DDRIG: Ethereal infrastructure: Placelessness, nature, and low-earth-orbit satellite internet constellations

本博士论文改进基金支持一个项目，该项目研究最近出现的低地球轨道（LEO）卫星星座所引起的社会经济和环境冲突。新一代LEO星座运营商认为，他们可以克服现有的基础设施障碍，在全球范围内提供可靠的宽带互联网。然而，LEO星座产生了新的重叠冲突，涉及LEO互联网连接的可行性，天文研究的未来，以及如何在未来的环境立法中构建外层空间。该项目将研究相关利益相关者如何驾驭和质疑卫星星座提供的无处不在的、物理上不受约束的连接的主张，并将这些主张与在这个大规模外层空间商业化时代围绕环境和外层空间的话语和法律斗争联系起来。该项目的结果将用于为正在进行的关于外层空间管理的政策辩论提供信息。该研究解决了以下研究问题：在低轨道基础设施开发过程中，低轨道运营商、政府机构、天文学家、环境活动家和农村社区如何概念化地点和自然？卫星运营商、天文学家和农村社区如何应对低地球轨道卫星星座的实际存在所带来的新的基于地点的挑战？对外层空间作为人类或非人类环境的理解如何与环境行动主义和低轨道卫星基础设施的技术生命周期联系起来？本项目将科学与技术研究的理论框架与多地点人种学、半结构化访谈和文献分析相结合。它将研究低轨道卫星星座的部署、运行和管理，以及专业天文团体、环境活动家、立法机构和农村社区对这些问题的反应，以提供一个关于地点、自然和环境如何被这些行动者概念化的比较说明，以及这些概念化选择的更大后果。在此过程中，该研究突出了低轨道星座供应链上的数字和环境不平等问题，这将引起立法者、计算专业人士和致力于创建更可持续网络基础设施的学者的兴趣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant supports a project that examines the socio-economic and environmental conflicts arising from the recent emergence of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. A new generation of LEO constellation operators argue they can overcome existing infrastructural barriers to provide reliable broadband internet worldwide. However, LEO constellations engender new, overlapping conflicts concerning the viability of LEO internet connectivity, the future of astronomical research, and how outer space will be framed in future environmental legislation. This project will examine how involved stakeholders navigate and contest the claims of ubiquitous, physically unbound connectivity provided by satellite constellations, and connect these to discursive and legal struggles over the environment and outer space in this era of large-scale outer space commercialization. Results from the project will be used to inform ongoing policy debates over regulation of outer space.The study addresses the following research questions: How do LEO operators, government bodies, astronomers, environmental activists, and rural communities conceptualize place and nature during LEO infrastructure development? How are satellite operators, astronomers, and rural communities negotiating novel place-based challenges arising from the material presence of satellite constellations in low-earth-orbit? How are understandings of outer space as a human or non-human environment linked to environmental activism and the technological life cycle of LEO satellite infrastructure? This project combines theoretical frameworks from Science and Technology Studies with multi-sited ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis. It will examine the deployment, operation, and regulation of LEO satellite constellations and the responses to these from the professional astronomical community, environmental activists, legislative bodies, and rural communities to provide a comparative account of how place, nature, and the environment are being conceptualized by these actors, and the larger consequences of these conceptual choices. In doing so, the research highlights issues of digital and environmental inequality along the LEO constellation supply chain and will be of interest to lawmakers, computing professionals, and scholars committed to creating more sustainable networking infrastructures.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.