“There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent, we shall have no more need of science.” – George Orwell, 1984

Back in September 2025, then acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy claimed the United States had a “manifest destiny to the stars”. Manifest destiny, for those unfamiliar, refers to the colonial and white supremacist belief which originated in the mid 19th century. This term is laden with racist and imperialist connotations. The nationalist narratives surrounding space travel are not new, but in recent years, have been dragged out once again as Cold War anxiety meets a dramatic global swing towards the far-right. The resurfacing of this language in 2025 reflects the resurgence of romanticising US history by Donald Trump’s administration as a mechanism of control. When Trump made clear in his first term that space is to be considered “the final frontier”, he reignited a decades long tradition of disguising space research behind American charisma, pride and entitlement. 

The difficulty with these nationalist narratives is that—in their assumption of unity—dissent remains rife. Amidst all the “to infinity and beyond” and “one small step for man, one giant leap for man-kind” there’s a chorus of people asking “why should I care?”. Just days before the Artemis II launch, Israel had announced a one-sided death penalty against Palestinians and America hadn’t said boo. Police continued to brutalise and terrorise individuals whose only crime was protesting a genocidal war criminal. Amidst global instability, a host of humanitarian crises occurring on domestic and foreign soils, the language of “we rise together, back to the moon” feels misplaced. We may be travelling together back to the moon, but some of us are sitting shotgun and some of us are being dragged along the pavement by our ankles, screaming to deaf ears that we want to be cut loose.

“How is an Indigenous child on a reserve in North America supposed to connect with space exploration if the language is the same language that led to the genocide of his people?” – Natalie Treviño

These nationalist narratives serve two goals—the first, to endorse an “America first” mentality where people predisposed to national pride support American imperialism and transcend the Kármán line to infiltrate the stars. Interestingly, whilst historical support for space programs has been associated with higher levels of education and liberalism, there is a wave of conservatives and evangelicals actively supporting space programs. Colonial language of space strongly resonates with these decentralised religious units, transforming an epistemic quest for knowledge into a political bargaining chip. 

The second, for those who don’t  fit into the former, these narratives sow retaliatory questions. “Why do I give a fuck? What does space even matter? What even is the point?”. This is dangerous in its own way as space, and who has control of it, really matters in 2026. The difference between the space program in the 1960s and now is that, whilst global tensions remain high, space infrastructure has become completely and totally necessary to sustain life as we know it. Our reliance on cell connectivity, Global Positioning System (GPS) and satellite communication (SATCOM) usage in natural disaster response, climate monitoring and atmospheric research satellites has rendered us vulnerable to political coercion as global monopolies fight for space dominance.

Much of the arguments defending space travel are treated almost as if we’re discussing humanity’s quest for purpose. The International Space Station (ISS) sits at an orbit of only 450km above sea level. On the cosmic level, we may as well be holding hands with the astronauts. So what is it about existing above and below the Kármán line that inspires these grandiose claims of humanity’s quest for truth, knowledge and purpose. Truthfully, it’s because that’s currently the only readily accessible part that is  to us. So, when we refer to “space”, we’re not really referring to the awe-inspiring wonders of the cosmos. We’re referring to the bit between ~300km to 35000km above sea level. And, maybe the Moon and Mars. The lower altitudes of this orbit (approximately 300 to 1000km) are referred to as Low-Earth Orbit, and this is where 88 per cent of all satellites fly. Within Low Earth Orbit (LEO), SpaceX operates about 60 per cent of all active satellites, and their Starlink network provides internet to over 10 million customers worldwide, including most major mobile network providers, globally. 

The politicisation of LEO extends beyond who simply reaps the profit of operating those satellites. SpaceX seemingly has the ability to shut down entire regional networks, plunging communities and countries into a communications blackout. And there’s precedent for this. In 2022, Reuters reported that Musk ordered Starlink engineers to shut down coverage in areas Ukraine was attempting to reclaim from Russia. Ukrainian troops and civilians were plunged into a communications blackout. Surveillance drones operating over operationally key areas of Russia lost connection and long-range artillery units were unable to fire. Whilst Musk has denied these claims,  instances such as these are a salient reminder of the critical dangers of space monopolies, particularly private enterprise monopolies. At the time of writing, 63 per cent of operational satellites in orbit belong to the United States. Not to mention that the US completely owns and operates the GPS, which can be (and has been) deactivated at any point in time for particular regions. So, when Trump had an awkward interstellar phone call with the four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule, emphasising how happy he was to “allow other countries like Canada” to enjoy space as well, the implication was clear. Other countries can go to space, on America’s terms. The US does not just own space. They dominate it.

Just days ago, NASA released plans to establish a permanent lunar base. It’s pretty understandable that people are raising eyebrows at Trump’s apparent sudden love for the stars when these plans are coming out of a quite staunch “anti-science” administration. In fact, in early 2025, the White House proposed a 24 per cent budget cut to NASA. And just days before the Artemis II mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Trump unveiled another show of support for his love of science—a request for NASA’s 2027 budget to be cut by 23 per cent. What’s more, the President’s request for the division of funding to NASA includes slashing the money allocated to “science” (Earth science, planetary science etc.) in half. So, the question is, why would a man who has slashed 7400 research grants, terminated over 25,000 scientists and requested historic budget cuts to scientific research, care so much about an epistemic exploration of the stars? Well, because he doesn’t.

