Space Agriculture, Tourism and Health – Lessons from British Imperial History
£5.00
D.J. Sivier (2003), JBIS, 56, 192-204
Refcode: 2003.56.192
Abstract:
Advocates of space commercialisation and colonisation have drawn on previous centuries’ experience of the exploration and exploitation of terrestrial New Worlds. Although so far chiefly confined to the colonisation of the Americas and exploration of the Antarctic, a proper examination of the problems and solutions faced and found by the late 19th – early 20th century Jamaican tourist trade, mid-Victorian planter agriculturalists in Sri Lanka and the impact of climatic theories of health on early 20th century White colonists in Kenya and Rhodesia, can, if properly applied to today’s conditions affecting modern space businesses, offer important insights to the psychological impact and aetiology of disease amongst future space colonists, and the successful establishment and management of tourism and agriculture in space. By following the precedents set by the imperial pioneers, it should be possible to apply their founding principles in these sectors successfully, while avoiding the pitfalls and excesses of terrestrial imperialism.