibility on top of their heads and they can't hide behind anything, and I think for new actors, emerging countries, developing countries,  space governance is an area that they can actually have an equal playing field because they all have experience of either, say, mining operations in their countries. They have experience of being settled through colonialism. the lived experience that they have actually means that discussions about rules and regulations, they actually can have a say, even though they're not technologically advanced enough to be able to work on the engineering.

Space Forward: In this case, would you say the statement of the rich get richer, as is applicable at the end of the day?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: The rich definitely get richer, but I think I think people are getting wiser to the fact that,  we have to start being futuristic in our outlook, we can't say so. Like for me, with developing countries, it's it's like we've got so many problems. Why would we be talking about, like, governing Mars or governing the moon? And it's like you can afford like if we look at history, you can afford to just be like, I have more important priorities. You have to reserve some people to be thinking about the future. And I think for me, this is why I work with youth so much, because you have the perfect people.  you can save your experience, people to be working on the pressing issues of today, but you can develop your youth so that by the time they get old enough, they already are aware of these issues. They've already done all the interactions and networking amongst themselves before it became a political issue.  you now later on, you now have the personnel to be able to discuss these topics.

Space Forward: Yeah, beautifully, beautifully stated, I think the future of our generation, as is reliant upon the ideas that have been unexplored, essentially to that matter where we're we're doing that. 

I am very curious about the research and the core problems that you're working on in space governance. What are some of the key points that you can mention of international Contention?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Right. One of the things that's really important to me, but I'm having a hard time figuring it out is how to develop the approach to negotiation and the approach to consultation and the approach to collaborations, because we have all this historical baggage that comes with it. What kind of lens do you use to go into a negotiation in the first place? Bearing in mind that all these different actors are coming to the table with different things in their mind, and it's not clear what the intent of different actors are. we have a lot of mistrust in the Space world, right. Like any time Iran wants to launch a satellite, it's just this big deal. Are they really launching a satellite? Is it an end to is it a missile?  You can't tell what is going to happen until you actually see the results. It's one of those really complicated issue areas. So how do we build trust between different actors? What are the tools that we need to be able to encourage more collaboration, more cooperation without fear? This is a thing that I'm really thinking about and I'm really thinking about it from the perspective of developing countries and established countries, because,  back in the day when space governance or space law kind of started, you only had a couple of actors, right? That's back then before decolonization.

was easier to get things done. Now, at UNCOPOUS, which is the UN Committee on space, you have over 95 countries. How do you get things on the agenda item in the first place? How do you determine what topic is important? How do you stop political gridlocking? Now, these are all quintessential problems that that are not peculiar to space. They are global governance problems. I also work on climate change and it's kind of the same, these intractable problems that that people are coming at it from polarized viewpoints. And how do we get past polarity? As humans, we may not ever be able to do that. But if we continue trying to understand the perspective of the other and put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we may be able to come closer to the middle. So that's basically what I spend most of my time thinking about.

Space Forward: I hope it doesn't keep you up at night too much thinking about these problems, but it definitely would keep me up to figure out the trust problem that you're trying to tackle. It kind of begs to the question as to the historical context that you've mentioned. 

We have as human beings; we've had the opportunity to resolve so many different conflicts and territorial disputes. Let’s look at the problem of remote territorial disputes.

There's been large context of philosophical concepts on property rights that have been, developed and adopted over the last 200 years. Is owning subject still the right concept for space? And how could the space community approach this issue?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Yeah. That's a really complicated and great question. It's so because I do have a very Western philosophy. Because of my background, I understand the Locke idea of you put your work, you put your works into the land, you should be able to reap the benefits and you can only reap the benefits if your rights to your work can be protected. Right. Because if we go back to Plato, state of nature and we go back to depending on the account that you have of human nature, whether you think that we're all beasts or whether you think, we're all angels, if you leave people to their own devices and you don't say that this belongs to someone, then someone else is just going to try and get it. I understand the American philosophy that if we want innovation to happen, we want enterprise to happen. We have to give people the frameworks to be able to say that we will defend your rights. And that's what the US, Launch Competitiveness Act is trying to say. They're trying to say, even though internationally we don't know if this is legal, the U.S. will defend you. So it's giving people that certainty that at least I'll be defended by my country.  I can go ahead and that gives me peace of mind that I will be defended anyway. Now, when you start looking at other philosophies like the African Ubuntu philosophy, which is about,  oneness and and,  having a human relationships between people, you now see that people think about commonality and communal nature and and that we should take this concept of because space is something that belongs to everyone of thinking about how do we have a shared ownership.

And a lot of people use Elinor Ostrom’s philosophy of the Commons to be able to talk about how these territories should be regulated. And and I think we have to find a middle ground. But I'm always a middle ground person. You have to allow people to benefit from their work while saying that we're not going to exclude, and this is going to require a mind shift for people because they don't trust each other. I think if you did have trust for another and if you had fair and equitable allocations, you wouldn't be trying to fight each other. The problem that we have in space is that even though space is vast, there is scarcity because the resources are limited. Even if we're talking about Earth orbits, we're talking about the geostationary orbit. We're talking about the South Poles where the water is. These are all limited resources. So what kind of allocation formulas should we use? And is the first thing that we need some kind of central authority to be the one that allocates to different people because you can't trust people to do it by themselves?

Space Forward: It's funny, that sounds very ISU of you, especially coming from the middle ground perspective and to be able to look at everybody to establish a basis for space - bases for space cooperation, essentially. It begs the question that have we learned from the sins of our past of colonialization and the context that we will be able to continue this journey forward and prevent similar mistakes of happening in the future?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: We haven't learned. Last last night, I was listening to a conference about the Native American treaties in Canada, so the treaties that were signed between the colonists and the Native Americans and, they are OK, I'm going to say some controversial things. I have this conversation with my dad and we talk about all the Native Americans hanging on too much to their history in the sense that society doesn't work in the way that it used to work, where people can be nomadic and they can live off the land, you know.  if society is moving away from that, why are you holding on to these concepts that you're not getting development in? Why are you holding on to these concepts? And then you realize when you hear them talk, those treaties that were signed, if they don't hang on to their old traditional practices, they will get exterminated, they will lose everything.  the fact that they're still fighting for their lives, with all of this that we know, these people still feel like they're fighting for their lives, even with everything that's happened, even with all the awareness, even with all the dialogue and reconciliation, et cetera. We haven't learned because people are still trying to get more from them and still trying to say, no, we're just going to put you over here. When I think of, the American Indians, the Native Americans, then we see by the fact that this relationship hasn't been resolved, that we still we still haven't gotten anywhere. Right,  this is really challenging.

Space Forward: I can attest to the fact that I haven't had the opportunity and the gratitude to work with Native American native Canadians persay and the establishment of the first university in Canada that is dedicated to First Nations. A step in a positive direction. However, as you said, the respectful essence of hanging on by a thread per say. But do you think it's necessary? Because,  people as we know in the Western society are born without heritage, especially over the last hundred years or so, because of the number of migrations that have taken place. Why should I fight? Why should I fight for something of the past rather than focusing to build the future life or the future version of our generation?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Hmm. You know, I haven't thought about that because, now that I live in America and I see  African-Americans, their plight is very different from mine as an African, and I think because I do have a sense of heritage and root that goes back infinite times even to the first civilizations. in a way,  the Africans and the African-Americans, they don't have the same issues. And I have a certain confidence because even if I get treated badly in America, I can be like, well, I have a home somewhere, even though people get treated badly there, too. But you have this sense of you have somewhere that you belong to versus, say, the African-American who this is their home and they are mistreated and they don't have a sense of belonging. And that's why so many of them are trying to organize that movement to go back to Africa. But,  but but they would still feel a bit of a difficulty belonging even if they went back to Africa. Right. Because of everything that's happened. You make a really powerful point that people are losing this concept of heritage. And and I think in a way, that's why,  projects like Mars One, where they were people were like, I'm ready to go to Mars. 

I mean, if you have a sense of heritage and if you have a sense of,  belonging to somewhere, it's really hard to say I'm going to pack up and leave everything and go to a hostile environment where I'm sure to die.  I think that this this new breed of people who are really interested in settlement, who are really interested in,  moving us forward,  we have to balance that with what does it mean to have a connection to somewhere. And that's what we can learn from the native Canadians and Americans, that having that connection to where you are, to who your people are, to the land, to the environment, and maybe we can create a universal cosmological feeling which might unite us all because we all have the sense of ownership of Earth. I think we can really learn lessons from these nontraditional actors, from history, from heritage to move us forward into,  when we create new settlements to have that feeling of oneness.

