The Civilian Space Protocol is proposed and recommended for adoption to the Governments of all the Planet Earth’s Nations.
PREAMBLE
2020 has challenged Earth’s governments and people with a health and economic crisis with no precedent. Even we, space development advocates, had no idea of the human suffering and collateral effects that would touch our daily lives as humanity struggled to come together to face COVID-19 and the economic repercussions of failed global distribution and commerce systems. We knew that global pollution, depletion of resources, climate change, all threaten our survival as a civilized community. We knew that we are also causing the third greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history, and that we risk being included in the list of the species that we caused to disappear. But now we are living a reality that goes beyond simply knowing.
Now is the time when we must learn to use renewable resources, recycle our waste, and do all that is needed to keep this planet hospitable for us, because we’ll need it for a long time.
Among the factors making Planet Earth hospitable, social conditions play a primary role. Thus we must also find a path to further development. We cannot tell billions of people that they are not allowed to improve their living conditions because the environment would not tolerate it, nor tell other billions that they must reduce their standard of living for the same reason. The only way to foster both development and Earth’s environment, both safety and personal freedom is finding new resources and new spaces outside this planet. Some might say “there is no planet B” but it is not true: there is the entire solar system, with immense resources, waiting to be taken!
We urgently need to bootstrap civilian space development, for the following reasons, at least:
1) To allow our 8-billion-person civilization find safety in new spaces, resources and energy to keep on developing our economies, culture, welfare, ethics, well-being, freedom and democracy.
2) To relaunch the global terrestrial economy by expanding the civilian astronautic industry and economy.
3) To access the great abundance of lunar and asteroidal resources, assuring a virtually infinite material platform, decrease and eventually eliminate reasons for resource wars and social conflicts.
4) To relieve our mother planet from the burden of our industrial growth.
5) To move heavy industries outside our planet and transform it into a beautiful natural garden.
6) To create places where people can live outside of the Earth, on the Moon and other planets where possible, and even in artificial structures in space, orbiting around the Earth or in the Earth-Moon system.
7) To allow non-human species to keep on living on this planet in non-humanized habitats.
The signer’s organizations recommend United Nations to add the 18th Sustainable Development Goal to the 2030 Agenda: “Bootstrapping Civilian Space Development”. The text of the Civilian Space Protocol below illustrates the spirit and the contents of such goal: the meaningful initial steps on the path of civilian space development to be done within 2030.
The signer’s organizations recommend the Governments of all Countries of Planet Earth to adopt the following “Civilian Space Protocol”.
