Space and the planet: taking the extra-planetary seriously in planetary thinking

In light of recent developments in space technology, services and commercialisation, human geographers have started to consider space exploration and extractivism as areas of critical concern. A debate that has not yet fully embraced the extra-planetary, however, is that on planetary thinking, in which scholarship has to bracket out the space environment to some extent in that it represents a mere distraction from the actually important terrestrial crises. Against such a background, the present intervention engages with the relations between the planetary and the extra-planetary, advocating explicit consideration of the latter in critical planetary thinking – notably not as a diversion from but rather as a reinforcement of the need to engage with earthly concerns. To elaborate its argument, the text first reconstructs the disregard of the extra-planetary in planetary thinking by revisiting two books that have shaped the contours of the related debate: Bruno Latour's Down to Earth and Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble. It then critically reflects on “Humans on Mars”, a publicly funded research initiative at Bremen University which justifies an expansionist agenda by adopting a planetary mindset, or at least planetary rhetoric. Conceptualising the extra-planetary as imagined-and-real counter-space, planetary scholars are finally being called upon to connect with off-Earth ecosystems, weaving their non-human and more-than-human components into a cosmopolitical ethics of care and responsibility. At the same time, a rupture pratique is suggested which, in turn, designates the extra-planetary as a space in which there is literally no room for humans and certainly not for the very frontier expansionist and extractivist practices that have resulted in socio-ecological crises on planet Earth.