Space Forward: What do you think about the idea of the pale blue dot? Do you think that philosophy of universal? In essence of that we are the only species? I don't want to get my astronomer friends agree. Do you think that philosophy of the only unknown or the known species could thrive and creating cosmological version of of of cohesive bonds together for humanity?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: The first thing that we have to do, though, is understand all the different narratives, because, for instance, have you heard of the overview effect where they say that if someone goes out into space, all of a sudden they have this cognitive shift? I mean, to me, that sounds like mythology. And I'll tell you why. It sounds like mythology. And I had a really interesting conversation with an astronaut about this. It was because so many of these astronauts are military guys who get told what to do.  they have blinkers on like this. When you get to space, you suddenly have all this freedom and you have all this openness and then you have that cognitive ship. But you and I, for instance, who already have this, may not feel such a big cognitive shift because we on Earth, we already have that awareness. we already see ourselves as global people.  going to space wouldn't necessarily make me feel even more connected because I already feel connected. again, that Carl Sagan's pale blue spot, maybe the native people already feel like they have this oneness with the environment, even without going to space.

Space Forward: It creates a question about ethics. I start to wonder or I think I'm starting to get this understanding that, we have been poisoning and eating biological life and animal on the only planet that we have. And we know of what is it that we need to do to establish a supra cultural code of space ethics for a sustainable future. And this is attacking or this is going towards your passion of climate change. I'm very curious on your about your thoughts on that.

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Yeah, climate change is an intractable problem because everybody contributes to it and nobody wants to change their behavior, because nobody wants to go backwards. We end up focusing on technology is the answer, when really, it's about behavior change. This is the same. It's the same in spades in that we end up filling our time talking about the rover or,  the technology when really it's a behavioral issue and the technology is secondary because once you've got a consensus ad idem, a meeting of minds, a way for people to think as one, they can work on the technology and that will just be really, really fast. We thought we'd resolved it with the Paris Agreement on climate change. That was in 2015, the big global agreement that basically when it took over the Kyoto Protocol, which basically set limits for states and said you have to bring your greenhouse gas emissions to a certain level. The Paris agreement was like, OK, that doesn't work because people are not going to bring down their limits. let's do something where it's nationally determined. Each country determines what they're going to do. And the only legal obligation is basically transparency, that you will report what you've done and then you will increase your ambition over time. Ratchet up your ambition. and then the almost the whole world signed onto that agreement and everybody thought, OK, with there we look down five years later. And what we now see is that nobody's increasing their ambition and it has and the legal tool of reporting doesn't mean anything when all the other actors don't even hold you to account because they don't want to be held to account themselves.

Space Forward: Do you think that should be the order of execution – we should solve inequality, save the planet and then move on to space?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: I gave a TED talk where I asked the question, do we have to solve the basic ills of society before we deal with fanciful things like space exploration?

And my answer to that, of course, is no, because if you come to the United States, which is supposed to be one of the most advanced countries in the world, you will see poverty, serious poverty. And the thing that sticks to my mind was once I went to a conference from I was in Montreal and I went by bus to Washington, D.C. and when I got to the bus station, I was just shocked at what I saw in the bus station. It was like hell on earth. And I said to myself, I'm going to a space conference and this is the first place that I land.it's true that you fix the ills of society before you do space, nobody would have done space because nobody has solved it. we have to we can't think of things in silos, do one at a time, because so long as we have so long as we have human nature and the competitive spirit that we have in the sense of capitalism, then others will still be trying to get ahead of others. Some people are going to get left behind. The way that we have to address that is those of us that are conscious of the others getting left behind as we move forward, we must always put our hand back and say, who are we bringing along in this journey? Who are we carrying along? What is our responsibility to look back and see who's behind us and bring them forward?

Space Forward: Is there a need for a development of a new set of code of ethics to ensure that the next humanitarian level, as is counted upon and we are working to a point where the technological advancements are moving so fast, along with societal developments, that legislation is essentially lagging behind? 

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Poverty and inequality is the I mean, they're the roots of every problem, they're the roots of inequality is the root of everything.  But but I'm Christian. If we go back to biblical times, if we if we go back to these great works of our religion, we see that, ever since Adam and Eve and and us being able to know the difference between right and wrong, we've always had that sense of inequality. The question now becomes, taking a religious lens, how do we answer the why? And we can't answer the why, which is why we have faith anyway, because we know that there's no there's no answer to that. Faith means that we keep being hopeful. I think hope is a big aspect of humanity. Many people in developing countries, sometimes it looks like we are happier people because we have hope, you know what I mean?

