Just as railroad technology had significant historical impact on society, space technology has the potential to greatly shape our future. Technological determinism and path dependency can shape societal norms and values as they did with gender disparities in early space exploration. It is important to utilize conscious engineering designs and technology policies in the space industry to ensure positive impacts on society and future generations.
When I think about space, space technologies, the future of humanity in space, I think backwards to the 19th century in the United States.
There's this technology that really marks the whole century: regularly-scheduled, steam-powered, passenger trains. The first passenger train was installed in 1830 between Baltimore and Ohio, and very, very quickly there are railroad lines crisscrossing the United States. The next several decades are often referred to as the Golden Age of the Railroads -- a whole era defined by one technology.
Rail could cover long distances quickly; they changed where people lived, where they worked. Rail revolutionized industry, and it was very much responsible for the economic development of the United States during that time.
But the railroads also had a big impact on culture - trains brought with it a new standard for timeliness. A punctual schedule is necessary for safety, for trains to avoid crashing into each other. This new emphasis on punctuality, re-enforced by capital-intensive machines, would trickle out into society, and the end of that century would be dominated by a new paradigm centered on productivity, efficiency that we -- time is money -- still see today.
The Progressive Era would see this idea of efficiency seep into economic paradigms, religious beliefs, ways of living. Railroads are a classic example of how new technologies can have a significant impact on society and culture. So now, we are on the verge of the new “Space Age”...and what can we learn from the railroads?
Looking at the current, fast-growing space sector, it is not hard to imagine that space technologies will have a similarly profound impact on our world, perhaps influencing our future economic systems, political systems, shared natural environment, cultural norms, and even our philosophies and religions. It’s easy to imagine the advance of technological development as this all-powerful guiding force on society, and we mere mortals are subject to the whims of the inevitable technologies that scientific advancement bequeaths us! This mental framework is often referred to as technological determinism – i.e., technology guides society.
Let’s consider this principle through a specific lens: gender.
Women’s health was wholly ignored in the early engineering design of human spaceflight. NASA in the 1960’s was overtly discriminatory against women. In a 1962 hearing in front of the US Congress, astronaut John Glenn would state “Men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them … The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.” That early attitude would have long repercussions for women in space. The first American woman would not go to space until 1983. NASA announced the first all-female spacewalk in October 2018, only to embarrassingly discover that there were not enough spacesuits on the ISS in the correct sizes for women astronauts to space walk at the same time. Even now a female astronaut’s career can only be in space half the time as a male astronaut, due to engineering designs, regulations, and research priority decisions made early-on. This is an example of technological path dependency. Once certain design choices are made, it’s hard to reverse course. Automobiles were designed for two people, road infrastructure now accommodates that width, and it would be nearly impossible now if we wanted to design cars three people wide.
New technologies exist within larger sociotechnical systems. Scientific advancements inform the development of new technologies, and technological innovations drive further scientific research. And both are shaped by the opinions, values, and beliefs of different members of society, who are in turn impacted in overt and subtle ways by new scientific and technological innovations.