With Artemis, NASA envisions a multiplanetary future for humanity

NASA’s quest to return humans to the moon has finally gotten off the ground. After being stymied by repairs and hurricanes, the Artemis 1 mission launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral early Wednesday morning. 

This first mission is an uncrewed test of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft – shooting all the way to the moon and back – so that everything goes smoothly when humans do climb aboard for a trip to Earth’s companion.

But Artemis 1 is more than just a technological test. Success would signal momentum toward a broader vision for a multiplanetary future for humanity. Complete with construction of a permanent lunar outpost, the Artemis program is designed to establish a way station for travel to Mars – and beyond. Behind the audacity of that goal, shared by NASA and numerous private space companies, is a faith in the potential of human ingenuity.

“The capabilities that we will develop for the Moon to Mars Program can and will enable a multiplanet species,” says Patrick Troutman, a NASA space architect for the agency’s Moon to Mars vision.

That future will be shaped by motivations – from security to exploration – that have already defined much of human experience on Earth, experts say.

Money will also be a factor. It’s not a question of whether we can land humans on Mars or establish a permanent outpost on the moon, says Roger Launius, former chief historian of NASA. “The question is, how much resources will it take? And do we want to expend [them] in that particular way?”

God, gold, and glory

One option now is for humans to skip the trip. Plenty of important science missions can be undertaken – more cheaply and with much less risk – using automated vehicles and instruments. But throughout our species’ history, humanity has expanded its footprint across landscapes, first filling spaces devoid of other humans and then jostling with other civilizations for the same places. To some, human spaceflight is a natural next step.

“Expansion,” Mr. Troutman says, “has always been part of what humans do.” 

When it comes to outer space, he adds, expansion continues to be top of mind for spaceflight leaders in both the public and the private sectors. Many have used terms like “colonization” to refer to a multiplanetary future, connecting their visions to past expansions.

Historically, expansions have largely been motivated by three themes, says Dr. Launius, which he calls “the three Gs.” God, gold, and glory.

Glory was a strong motivation behind the space race of the 1960s, Dr. Launius says. Then, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite and first human into space, and the United States landed the first human on the moon. The world powers were grappling for prestige on the global stage, using the technological feat of going to space as a measuring stick. (Former President John F. Kennedy famously said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”)

Gold and God both came into play when European powers colonized many parts of the rest of the world in the 1500s, Dr. Launius says. Extraction of resources outside Europe established who led the Western powers at the time, and missionaries frequently accompanied colonists and conquistadors to convert Indigenous people to Christianity. 

The cultural belief of “manifest destiny” in the 1800s in the U.S. is another clear example of religious views motivating expansion, as it was quite literally the idea that the nation was destined to spread its political and economic systems across the continent.

Today, there is a “profit motive, which is the gold part of this,” Dr. Launius says. “If we find something we want on the moon or Mars that is economically viable, there will be a gold rush like we have never seen before.”

Scoping out what resources might be on the moon is one of the objectives of the Artemis program, Mr. Troutman says. 

Today’s motivation for human spaceflight goes beyond extraction. One could argue that there is also a “God” component today, Dr. Launius says. And he has made just that argument, identifying how some people relate to spaceflight in ways that fit the criteria for what constitutes a religion in the eyes of the government. 

Some space enthusiasts still make what Dr. Launius calls a pilgrimage to rocket launches, and he has witnessed an outpouring of emotions at such events. 

One primary criteria for considering a set of beliefs a religion, he says, is salvation theology. Advocates for a multiplanetary future often cite the need to establish homes for humanity in other places in order to ensure our species’ long-term survival. The thinking goes, Dr. Launius says, “If we get off this planet, we as a species can be saved.”

