We discuss how visions for the futures of humanity in space and SETI are intertwined, and are shaped by prior work in the fields and by science fiction. This appears in the language used in the fields, and in the sometimes implicit assumptions made in discussions of them. We give examples from articulations of the so-called Fermi Paradox, discussions of the settlement of the Solar System (in the near future) and the Galaxy (in the far future), and METI. We argue that science fiction, especially the campy variety, is a significant contributor to the "giggle factor" that hinders serious discussion and funding for SETI and Solar System settlement projects. We argue that humanity's long-term future in space will be shaped by our short-term visions for who goes there and how. Because of the way they entered the fields, we recommend avoiding the term "colony" and its cognates when discussing the settlement of space, as well as other terms with similar pedigrees. We offer examples of science fiction and other writing that broaden and challenge our visions of human futures in space and SETI. In an appendix, we use an analogy with 1 the well-funded and relatively uncontroversial searches for the dark matter particle to argue that SETI's lack of funding in the national science portfolio is primarily a problem of perception, not inherent merit.Keywords: SETI -science fiction -human spaceflight -colonialism -futures Visions of SETI and Human SpaceflightThe topics of SETI, human spaceflight, and humanity's long-term futures are intertwined. As we engage with outer space we bring history and culture with us and it becomes a "cultural landscape" (Gorman, 2009), a place that shapes and is in turn shaped by culture. Steven J. Dick 1 has called for a "systematic approach" applying anthropology to SETI and finds evidence in historical collaborations that this would be beneficial to both fields (Dick, 2006). As a collaboration between an astronomer and an anthropologist, this paper draws on both interdisciplinary SETI work and anthropology to discuss factors shaping the cultural landscapes of space with special attention to ways we imagine and talk about possible futures through science fiction.Human spaceflight, extraterrestrial intelligence, and the distant future are commonly completely blended in science fiction. Visions of humans traveling among the stars and encountering alien life are perhaps the quintessential science fiction trope. At first glance, it would seem that the endeavors of SETI and human spaceflight are generally more separated than this: the former has historically comprised relatively small, mostly privately-funded efforts concentrated among radio astronomers and a few others; the latter has comprised major governmental efforts by the United States, the former Soviet Union, Russia, and their partner nations for decades. 2Here we consider the more ambitious projects for human spaceflight of the sort aspired to by many governments but never (so far) seriously attempted: the permanent settlement of the So...

We discuss how visions for the futures of humanity in space and SETI are intertwined, and are shaped by prior work in the fields and by science fiction. This appears in the language used in the fields, and in the sometimes implicit assumptions made in discussions of them. We give examples from articulations of the so-called Fermi Paradox, discussions of the settlement of the Solar System (in the near future) and the Galaxy (in the far future), and METI. We argue that science fiction, especially the campy variety, is a significant contributor to the ‘giggle factor’ that hinders serious discussion and funding for SETI and Solar System settlement projects. We argue that humanity's long-term future in space will be shaped by our short-term visions for who goes there and how. Because of the way they entered the fields, we recommend avoiding the term ‘colony’ and its cognates when discussing the settlement of space, as well as other terms with similar pedigrees. We offer examples of science fiction and other writing that broaden and challenge our visions of human futures in space and SETI. In an appendix, we use an analogy with the well-funded and relatively uncontroversial searches for the dark matter particle to argue that SETI's lack of funding in the national science portfolio is primarily a problem of perception, not inherent merit.Also on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.05318Please cite this version:Wright, Jason T., and Michael P. Oman-Reagan. “Visions of Human Futures in Space and SETI.” International Journal of Astrobiology, 2017, 1–12. doi:10.1017/S1473550417000222.

A number of different studies carried out in the late 20th century indicated that new religious movements (NRMs) tended to recruit individuals who were highly educated. In the present study, we confirm this pattern utilizing data from the national censuses of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, and Wales. Additionally, we found that educational patterns for NRMs in the censuses tended to fall into at least two subgroups, one of which had educational levels comparable to mainline denominations and the other of which had significantly higher educational achievements. Furthermore, census respondents who expressed some variety of nonbelief were comparable to this latter group in terms of educational accomplishments. We discuss this latter finding in terms of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell's analysis of secularization.

In this anthropological account of the “interstellar” – the vast expanses of outer space between the stars – I take interstellar travel as an object of ethnographic study. First, I examine three interstellar space projects: NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft; 100 Year Starship’s manifesto on their quest to travel to another star; and SETI’s search for life in the universe. Finally, I turn to corresponding examples of interstellar travel in speculative fiction.In 2013, NASA announced a transmission from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as the “sound of interstellar space” and marked it as crossing a boundary into the “space between stars.” Organizations like 100 Year Starship and the Interstellar Message Composition program at SETI describe interstellar travel in terms of spacecraft, listening for signals, and active transmission. Fiction and science also co-render humans into interstellar scale via speculative technologies like artificial intelligence, instantaneous travel across the universe by “folding space,” and the “generation ship,” in which generations of crewmembers live and die during a multi-year voyage to another star.This ethnography of interstellar ontologies across multiple sites and scales builds on feminist science studies (Haraway), recent work on abstractions as scientific things (Helmreich), and the concept of hyperobjects – non-human entities that are massively distributed in time and space (Morton). As interstellar space moves between abstraction, text, place, and object, I find that it unfolds to reveal a constellation of potentially inhabited worlds inscribed by both scientists and speculative fiction; what was remote, insensate, and desolate becomes intimate, poetic, inhabited.Keywords: Science; Speculative Fiction; Object-Oriented Ontology; Deconstruction; SpacePlease cite as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2015. “Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar.” SocArXiv, Open Science Framework. Manuscript, submitted February 4, 2017. osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r4ghb/A version of this paper was presented as:Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2015. Unfolding the Space Between Stars: Anthropology of the Interstellar. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, November 21.

Oman-Reagan, Michael P. 2015. “The Social Lives of Plants, in Space.” Astrosociological Insights 4 (2): 4–8.