Space Forward: I personally feel that idea of hope can be terrible as much as it can be beneficial. But I'm curious to understand, the next level of ensuring that the inequality continues to decrease over time.  We have established that because of this religious context, they were able to accommodate the essence of UN Declaration of Human Rights. And coming from that perspective and looking at inequality - is U.N. Declaration of Human Rights a good basis to develop the next level of ethics, or is it religious or is it somewhere related to the essence of the times of cold war?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: You’ve got people who are now, like Michelle Hanlon, who are now doing research about applying human rights principles,  to space. But human rights, can be critiqued a lot. Right, because whose version of humanity, who's who's version, who decides what is a right. And there are all kinds of rights that people talk about. And and these are also cultural. Right. Once upon a time, we would never have thought that that you had a right to say that you're not a specific gender, that wouldn't have even,  across our mind. we understand that the concept of rights is something that evolves.  now that we're thinking of individuals going to space rather than just states, should they be accorded rights that are independent of a state because they need to be safeguarded and protected. But the problem we have is, again, because we're not all in the same starting point as to what is a right and then being able to balance and allocate resources. For instance, I know people talking about the right to breathable air right in space because,  oxygen is not free meone is going to have the power to determine who can breathe. that should be a Human Right for anyone that goes into space, that it's not based on how powerful you are, how much money you have to be able to breathe. Everyone should be able to breathe. Having to come up with what are these universal principles. And I think when they came up with that back in the day, I think they focused on political rights. They focused on, a set number of rights. And I think that's what we would have to start with. We would start with the rights that are based on your right to live. Right. And then as far as we're thinking about what makes the quality of life,  you now get more and more nuanced about what you're trying to protect. And it evolves over time because I think the first people that go to Mars or that go to the moon are not going to be expecting their quality of life to be great. Right. Because the quality of life I mean, it's going to take a long time to connect back to Earth. There's not going to be all the equipment. you can't expect that their quality of life is going to be like fantastic. But over time, you would expect that it evolves. being able to ensure that that evolutionary concept things don't get crystallized such that you can't evolve things over time is going to be the tool that we need to figure out. Because the thing about law that sucks, it's a good thing we have this precedent. What was done in the past should be done in the future. That's the way. That's future. The way law works. And that can be good because it's certainty. This is what's going to happen with my set of facts. But it can suck because it's like, yeah, but things have changed and you're still making me stuck on what happened in the past. I think that's what we need for space, some kind of some kind of mechanism that evolution can be, it can be considered adequately.

Space Forward: You mentioned a key phrase here that I like to get our audience, who don't know, learned upon the universal principles. Can you can you can you possibly elaborate on what are these universal principles. When it comes down to it?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: There's natural law, right? There's we do as human beings. We do, even though we don't like to admit it, we do have these natural laws that we know there's some kind of right or wrong. We know, for instance, that if there's a child that has done nothing wrong. We know that they shouldn't take the brunt of someone else is wrong because they're innocent. natural law would be like, just don't don't get children involved in war or like don't give them weapons or don't make them fight things like that. these are universal kind of principles. But the problem is that even though we know these innate things that are universal, that apply to everyone because some people are trying to get ahead and they will recognize that others have this moral sensibility, they can use that to advance themselves. For instance, I think back in the day, children could be slaves, some people would say there isn't actually an innate or natural thing that says you shouldn't harm a child because back in the day we could. I think that it's it's very difficult. Even though most of us have a sensibility about what is a natural law, I think others can use that against you, you know.

Space Forward: Well, in this case of looking at the universality I wonder how our world will be able to create more progress moving forward to establish new universal principles or for space. Do we need new principles for a successful future in space?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: That’s a really great question about when newness and novelty leads to progress, because some people at my dad would say there's actually nothing new under the sun. Like when it comes to humanity, everything has been done. Everything has been seen.  those who sometimes propose the new actually don't have a good sense of history. Right.  this is why interdisciplinary transdisciplinary is so important, because we all need to use different lenses to understand where have we been before to figure out where we're going and if we have the toolbox from the past that we can use, that's going to be good because like like we already said, the good thing about precedent is that people know what to expect. the first thing we have to do is look at our past and say, OK, we're always saying that the past was so bad. But actually what in the past do we have that we can utilize? And then once we recognize what we have in the past, we now look to our present and we now say, but guess what? People say that the past was so bad, but our present this is the best times we've ever had. We're living in a heyday right now. We don't have world wars poverty is actually reduced. we look at the past to say, what have we done? We look at the present to say things are not that bad. And then we mix those two together and say, but what do we want to make better in the future? Learning from our past and recognizing that things are getting better every day.