In order to understand Trump’s ardent support for this moon base, it’s critical to understand the slimy underbelly of space history that is often swept aside in favour of shiny pictures of the Mercury 7. Space has always been a battlefield for feats of strength and lethal dick-swinging. It is without a doubt that space travel, as we know it today, would not exist if it weren’t for the development of the V2 rocket by the Nazis. Once the war had ended, Operation Paperclip enabled the USA to employ a number of Nazi party scientists to develop their space program, the most notable being Wernher von Braun. In the late 50s and early 60s, the USA and the USSR carried out a series of nuclear tests in space. The most notable of these was “Starfish Prime”, a 1.4 megaton bomb that was detonated by the US at roughly the altitude that the ISS orbits (400km). Electromagnetic pulse effects were felt as far away as Hawaii. 

Nuclear Test 184, detonated by the USSR in 1962 induced electrical damage in Kazakhstan resulting from a fire in a power plant. Following these tests, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the USA, the USSR and the UK. This treaty effectively put an end to underwater, underground and high-altitude nuclear tests. Whilst some diplomacy governs what actions may and may not be undertaken in LEO, those restrictions are comparatively much looser on the Moon. The Moon, like LEO, has been a contentious point of military prowess. In the late 1950s, before plans for humans to land on the moon had even been publicly announced, the US was working on Project A119—a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon’s surface as a show of American supremacy. The program was ultimately cancelled, but this project remains an acrid reminder of military propensity to see the Moon as colonisable real estate. 

A web search with the query, “why are we going back to the moon?” returns a lot of answers that broadly fall into one of two categories. The first speaks to humanity’s propensity to explore and investigate the unknown. In this sense, advocates for the return to the moon consider lunar exploration a sort of birth-right. They can’t fathom the possibility that we could just… let something be. The second answer is almost the inverse of that response. Rather than seeing the moon as a celestial wonder, this argument conceives of the moon almost as an extension to the Earth. The existentialist magic of space travel has been sacrificed in the name of ubiquity and in its place remains the urge to conquer the bloody commies. Most answers that align with this school of thought espouse something to the effect of “there are lots of resources on the moon that can be useful”. Most commonly cited are Helium-3, certain rare earth minerals and water ice that can be separated into constituent parts and used as rocket fuel. 

The natural extension to these reasons is to ask “but WHY do we care about those resources? What ends justify the means?”. The answer is always different, depending on who you ask. Some cite the importance of using the moon as a Martian gateway, an interstellar service station. Some say certain valuable resources which are (marginally) more abundant on the moon can be brought back to Earth. Some say we can establish a more permanent lunar base to conduct scientific research about the moon and beyond. It is this claim I am most sceptical of, considering the substantial budget cuts other areas of scientific research have faced. Regardless of the motivations for returning to the moon, one thing is clear. Whoever is first to establish human support infrastructure on the moon will have the first pick of location—which includes things like manageable temperatures, proximity to resources and scientifically significant areas. That is, whilst we may not currently know why we are returning to the moon, we do know that the people who get back there first will be the ones to decide.

With these extensive examples of militarisation in mind, it becomes clear that these nationalist narratives don’t only serve as a political tool of false unification; they also seek to obfuscate the militant and colonial reasons for returning to the stars. “Science-washing” space, if you will. It indentures the idea of national progress and pride being associated with technological progress, further shifting power into the hands of tech oligarchs. In these rousing speeches and press releases, blatant use of colonial language (“frontier”, “conquer”, “conquest”) highlight how modern efforts to pursue space juxtapose Indigenous understandings of the stars. For cultures that practice oral tradition, the stars are a wealth of information on weather, seasonal change and memory. While Indigenous cultures globally understand the stars as a spiritual guide, the keepers of creation stories, and a guide to the land, modern understandings see the stars as nothing more than an endless, inky pot of oil to extract from. In the context of Aboriginal Australians, Dr Duane Hamacher discusses light pollution as an ongoing form of cultural genocide, eroding Aboriginal’s ability to engage with a deeply necessary part of their cultural, scientific and linguistic understandings.

“Given that Indigenous cultures in places like Australia maintain close and essential connections with the stars, the very foundation of Indigenous cosmology, knowledge systems, social structure, and the library of oral traditions is being actively destroyed through encroaching light pollution.” – Dr Hamacher.

It’s sad to say, but the era of sending people to space purely for the purposes of scientific discovery is well and truly gone, if it ever existed at all. The motivations of state and private actors sit squarely in the realm of what will yield both profit and power. They lie in stark opposition to mine and many of my peers’ motivations for wanting to study and work in space, our career ambition fuelled by remnants of a child-like wonder for the cosmos. Artists’ renderings of galaxies tumbling in kaleidoscopic colour, images of bubble-headed astronauts bouncing around the outside of a spaceship with Earth serenely sitting in the backdrop nourished my career ambitions. Studies of astronomy and space are as ancient as language, but equally, so is humanity’s propensity to capitalise on vulnerable people’s fragility. As someone aspiring to work in the space industry, I can’t help but feel I’m trying to get a job with a cosmic property developer. As a tyrannical administration continues to push narratives of unity and progress at all costs, it is tempting to disengage with the narratives. But space has never been as important as it is right now. To turn your attention away from these efforts is to enable billionaires unprecedented control to your cell coverage, your images, your data. It allows a select few to dictate who has access to these now critical infrastructures and in what ways the most marginalised communities will and will not be allowed to interface with them. 

“Everything is written twice—on the ground, and in the sky.” – Mowaljarlai and Malnic