Dissertationsprojekt Peggy Reeder, M.A.

According to religious studies scholar Sarah McFarland-Taylor, Elon Musk’s followers venerate him like a religious leader and support his and SpaceX’s goals to colonize Mars. Philosopher of science and religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein parallels the dynamics around ambitious visions of space colonization to previous uses of the religious motif of a promised land to justify violent conquests of land. Moreover, colonial ambitions in outer space have raised concerns about the value and sacrality of celestial objects in light of indigenous cosmologies. As a result, research on the most prominent actors of commercialized space flight, also referred to as New Space, calls the proposed benefits of their activities into question.

At the same time, more than half of the annual turnover of the New Space sector is currently generated in the “downstream” sector. In contrast to the “upstream” sector around space infrastructure, such as building and launching rockets, it focuses on the commercial use of data from outer space for communication, Earth observation, and navigation. Supporting and relying on the inexpensive manufacturing and launching of satellites to collect data and provide data analysis services seems much less overtly related to religion. However, it draws on similar, often unscrutinized, dynamics and analogies to religion that have been diagnosed in unquestioned appraisals of AI, the assumed advantages of connectivity through the (satellite-based) internet, and the salvific aim of sustainability to justify and endorse their material-intensive endeavors and their effects on Earth.

The dissertation explores the intersections of “religion” and New Space activities, including the “downstream” orientation. Looking beyond U.S.-American actors, it provides new insights into the so far under-researched social realities, medial representations and self-understandings of actors operating in the European New Space economy. The lack of institutional cohesion, less venture capital, and the dominance of the USA in the “upstream” sector create a different environment in Europe. New Space in Europe is increasingly driven by the motivation to collect and process data about the Earth from outer space, placing it predominantly in the “downstream” sector. Companies present data, often combined with AI as an innovative tool to analyze it, as a key to solving global problems, such as climate change. Cosmological negotiations, technosolutionist tendencies, and grand visions behind space endeavors are thus visible in this sphere of New Space as well.

Through discourse analysis and an analysis of the materialities of actors’ self-representations online and offline through fieldwork at space expos and conferences, the thesis answers the following key questions:

How are “religion” and “New Space” constructed and related to each other in scholarship, journalism, and the New Space field?

How do the grand narratives about space endeavors prevalent in the USA relate to the ways in which New Space manifests itself in Europe and to the self-understandings of its actors?

How does a religious studies scholar’s lens benefit the field of research on New Space cultures and how might it recontextualize previous findings on the intersection of space and religion?