Space on Earth
Saving Our World by Seeking Others
By Charles S. Cockell
Macmillan Publishing, London / New York, 2007

“This book is, to some degree, a polemic,” writes Cockell, “It expresses a point of view as much as it is a description of science and technology.” The “polemic” in Space on Earth is the presumed ideological divide between environmentalism and space exploration. The reader may already be familiar with the often made criticism of space exploration and habitation (i.e., its massive cost) by those who feel our money is better spent improving conditions and restoring habitat here on Earth first. But the book is more a ‘dialectic’ in that it seeks (as its major theme) a broader synthesis of these seemingly opposed purposes. In simple, elegant prose, the author shows that “an environmentally aware society and a space-faring society are not an ‘either/or’ choice for humanity.”

Unlike Dennis Wingo’s Moonrush, Space on Earth contains no diagrams, graphs, charts, or photos. Rather, in its 175 pages and nine chapters, the book offers a literary and intellectual journey from ‘Earthrise’ to a future ‘habitable world’. Throughout, the author pursues an integrative vision of the eco and the astro—arguing for a ‘systemic link’ between environmentalism and space exploration, one that forges itself at the most basic technical and social levels.

There is a subtle, but persistent sense of utopianism in these pages. But Cockell is not in any way naïve when he lays out his vision of the imminent and distant future; he readily acknowledges that the exploitation of (virtually endless) resources from space (such as asteroid-derived metals) could easily engender a new and calamitous cycle of mass consumption here on Earth. It is for reasons such as this that Space on Earth calls for a convergence of these two ‘cultures’. 

Like Moonrush, Cockell’s book reads often like a manifesto. Each chapter’s title is underscored with a single, theorem-like assertion, such as: The settlement of space and the environmental stewarding of the Earth are one and the same challenge, and, The arguments for the care of the Earth’s environment and its creatures get stronger the further from Earth we go and the more we realize the startling uniqueness of life on Earth.

Though it finds the possibility of finding life on other worlds to be exciting, Space on Earth is not really concerned with this issue; the exploration of space will improve life on earth, and merging environmentalism with space exploration will improve our endeavors in space. There is a positive, reciprocal influence between the two.

--M. Ricciardi

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