Atkinson, Harry

Bal, Mieke

Belton, Michael J.S.

Binzel, Richard P.

Bottke Jr, W.F.

Bowler, Peter J.

Broad, William

Brown, Richard Harvey

Chapman, Clark R.

Cherry, Barbara

Clarke, Arthur C.

Clube, Victor

Clute, John

Davis, Mike

DeVorkin, David H.

Doel, Ronald E.

Felicity Mellor

FitzGerald, Frances

Forman, Paul

Franklin, Bruce H.

Gauss, Carl Friedrich

Gehrels, Tom

Genuth, Sara Schechner

Glen, William

Gold, R.E.

Gray, Chris Hables

Haraway, Donna

Hills, Jack G.

Hills, Jack. G.

Huggett, Richard

Ivashkin, V.

James, Edward

Johnson, George

Kevles, Dan

Kleiman, L.A.

Leary, William E.

Leslie, Stuart W.

Levy, David H.

Lewis, John

Matthews, Robert

McCurdy, Howard E.

McDougall, Walter A.

Milani, Andrea

Morrison, David

Nieto, Michael Martin

Niven, Larry

Pournelle, Jerry

Remo, John L.

Rouse, Joseph

Sagan, Carl

Seed, David

Shoemaker, Eugene M.

Steel, Duncan

Sumners, Carolyn

Tagliaferri, Edward

Tatarewicz, Joseph N.

Teller, Edward

Tyler, Patrick

Verschuur, Gerrit L.

Wall, Robert

Watson, Fletcher G.

Weart, Spencer R.

Whipple, Fred L.

Will, George F.

Wright, Pearce

Öpik, E.J.

Social Studies of Science

Mellor, F

Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository

Colliding Worlds: Asteroid research and the legitimization of war in space

ABSTRACT Over the past twenty years a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists have actively promoted the idea that an asteroid might collide with the Earth and destroy civilisation. Despite concerns about placing weapons in space, the asteroid scientists repeatedly met with scientists from the Strategic Defense Initiative to discuss mitigation technologies. This paper examines the narrative context in which asteroids were constructed as a threat and astronomy was reconfigured as an interventionist science. I argue that conceptualising asteroids through narratives of technological salvation invoked a &apos;narrative imperative&apos; which drew the astronomers towards the militaristic endings that their stories demanded. Impact-threat science thus demonstrates both the ways in which scientific research can be framed by fictional narratives and the ideological ends which such narratives can serve. They foretell a large impact causing global fires, the failure of the world&apos;s agriculture and the end of human civilisation. But, these scientists assure us, we live at a unique moment in history when we have the technological means to avert disaster. They call for support for dedicated astronomical surveys of near-Earth objects to provide early warning of an impactor and they have regularly met with defence scientists to discuss new technologies to deflect any incoming asteroids. The scientists who have promoted the asteroid impact threat have done so by invoking narratives of technological salvation -stories which, like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), promised security through a superweapon in space. The asteroid impact threat can therefore be located within the broader cultural history of fantasies about security and power which Bruce Franklin (1988) has argued is inextricably linked to the century-old idea that a new superweapon could deliver world peace. Howard McCurdy (1997: 78-82), in his study of the ways in which the US space programme was shaped by popular culture, has suggested that the promotion of the impact threat can be seen as the completion of Cold War fantasies which had used a politics of fear to justify space exploration. McCurdy highlights the alignment between the promotion of the impact threat and works of fiction. In this paper, I consider the reconceptualisation of asteroid science which this alignment entailed. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete history of the science of planetary impacts. My focus is on how a group of scientists moved from seeing impacts as significant events in Earth history to seeing them as threatening events in the human future -a move from historical to futurological narratives. Nor is there space to give a full account of the empirical developments which were used to support the construal of asteroids as a threat. Rather, I wish to make the case that these empirical developments were given meaning within a specific narrative context which drew civilian astronomers into contact with defence scientists, especially those working on SDI

Colliding Worlds: Asteroid research and the legitimization of war in space

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository

CiteSeerX

Crossref