Space Forward: You're saying that take the positives of the past added to the positives of the present and then create the future instead of?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Exactly, but where we see people don't move forward is because there's no recognition of their past hurts. while I am proposing that we focus on the positive and take all the good points, I recognize that No. One, because of our psychology, no one is going to move forward unless people stand up and say, OK, but I recognize where I hurt you. And this is this is what truth and Conciliation Committee is all about, you need to stand up and acknowledge where you went wrong before anybody is going to be able to move forward.

Space Forward: All about this has been a fantastic discussion on the scope of ethics and, looking at from all lenses.

I'd like to shift the conversation a little bit and go towards more on the international level of affairs as per happening and the well-known game of a game game theoretic scenario, the Dove and hawk game. The system dynamics are such that there will never exist an equilibrium between two agents or population at odds with one another. Their interactions over time can be bottled much like a swing of a pendulum serving as an analogy of the constant struggle between the good and the bad. Are we on a collision course for a clash of governmental systems in space, for example, democracies versus authoritarian systems, sanctions? What will sanctions look like in space? Should parties stop trading with another or increased trading at all costs? A humanity tax for companies who want to do business in space and for those who are not following the humanitarian standards? I'm very curious as to where you first go. Will this lead to an extra territorial territorial law of space stations?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: The one thing that we have to remember is that we started off bipolar, we started off with two different systems, right? The Cold War and the Soviet Union system and the U.S. system. that's nothing new. Now, we're just saying as China and the US, but we've always been in that.  space has always lived in this world of utopia, of like maybe we can use space as a canvas for the human imagination to think differently while the reality is we were living in this very bipolar world  basically nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, the distinction now is just that there are less bystanders. back in the day when the outer space treaty was negotiated and and the USSR and the U.S. were coming up with all the terms, the rest of the countries would just kind of sitting around like, I have no idea what you're talking about today. Those countries are saying, I want a piece of the action, too.  This diversification. And this is why today we're always talking about diversity and inclusion and equity and we're always saying that. I focus on equity, inclusion and diversity in that order because I'm like once because I think If you focus on diversity without putting the systems in place, you don't get anywhere. you have to focus on as a core that you have equity. You know how to treat people. And then you start being inclusive

And then you can focus on bringing everyone and having a diverse environment.  I think that's the distinction with today. We've always been in this bipolar world. We've always had this and these actors trying to use soft power to get the rest of the countries on their side. we're used to that. The difference now is empowering others to say you can come in and you can add to this multipolarity instead of this bipolar nature.

Space Forward: Does that be that in the future or in the near future, there will be at odds to this bipolar nature of operations and viewpoints throughout the scope of other nations that are stepping in developing nations? What do you think will be required for the next generation? A twenty first century legal framework to establish ourselves as a multi-planetary habitation of species?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: I think the first hing is shattering the narratives me people, some people might not like that because they like the Kumbia nature of thinking about space. But I think that that's the first thing that needs To go. We need to stop being like Kombai are like, oh, I love Star Trek and all this, and start seeing space as a place and seeing space as  OK, this is somewhere that we want to go and this is somewhere that we're going to go. And because we're human beings, we're going to take our nature with us. let's have a more realist lens rather than a Kumbia, like everything is going to be OK lens. Let's have a realist lens about what it is that we're going to do and how and what kind of challenges we're going to have. But I think but if you socialize children to understand that there is a future out there and there are things that can be done and it is interesting because it advances the human endeavor, but you don't feed them lies. for instance, when I see all these kids walking around with, like NASA T-shirts and NASA stuff and you see that,  they don't know how much military is involved,  and and they're just like, yeah, NASA's cause like what's cool about NASA, like,  it's it's it's really complicated.  I want some truth. I want some reality. And people might say, well, that when you demystify space, you take away the sexiness of space. But I think by demystifying space.

Working on truth and transparency and conciliation, then we see space as a place that we can go to and do different activities just like anywhere else been it's been like that for a lot of us who have been sort of engulfed in this cultural shift that was created back in the Apollo era. But by my sense of understanding, in terms of the framework that that was established through the cultural Bede's, how is it that it needs to be enforced or like how do we need to enforce laws in space. It's really challenging because the way we enforce international laws in space is like through, for instance, sanctions and through having a Security Council at the United Nations, which is made up of like the five strongest countries, which is really challenging because who enforces the enforces or who oversees the guardians? Right, who is anyone sanctioned the U.S.?

