Dark Skies provides the first comprehensive and balanced assessment of the space enterprise, past, present and future. It demolishes widely-held optimistic assumptions about the desirability of many major space activities, actual and prospective. Most consequentially, the hiding-in-plain-sight use of outer space as a corridor for long-range bombardment has increased the probability of catastrophic nuclear war. Contrary to the widespread claim that sustainable colonies on other celestial bodies are necessary for human survival from large-scale disasters on Earth, Dark Skies shows that colonization itself poses many severe threats and should be avoided. Instead an Earth-oriented space program should be pursued.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Prologue: MACHINE CIVILIZATION and THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EARTH
- Chapter 1. THE PROMISE OF SPACE REVISITED
- Chapter 2. TOWARD AN ASSESSMENT
- PART ONE: GEOGRAPHIC and TECHNOLOGICAL HORIZONS
- Chapter 3. NEW HEAVENS, NEW EARTH
- Chapter 4. TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGINARIES, FEASIBILITIES, SYNDROMES and CATASTROPHES
- PART TWO: SPACE EXPANSIONISM and CRITICS
- Chapter 5. ABSOLUTE WEAPONS, LIGHTNING WARS and ULTIMATE POSITIONS
- Chapter 6. LIMITLESS FRONTIERS, SPACESHIP EARTHS and HIGHER HUMANITIES
- Chapter 7. SUPERPOWER RESTRAINTS, PLANETARY SECURITY and EARTH IDENTITY
- PART THREE: ASSESSMENT
- Chapter 8. GEOGRAPHY, GEOPOLITICS AND GEO-HISTORY
- Chapter 9. EARTH SPACE, PLANETARY GEOPOLITICS and WORLD GOVERNMENTS
- Chapter 10. SOLAR SPACE, ISLAND EARTH and THE ENDS OF HUMANITY
- Conclusion: SPACE FOR EARTH