According to Star Trek at least, space is the final frontier. I’m sure physicists and others of a more scientific nature than I will have their own opinions. But it’s a good line that has been uttered often enough to become quasi-fact.

One thing is for certain is – without wanting to sound too much like 70s songstress Charlene – while I have been to many places we have discussed on the podcast (Greece, Kuala Lumpur and Iceland included), I’ve never been to space. I also didn’t imagine that it would become a regular topic of conversation for us when it comes to discussing sustainability topics on Transforming Tomorrow.

Yet here we are, a month into the third season, and we have just recorded the third episode (of almost 100 now – big celebrations incoming) revolving almost entirely on factors beyond the Earth, albeit linked greatly to it. Sustainability knows no planetary boundaries.

It turns out that what goes on beyond Earth’s atmosphere plays a role in the bigger sustainability picture. I suppose I’ve known this for some time – usually thinking about it while shaking my head and tutting as another billionaire blasts a rocket into orbit (or not; results are not always as intended) and creates a two-minute carbon footprint that eclipses much of the planet’s lifetime emissions.

What our guests have shown us is how space ties in with business and sustainability. And it is on a more regular basis than just when Jeff Bezos decides he wants to see what a cloud looks like from 66 miles up.

It started with Craig Jones last autumn, when he talked to us about asteroid mining. It sounded – and still does in many ways – like science fiction over science, and led me to wonder if co-host Jan had been hallucinating when she suggested we had the perfect colleague with whom to discuss it. But discuss it we did, and it became apparent there were many issues in the topic that tie in so well with the sustainability agenda.

Craig outlined how asteroids offer us a way to bring rare-earth metals back to Earth, supplementing the rapidly diminishing stocks down here. There are also issues around the pollution created by and the resources needed for the rocket launches required to get to the asteroids in the first place and the technologies needed to get there, stay there, extract what we want, and then bring it back. It is little wonder no-one has come close to building an operation to do so as yet.

Craig also introduced us to the Outer Space Treaty, which essentially says space is for everyone and must be used peacefully, and which touches on asteroid mining. I found the whole discussion fascinating – I still like to bring up the fact that Luxembourg is among the leaders in space exploration legislation wherever I can (making for fascinating dinner parties, I can assure you) – but did not necessarily expect to come across it again, let alone far from work and podcasting.

Yet, there I was in the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen one summer evening – the perfect place to shelter from the heat and to relax after a long day spent pondering pandas at the zoo. While waiting for our show on space junk – now there’s a sustainability issue – we came across an exhibit on the Outer Space Treaty. Here, laid out in language that even a seven-year-old could understand (I had one handy to test this out) were displays talking about how we treat space as a planet and as nations, and who has signed up to what. Craig told me he had certainly never seen the Treaty and the issues presented in such a public-facing way, and I was thrilled to have existing knowledge.

[Photo: Paul Turner]

It was only this month that Mia Bennett brought the Outer Space Treaty back to Transforming Tomorrow. Mia spoke to us about the links between the Arctic and space. They might not seem obvious, but they go back centuries to indigenous peoples using the stars to navigate by and to tell stories about their lives, and to meteorites crashing to earth in Greenland, and fast forward through missile bases and tracking stations in the Cold War to Elon Musk and his Starlink network.

The Outer Space Treaty came up here with regards to the (non) weaponisation of space. It then tied back into issues of pollution and exploitation back on Earth with the construction of various bases in the Arctic Circle over the last century. The Arctic, it turns out, is a frontier on the planet and the stepping stone for us to explore that other frontier. Pollution, displaced peoples, and the clogging up of the night sky with flashing lights all come together here. You can listen to that episode from November 3rd.

This all bypasses the other discussion of space we enjoyed at the start of our current run. Jim Wild was wonderfully engaging on the topic of space weather – essentially, what happens with the sun and how it affects us. This was a science-heavy episode – though made wonderfully accessible by Jim’s skill at communicating his expertise – but one with its own sustainability and business connotations.

Did you know, for instance, that solar flares can play havoc with GPS and other electronic systems, affecting farmers, navigation, and potentially even the likes of railways. Unlike with many of the topics we discuss, there is nothing we can do to control the Sun and its activities (though I’m sure Messrs Bezos and Musk are working on it). That is not to say there is nothing we can do to guard against its potential effects.

I’m sure we will return to talk of space in the future (hopefully before the first asteroid mining ship blasts off from a base in the far end of Alaska and gets blown off course by an unexpected solar storm). Until then, these discussions show that the boundaries of sustainability are always expanding, and we cannot confine our thinking within our own atmosphere.

Note: we have gathered all our space-related episodes into playlists, in case you need to get your fix all at once! Find them on YouTube or Spotify.

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