It's really difficult because it requires a certain sense of saying that there are some countries that are above the law and who decideswho those countries are. And I think this is why we end up doing like rotations sometimes and saying, OK, you can,

But then there's always permanent seats. the U.S. always has a permanent seat.  

The fantastic thing about the United States is it's like a microcosm of the world in the United States. 

While It's difficult on the international level to like, sanction the U.S., they get sanctioned in the U.S..  it's like this is why it comes down to individuals again and giving the individuals power and autonomy to be able to effect the changes that they want and then giving them the reality to know the difference between fiction and fact.

Space Forward: True, absolutely, and beautifully stated there, and a kind establishes a groundwork for our list of priorities that you think we need to establish or formulate to assure a cooperation of a planetary settlement in the 21st century, a lot of which a lot of companies are looking forward to.

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: And it's it's really difficult to have that list, though, because it requires it requires a lot of insight and it requires a lot of maturity and it requires a lot of foresight.  this is where new topics like my school, the School for the Future Innovation in Society is a really interesting kind of intellectual home to think about these kind of activities, because we look at what are the societal implications of the technologies that we build and how do we think about that as we craft the future. And there are new positions out there like in the U.S., we just have a new position in the government of science society. And my job title is Space society. Really thinking all those things that you never thought had a sociological bent to them. It really matters today because you have to consider all the different factions of society. And this is where all those topics that we never thought I mean, who would have thought sociology was an important topic?  it's just like most of us are, just like I don't even know what that is. Right. But understanding who people are, what they bring to the table is is increasingly important. at my school,  we have like something like 50 professors from 40 disciplines. And the challenge is trying to have a commonality in a common language. This is where English, who spoke English, was a powerful and important topic, like, are we even all using the same words? Do they what do those words mean?

Space Forward: It kind of goes back to the statement that we kind of started with is how will all of this focus on law, governance and space help us enhance the standard of our living here on Earth? And how can we ensure that no nation or group of individuals is left behind or excluded from enjoyed the fruits of exploration terrestrially and off world?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: I always think about this, they say that the the pen is mightier than the sword and but a lot of scientists and engineers will just be like, oh, what? Your weapon is a word. But it is. words are powerful.  you can see something that can calm a nation or you can see something. Look at what happened with President Trump and everyone saying that he caused this insurrection by just a few tweets. words are

Powerful preachers. Martin Luther King was able to move a generation by just talking about, I have a dream,  the power of words.

Now, he later said that dream became a nightmare and that dream killed him. But everybody will still remember his vision because he was so powerful with his language.  us, as people who think about science and technology, need to think about the science and technology of words.

Space Forward: At the impact that those words will have, choose them carefully, I guess. And that sums up a critical component of the way that we're looking at the world as per now, any last statements that you would like to pose to our audience? Anything curious that you would like them to think about? And, this is a question that I ask to each one of our guests. Is that what do you think that humanity needs to do in order for us to be moving in the direction Of space Forward?

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: Yes, my favorite quote comes from Joey Etheridge and Ed Finn, and they said that space is not a void, but it's a canvas for the human imagination. Questions of policy and logistics are merely scaffolding for a deeper set of questions about who we are and who we want to become as a species. we explore the universe because we are curious not just about what we will find out, but what that will do to us and how we will grow to match our expanding sphere of action and understanding. why are these words powerful? They are so powerful because it's not just about knowledge, but what will that knowledge do to you? How is it going to impact you and is how is it going to change you? And once we start recognizing that we're not just empty vessels that can just ingest something and eject something, but something comes in us mething happens to us innately and we change. there are different ways of knowing and there are different tools of knowing and there are different consequences of knowing. But we have to become more conscious about what knowing actually does to us. So no longer can we be passive consumers of knowledge, passive consumers, consumers of information. This is where misinformation, disinformation campaigns can come in and affect us. everyone has to become more critical thinker. See the information that comes in front of them and says, how is this affecting me and what is this doing to me and how am I going to relay this information back to someone else or something else? I think my conclusion is basically that that knowledge change you for the better and let it impact you. And you use that knowledge to impact someone else.

Space Forward: Wow, wow, what a powerful way to end our podcast. I think,  I am astonished about the fact that I knew I would learn, but I did think that I would learn this much. from the bottom of my heart and and all of us, I sincerely thank you for taking the time and joining us today and to give us the perception and the depth of information that you have about space, governance and law. Thank you very much.

Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty: You're very welcome. Thank you much for giving me this opportunity.

Space Forward: And I am sure that in the future, when we have the tough questions, we will have you back. All right. Cheers. Thank you so much.