About Outer Space Consulting
Welcome to Outer Space
Human activities in outer space are no longer science fiction, and the rates of our exploration and use of space are rapidly accelerating. It's time to apply lessons learned here on Earth to this new environment.
Purpose
- To assist industries, scientists, academics, and others with interests in outer space exploration and exploitation in recognizing the critical role of extraterrestrial environmental awareness in achieving and sustaining their goals, and
- To provide a forum for the exchange of information and ideas on how to bring social, ethical, and environmental concerns into outer space conversations.
Outer Space Consulting
Offering expertise in developing novel and practical approaches to address the social, ethical, and environmental issues that will emerge with our use of outer space. Some potentials include:
- Creating an environmental assessment process to reduce costs, sustain development, reassure investors, and maintain options for future use.
- Fulfilling requirements of the Outer Space Treaty to support outer space as the “common heritage of humankind.”
- Addressing the ethical issues associated with our relationship with extraterrestrial resources.
I hope this website will be both provocative and liberating. If you find the information, articles and other postings useful, please let me know and alert others to this site.
William R. Kramer
Notebook
Mars Extant Life Conference
I'll be presenting a paper next month at NASA's "Mars Extant Life: What's Next?" conference in New Mexico. My presentation is "Giving Voice to the Extraterrestrial - Providing legal standing to the unknown." In short, should we discover life on Mars or elsewhere (microbial scale organisms, not the Hollywood alien variety), what should be our ethical relationship? Will we be able to own it, patent it, or exploit it without any ethical consideration? The overwhelming opinion is that because it will be small by human standards, it deserves no ethical consideration based entirely on its size (this was the approach taken by the 1976 Viking missions that searched for life on Mars, then incinerated the sample regardless of what was found. Had life been discovered, our first encounter would have set a lethal precedent). My position is that size is irrelevant, and that, at a minimum, the entity should be provided ad litem human representation now, before it is discovered.
I've ordered tshirts that say: SAVE THE MARTIAN MICROBE, which should generate some interest.
If interested in the conference:
Reinvent Everything
My mentor and good friend, Dr. Jim Dator of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, affirms, “Outer Space provides us the opportunity to reinvent EVERYTHING!” One of our biggest challenges as we move into this century of outer space is to not squander those opportunities. We must not repeat past mistakes just because they have become routine, convenient and expected -- just because we, as a multitude of cultures and histories, have always done things that way. That theme provides a foundation for most of my thoughts and writing about outer space exploration and exploitation. It's certainly applicable to the social sciences in areas such as governance design, geopolitics, international relations, and even law, intellectual property and patenting. But it also applies to biology -- It is becoming increasingly apparent that we will be evolving physically as well as psychologically to adapt to new environments in space. As we continue to extend our reach, reinvention will, perhaps, apply to physics, as well.
In short, be inventive! If the world was starting all over again, how might humans have made wiser choices for the centuries to come? We are taking the first steps at starting new worlds, and we CAN reinvent everything! Space is not only an opportunity to do that, it's necessary if we expect to be successful.