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1 " Despite having had a UN treaty on the peaceful uses of outer space since 1967, youcould say we haven’t yet learnt how to be peaceful in outer space. "
― Alice Gorman , Dr Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future
2 " There are places where litter is acceptable and others where it is not. What is the proper place for space junk? You could say it is the atmosphere: that abandoned satellites and debris should be cremated, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There’s a contradiction here. We’ve placed junk where it is perpetually ‘out of place’ as a human object, but in another sense, this is its natural place. "
3 " One of the key principles of the Outer Space Treaty is that space is the common heritage of humanity and cannot be owned by anyone – government, nation, individual or corporation. Space is very colonial: we talk of the ‘conquest’ of space, the ‘high frontier’ or the ‘final frontier’, colonising other planets, and the innate urge of human beings to explore, often without thinking about it; it’s such a strong master narrative. Instead of considering the treaty to be outdated, we might equally think of it as a radical statement of equality and justice – and one we need more than ever. "
4 " Space narratives usually leave out Indigenous people and often ‘non-spacefaring’ nations too – which is a large chunk of the world. We can’t afford to do that any longer, not if we’re truly committed to space being for all humanity. "
5 " Since stone tools were the only technology that survived archaeologically for millions of years and across several hominin species, it was assumed that they were male technology. It said so on the box: man the toolmaker, man the hunter. Women gave birth, cowered in the backs of caves, posed as the model for a Venus figurine occasionally so that Palaeolithic ‘man’ could get his other rocks off, and maybe collected a worthless vegetable from time to time when the mammoth chops were running low. The sometimes openly stated and mostly implicit assumption was that human physical and cultural evolution was driven by male hunting. Was this the best we could do? "
