Saved by the Moon

Imaginaries of Earthly Afterlife in Space

Bibliographic Data

ID5337997
AuthorsCharlotte Kroløkke (0000-0002-9264-5265, University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author), Jonas Holm Larsen (University of Southern Denmark)
Year2025
Volume50
Issue4
Pages830-856
Publication date2025-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/01622439241255733
OpenAlexW4399050592
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited52

Today, emergent space technology engages in visions of future off-world colonizing, while conservation technology is employed in ensuring the continuation of life on earth. In this article, we combine social science of outer space literature with biodiversity conservation work to analyze how utopian visions of off-world futures and dystopian visions of earth entangle in technoscientific future-making practices. Our case is the Lunar Ark, which is a proposed technoscientific project for a conservation base to be assembled inside the moon's lava tubes comprising samples of the earth's ecosystems. We investigate two interwoven imaginaries involving an imaginary of the Lunar Ark as a "reseeding of earth" and secondly, an imaginary in which the Lunar Ark becomes a platform for "escaping earth." Based on scientific papers, web material, news articles, an interview with the head of the research group, and ethnographic observations, we conclude that the Lunar Ark engages with a speculative bioeconomy, wherein earth is imagined as an unstable and unfit protector of life. In contrast, the Lunar Ark emerges as a pan-humanitarian and maternal-like technoscientific environment

Aesthetics · Afterlife · Art · Astrobiology · Literature · Physics · Philosophy · Space exploration and regulation · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction