Wasting and wanting: An extractive supply chain approach to outer space geographies

Abstract

This article conceptualizes outer space geographies through the Earthly geographies of extractive supply chains, focusing on mines and discarded electronics (e-waste), in order to examine the material relations through which contemporary human engagements with outer space are being produced. It considers the emergence of billionaires-turned-astronauts within the waste-making practices of supply chain capitalism, critiquing this as a particularly stark example of the politics of sacrifice that need to be centered in debates concerning the present and future of human engagements with outer space. Drawing together literatures on waste, discard, supply chains, and frontiers, and informed by fieldwork in several mining and launch sites on four continents, the article argues that waste-making on Earth is constitutive of a set of contemporary space activities and shapes the manner in which the immensity of the cosmos is understood and engaged by diverse publics. It concludes by reflexively examining the potential epistemic violence of waste-making as a spatial analytic to link Earthly and outer space geographies.