I’m not even sure they need to. There is an enormous assumption of “There will be a war of independence” built into a heck of a lot of Science fiction, because a lot of it was written by americans wanting to do analogies with the american independence war in space, no matter if that makes sense or not.
This has fed back into the thinking of a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the political settlements of earth, and has made “Space; Where you go to be free of political control” a reasonably common idea. So the terminal goal of a certain faction of those arguing for space colonization is to break with earth. No matter how painfully illsuited for the kind of society they want space actually is.
I don’t think banning space colonization is a very sensible “solution” to this problem however as there are much simpler ways to ensure any colonies don’t get any stupid ideas. Like: “Don’t hire any libertarians”.
How one treats the workers in the space industry doesn’t even really come into the worry I’m entertaining. The most plausible way to get an Earth-space war isn’t the staff of a space telescope suddenly discovering a yen for nation-founding—That’s just so unlikely I can’t be bothered to work out how unlikely it actually is.
The only semi-plausible way to get there is for a couple of very specific groups to go into space colonization specifically because they have mythologized both the american independence war, and space as a conveniently natives-free analogy of the american west—IE, radicals with a hardon for revolution, and the impression a height advantage will make it more feasible. I’m not worried about people getting radicalized in space, but about existing radicals concentrating there. Which is still pretty bloody unlikely, but tbh, if I was hiring miners for the belt, I’d be .. rather reluctant to hire people with radical political views. It only takes one person who has read too much Heinlein to deliberately set off a collision cascade in LEO*, and there comes bankruptcy. Also the inevitable death of everyone on the high side of the shit-storm when it turns out self-sufficiency is much harder than it looks, but that doesn’t clean up the mess.
*I have no idea why the “American Revolution 2.0” books never use this as a weapon, but instead insist on killing massive numbers of people on earth. Blocking access between space and earth for a couple of decades is bloody well trivial if that is really what you want to do—Grind an asteroid into sand, put the sand into the right orbits, and now going up and down is suddenly very, very unsafe until it deorbits. Very hard to undo, but.. if you are dropping rocks on earth, that comes with even /less/ options for changing your mind later.
I’m not even sure they need to. There is an enormous assumption of “There will be a war of independence” built into a heck of a lot of Science fiction, because a lot of it was written by americans wanting to do analogies with the american independence war in space, no matter if that makes sense or not.
This has fed back into the thinking of a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the political settlements of earth, and has made “Space; Where you go to be free of political control” a reasonably common idea. So the terminal goal of a certain faction of those arguing for space colonization is to break with earth. No matter how painfully illsuited for the kind of society they want space actually is.
I don’t think banning space colonization is a very sensible “solution” to this problem however as there are much simpler ways to ensure any colonies don’t get any stupid ideas. Like: “Don’t hire any libertarians”.
It’s unlikely that you could keep people from having the idea of revolution.
Another possibility is to not treat them so badly that they’re willing to take a serious risk of death remove your authority.
How one treats the workers in the space industry doesn’t even really come into the worry I’m entertaining. The most plausible way to get an Earth-space war isn’t the staff of a space telescope suddenly discovering a yen for nation-founding—That’s just so unlikely I can’t be bothered to work out how unlikely it actually is.
The only semi-plausible way to get there is for a couple of very specific groups to go into space colonization specifically because they have mythologized both the american independence war, and space as a conveniently natives-free analogy of the american west—IE, radicals with a hardon for revolution, and the impression a height advantage will make it more feasible. I’m not worried about people getting radicalized in space, but about existing radicals concentrating there. Which is still pretty bloody unlikely, but tbh, if I was hiring miners for the belt, I’d be .. rather reluctant to hire people with radical political views. It only takes one person who has read too much Heinlein to deliberately set off a collision cascade in LEO*, and there comes bankruptcy. Also the inevitable death of everyone on the high side of the shit-storm when it turns out self-sufficiency is much harder than it looks, but that doesn’t clean up the mess.
*I have no idea why the “American Revolution 2.0” books never use this as a weapon, but instead insist on killing massive numbers of people on earth. Blocking access between space and earth for a couple of decades is bloody well trivial if that is really what you want to do—Grind an asteroid into sand, put the sand into the right orbits, and now going up and down is suddenly very, very unsafe until it deorbits. Very hard to undo, but.. if you are dropping rocks on earth, that comes with even /less/ options for changing your mind later.