A New Governance Landscape on the Moon
Image: Earthrise, photo by NASA on Unsplash
Fellow Chelsea Robinson (Cohort 7) has taken a career of earth science, climate change advocacy and global policy experience to the next frontier with non-profit, The Open Lunar Foundation. In her role as COO, Chelsea is joined at Open Lunar by Fellows Jessy Kate Schingler (Cohort 7), Robbie Schingler (Cohort 7) and Will Marshall (Cohort 8), in leadership, advisory and board roles respectively. Together, their team is “developing plans, policies and technology that reflect the best of humanity to create a peaceful, cooperative presence on the Moon for the benefit of all life”. Born and raised in Aotearoa, Chelsea now splits her time between Te Ika-a-Māui (North Island of New Zealand) and California.
“I often find myself at the beginning of things,” Chelsea says, “and in the position of building something new that needed to be built. I started out in the climate change sector and co-founded Generation Zero which was instrumental in the creation of the Climate Commission and in getting the Zero Carbon Bill and Zero Carbon Act passed.”
After a journey through democracy, mental health, entrepreneurship and more, Chelsea says she was “shoulder-tapped” to join the space industry. “I had reached a point where I was quite frustrated with the constraints on existing impact work. I’d found that stakeholders with vested interests and significant power can create huge forces of resistance, and old-school thinking still prevails in many ‘impact’ organisations. When Jessy Kate, and Will and Robbie from Planet Labs approached me in 2018 about what we could achieve with the Moon, we created something new together - Open Lunar, which exists to demonstrate new approaches to some of humanity's oldest challenges of coordination and sustainability, in a new environment.”
Now in its 5th year, Open Lunar is tackling some of the most challenging issues surrounding space exploration, in particular how we might share property and create collaborative utilities which aid in long-term survival on the Moon. “It’s not just about sending robots to the Moon,” Chelsea says. “There are plans in place to send people, and we want to support a settlement and societal structure there.”
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 lays some of the groundwork for this already by stipulating that no Earth nation can claim territory on a celestial body. “Can you imagine what it would actually be like if you were on a planet where countries weren’t allowed to exist; what systems might you be able to create in the absence of nation-based governance?” Open Lunar sees this as an opportunity to re-architect how people live and work, and to improve upon some of the historical systems which haven’t worked so well on earth. “We are terrible at dealing with issues that span across borders - water and food supply systems, climate change, COVID. The Moon presents a new territory where we can change how we work and operate, and how we structure our economies and politics.”
The key, Chelsea says, is to work backwards from the basic needs of habitation. “You start by looking at the building blocks of what we construct. How do we make the settlement? What are the machines we need? And then, how do we survive collaboratively and structure our social and economic systems to support that? This enables us to work backwards to find the technical prerequisites for each goal. It’s less about creating a utopia than it is about creating an iterative relationship with the place.”
One of the biggest challenges is how to, in essence, create a sustained presence on the Moon without bringing in historical colonial power structures, Chelsea says. “Inherently what we’re doing in creating lunar settlements is, in some ways, colonial. The only solution is to start with what’s in front of us today and determine what will send us in the most high-integrity direction, rather than trying to mastermind the whole plan. You can still see evidence of that flawed approach in New Zealand, where British colonisers tried to implement plans that they were familiar with but which don't actually make any sense in Aotearoa.”
In lieu of a prescriptive masterplan, Open Lunar is working with what Chelsea refers to as seeds for the kind of positive future they imagine. “One of these is stewardship, inspired by the principles of Te Ao Māori. We are promoting collective responsibility, as opposed to traditional concepts of ownership. We find that a lot of people turn up to this space with existing paradigms in mind like having one single governance body that will rule the Moon, but our focus is instead on cooperation and what’s called interoperability: technologies and technological systems which work together to support multiple parties as peers.”
Without intervention and good governance, Chelsea’s expectation is that lunar settlement would be deeply and, in some cases, intentionally siloed. “You’d likely see a handful of different lunar activities conducted separately for reasons like privacy, security and competitive advantage. The way to combat this is in collective infrastructure investment. If we recognise that there are some things that everyone will need - power, communications infrastructure, water - that creates a foundation for a highly cooperative approach. And if you can be realistic about what the parties are motivated by, you can incentivise better outcomes. For instance, if we can show the value in co-investment in communications systems, then they won’t need to be rebuilt by every mission like they are now. That would be beneficial to everyone.”
EHF Fellows, Chelsea Robinson (left) and Jessy Kate Schingler (right)
There is some precedent for this kind of collaboration, as well as the opportunity for smaller players to still contribute and engage meaningfully with space exploration. “Obviously Russia and the US invested very heavily in the International Space Station, and they did so alongside many other countries, even without the same scale of resources. If we can create shared plans for lunar infrastructure, we empower countries and entities to contribute in specific ways that are advantageous to everyone. Then the next step is to figure out an equitable distribution mechanism for any profit there is to be made from lunar resources, and to create accountability around activities being undertaken.”
Open Lunar has recently helped to create a living example of an entity that exists to steward resources, through their related initiative, Breaking Ground Trust. “Space economics is still pretty abstract but Breaking Ground is demonstrating, in a tangible way, the kind of economic activity we want to see in space. Lunar missions will travel to the surface of the Moon and collect lunar materials, document and confirm they have collected it, and the Trust will purchase the rights to that collection from them. That gives us the opportunity to say we hold a title to these Moon rocks and start really exploring what that means. It’s legal experimentation in practice, not theory or white papers. If we steward those Moon rocks, we now have to explore what rights and obligations that implies.”
Chelsea sees huge opportunity for Aotearoa to take a leadership role in the future of aerospace exploration, and says her experiences of travelling and living overseas have given her additional perspective on New Zealand’s role in the industry. “Even back in my Generation Zero days, I witnessed that when New Zealand speaks out at the UN and in other international forums, people listen. That perception of New Zealand, coupled with Rocket Lab’s establishment as a real player in the market, have created an opportunity for New Zealand to take some bold stances. We’ve talked at length to the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Space Agency about how the uniqueness of the New Zealand perspective can be applied here. That goes back to that idea of stewardship and what we can learn from Te Ao Māori about systems of governance. Rocket Lab’s work in the sector also provides continuous real-time opportunities to examine what’s being flown into space from New Zealand, for whom and why, and if each of those activities aligns with what we want to see for our collective future. My one observation here would be that it's important for the New Zealand Government to ensure that it has its own independent vision which aligns with the values of New Zealanders and who we want to be.
“Beyond lunar exploration and settlement, I’d also love to see New Zealand really maximise its potential around space-based observation. We have the most practical resonance when it comes to earth observation technology in terms of agriculture and land management. What would happen if New Zealand became the best in the world at using satellite data to manage land? That would be an incredible way for New Zealand to further regenerative agriculture, address climate change and become leaders in the aerospace industry.”
Chelsea’s personal journey is one of open-mindedness, she says, and a continual reframing of her place in the impact space. “I get a lot of people who think that, by progressing beyond my work with climate change, I’ve somehow left the impact and values-driven space. But I’ve learned that some of the biggest, most radical change can come from lateral innovations. Early in my career, I was always looking for that one thing with the most possible impact, but now I better understand the interconnectivity of the problems we’re all facing.”
To learn more about Open Lunar, their current work and their Fund a Fellow campaign, visit https://www.openlunar.org/fellow and find out how you can help break new ground by purchasing and stewarding lunar rock at https://breakingground.space/.
Story by EHF Fellow Bex De Prospo (Cohort 2) and Director of Authentic Storytelling