Dissertation Research: Extending Human Presence: Spacecraft Design Practices and the Making of a Social Outer Space

自阿波罗时代以来，政府航天机构的目标不仅是将人类送入外太空，而且要在太空中建立人类的存在。现在，随着各国政府将新的宇宙飞船瞄准月球、火星和更远的地方，人类在太空中的新存在正在形成。这个比较民族志项目询问这种认知变化在实践中和在不同的社会文化背景下意味着什么。本文建议通过调查NASA和欧洲航天局的新航天器和社会政治目标在代表、话语和实践中共同产生的方式来回答这个问题。新兴的政府载人航天飞行器是这种调查的理想和独特的焦点。它们不仅仅是为了离开地球而建造的机器，它们的发展轮廓揭示了社会合作和斗争的独特形态，重新安排社会和自然秩序的政治努力，新的科学和技术实践，以及国家或地区进步的未来想象。因为外太空是它们的目的地，这些飞行器沉淀了新的实验参与，与现有的关于人类作为生物和社会存在以及自然作为给定环境的想法有关。这些建造新航天器和推广人类在太空存在的新概念的争议性和数十亿美元的活动具有广泛的全球影响。它们包括如何定义长期的人类/技术关系，如何将新的超全球领土视为社会和政治领域，以及如何将根本不人道的太空边界变成自然环境和资源。为了实现其目标，该项目将在美国宇航局和欧洲航天局进行案例研究并进行比较。这些案例研究将在三个社会层面上跟踪和比较新航天器和扩展人类在太空存在的相关概念的创建方式和设想：1)微观或实验室层面的人为因素和技术设计过程，2)中期或机构层面的人类空间探索计划管理活动，以及3)宏观或国际层面的空间机构差异，合作和竞争。研究人员将通过收集档案资料、监测档案使用的变化、进行参与和直接的观察和访谈来构建个案研究。智力优势：通过收集人类在太空中存在的比较经验数据，该项目旨在帮助人们更好地理解政府航天机构的话语、实践和目标。这些机构通过与政治和经济决策以及技术转让等更广泛的地方和全球社会进程的互动接触，继续重塑将地球社会发展与空间社会发展联系起来的途径和期望。本项目所作的分析旨在丰富关于载人航天项目如何将外层空间变成一种独特的政治和科学媒介的科学和一般理解和辩论，在这种媒介中重塑人类、社会、技术和环境之间的关系。

Since the Apollo era, government space agencies have aimed not just to put humans into outer space, but to establish a human presence in space. Now, a new extended human presence in space is in the making, as governments aim new spacecraft toward the moon, Mars, and beyond. This comparative ethnographic project asks what this epistemic change means in practical terms and in different sociocultural contexts. Itproposes to answer this question by investigating the ways that new spacecraft and sociopolitical objectives are co-produced in representation, discourse, and practice in NASA and the European Space Agency. Emerging government human spaceflight vehicles are both an ideal and unique focus for such an investigation. More than just machines built to leave the earth, their developing contours reveal the distinct shapes ofsocial collaborations and struggles, political bids to reorder society and nature, new scientific and technological practices, and future imaginaries of national or regional advancement. Because outer space is their destination, these vehicles precipitate new experimental engagements with existing ideas about humans as biological and social beings and nature as a given environment. These controversial and multibillion dollaractivities to build new spacecraft and promote new concepts of a human presence in space have broad global implications. They include how long-range human/technology relationships are defined, how new supraglobal territories are recognized as social and political, and how the radically inhuman frontier of space is made into a natural environment and resource. To achieve its aims, the project will conduct and compare case studies at NASA and the European Space Agency. These case studies will track and compare the ways new spacecraft and the associated concept of an extended human presence in space are being created and envisioned at three social levels: 1) the micro, or laboratory, level of human factors and technical design processes, 2) the mid, or institutional, level activities of human space exploration program management, and 3) the macro, or international, arena of space agency difference, collaboration, and competition. The researcher will construct the case studies by collecting archival data, monitoring of the changing use of archives, and conducting participant and direct observation and interviews. Intellectual merit: By gathering comparative empirical data on the making of a human presence in space, this project aims to contribute a better understanding of government space agency discourses, practices, and goals. These agencies, throughinteractive engagements with broader local and global social processes such as political and economic policy-making and technological transfer, continue to reshape the pathways and expectations that link the social development of earth to that of space. The analysis produced by this project is intended to enrich scientific and general understandings and debates about how human spaceflight projects turn outer space into a unique political and scientific medium in which to remake relationships between humans, societies, technology, and the environment.