There’s likely an additional intangible element driving human spaceflight efforts, too, says Savannah Mandel, an outer space anthropologist and a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech. “The motivations for sending humans to outer space are incredibly emotional and full of heart. There’s just this intense drive to see it with our own eyes firsthand,” she says. “Seeing Florida on a postcard is not the same as standing on a Florida beach. And even though it might be more financially smart or politically smart or socially smart not to go to Florida, you still want to go and stand on that beach.”

Creating a lunar future

Following the uncrewed test flight that is the Artemis 1 mission, NASA will send its second mission of the program with humans on board. Neither of the first two missions will land on the lunar surface. Subsequent missions are planned to touch down, however, landing the first woman on the surface of the moon and sending off expeditions.

The vision is for crewed missions to establish a lunar outpost from which research and resource reconnaissance can be conducted. Mr. Troutman likens it to settlements established across the American West in the days of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The government-sponsored explorers went first, and services needed by their outposts were the initial industry in a given location. Then, as the outposts grew, the industries grew too, attracting more people to the now-thriving communities. 

It’s this kind of outpost that Mr. Troutman envisions could one day lay the groundwork for a full-fledged lunar civilization. 

“If humanity is truly to expand and thrive, there has to be economic opportunity or reason for more people to go,” he says. “We’re trying to do our initial exploration on the moon to identify those places where that opportunity exists. That will give more rationale for extending the human presence on the moon.”

This process, Mr. Troutman says, could potentially be repeated on Mars – assuming success on the moon first. 

Technologically, sorting out how to have a permanent presence on the moon will also hold lessons for Mars. “The moon is a dusty, partial gravity environment. Mars is a dusty, partial gravity environment, except the dust could be a little more toxic than it is on the moon,” he explains. 

“So if we understand how to work on the moon, and operate there for initially 30 days and then expand it longer and longer, we can use those same methodologies for Mars while we’re exploring the moon.”

NASA’s role, Mr. Troutman says, is to explore the cosmos and open the door to a multiplanetary future for humanity. But it’s likely private industry that will pick up the baton and run with it to make this shift in our species’ realm permanent. Once our capabilities and technologies are proved, he expects private industry to step in and take over operations and growth of the outpost on the moon. 

“Look at low Earth orbit,” he says. “We’re to the point now where industry and our partners are ready to provide low Earth orbit platforms” once the International Space Station is decommissioned.

“There could be a future where there are scores of people on the lunar surface. They’re enabling science, enabling economic opportunity, and catering to a growing population [there],” Mr. Troutman says. Trips to Mars would likely follow within a couple decades, the space architect adds. And if that is successful, too, who knows where humans might go next? 

A chance to build a new kind of world?

A multiplanetary future is not written in the stars. Each successive ​step carries big costs. ​And not everyone agrees on the goals or approaches, Ms. Mandel says. ​ 

“The biggest challenge is deciding who is getting a say in why we’re going to space, how we’re going to space, and when we’re going to space, and who is getting left behind,” she says. Right now, NASA and private spaceflight companies are leading the conversation.

When people talk about sending humans to space, “you see these values and belief systems coming to the surface that are very culturally specific and driven by the individuals who are speaking them,” Ms. Mandel says. And who has a seat at the table to enact those values could shape whether humans go to deep space at all. 

As astronauts build the literal architecture of a lunar or Martian civilization, they and spaceflight leaders will have to make decisions about the sociopolitical systems that operate in these new human outposts. 

In Antarctica, which Ms. Mandel points to as a parallel for what could happen on the moon, early explorers similarly established rules and laws for humans on the icy continent, and some tried to stake claims on swaths of land – much of those patterns mirroring existing cultural norms and political systems.

It’s likely the moon and Mars will be no different, particularly because much of the rhetoric around a permanent human presence on those worlds uses terms related to colonialism and capitalism, suggesting that current and historical dominant systems will continue to influence our species’ expansion. 

Ms. Mandel recommends including more voices in the conversations around whether, how, and when to send humans to space, such as multigenerational perspectives and philosophies from Indigenous knowledge that considers “how to inhabit with a space, not on it.”