Water is the new ‘spice’ of space travel

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As we enter a new space age scripting history, we may be yet to come to grasps with the politics of space.

“Power over spice, is power over all,” said an ominous voice (In an alien sounding language) as words then took shape on the theater screen, at last week’s release of Dune: Part Two (2024), a sci-fi adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 eponymous novel. To give a basic premise of its fictional universe, humanity has become a space-faring race, inhabiting planets orbiting distant stars. In Herbert’s Dune, humanity accessed a novel spice found only in a barren, desert planet called Arrakis.

As much as it works to spice up food, it functions as a psychotropic drug as well. In fact, consuming too much spice can help you enable bend space-time itself like a wormhole, providing prescience to enable safe passage between the stars.

It may just be a novel that recently got adapted into a two-parter (perhaps it’s a trilogy if Dune Messiah is adapted too) movie, but the story vibes with a lot of chatter in our society too.

Elon Musk, for instance, envisions humanity to colonize Mars with 1 million people. He tweeted at one point on the need to avoid the Great Filter, and similarly embrace our destiny as it were of becoming a space-faring species.

It may just be chatter and hype, but last week saw Intuitive Machine’s Odyssey mission end all too soon, after a rough landing in the rugged lunar terrain, leaving it tipped over its side. That mission may have ended all too soon. However, it surely would be replaced by another robotic exploration mission that Intuitive Machines’ contracted to do as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). And more missions will follow up to set the stage for Artemis III’s planned lunar soft landing in 2026. That mission would presumably see the first astronauts to set boots on the moon since Apollo 17.

Much like spice melange in Dune, the Artemis program hopes to demonstrate how water on the moon can fuel dreams of space colonization. Simple electrolysis of water can yield molecular hydrogen and oxygen on earth. On the moon, it’s easier to launch a rocket with even limited fuel compared to earth, since lunar gravity is one-sixth of the earth. In outer space, water as fuel can help alleviate the cost burden inherent in human spaceflight.

 

The spice is actually the excreta of the native gigantic sandworms of Arrakis. Credit: Astronimation / Wikimedia

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Regulating space

Dune explored themes beyond technological supremacy inherent with spice. In fact, what made the book so popular was how it imagined humanity 8,000 years from now ruled by an ‘Emperor of the Known Universe’ with their nobility like in feudal societies. However, the bearers of the spice melange held prescience abilities in addition to folding space for interstellar travel. The Spacing Guild as they were known in the novel, could see events unfold like no one could. They weren’t noble, despite being elevated to nobility status. The politics of space travel isn’t a subject that’s not been broached in science fiction, but perhaps we don’t talk as much of it in our real world as we ought to.

The universe in Dune would see wars unfold time and again. However, what’s important is how space agencies in our world – NASA, ESA, ISRO, CNSA, JAXA, Roscosmos and now many from the developing world contest for space in space. The Donald Trump administration brought the Artemis Accords to bear, and now has seen 36 countries become signatories for peaceful use of outer space. This isn’t an international mandate, since the Chinese and the Russians say they have no plans to sign yet – calling it ‘US-centric’ in designs.

What’s at stake now for space exploration is the question of whether anyone own property in space. Well, the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs says no, referring to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty signed and thus agreed upon that space is international property. However, it doesn’t state how the resources can be utilized in other respects. Soil samples in the moon collected by Apollo have been distributed by the US to other nations. Space research and the space community so far has always been known to be cordial, seemingly escaping the touches of politics. Seemingly.

Water ice exists as just on average 500 parts per million in the lunar regolith (in higher latitudes) – drier than even the driest sands on earth. Though to a spectrometer on a lunar orbiter, that’s the signature for water, although not in drinkable form. However, water ice can’t be directly electrolyzed without essentially mining that water much like we do on earth. Perhaps in a not so distant future, space mining could be a thing perhaps on asteroids where, much like the Spacing Guild in Dune, space companies could send diggers. The ‘Emperor of the Known Universe’ though isn’t really well-known at this point. It’s more like the many Great Houses in the novel, with Dukes and Duchesses scheming their own ambitions, to dominate the spice and control planet Arrakis.

The space sector isn’t regulated well enough as technology seems to keep abreast of everything else. Water’s the new oil of space. There isn’t too much of it either. However, mining anything in space would come at the cost of violating UN designated sustainability goals. Mining water from the moon in excess could cause some long lasting damage to the soil.

Here’s an ethical outlook. When we think and dream of human spaceflight exploration and all that, we also carry with it our character as a species. Although polluting space may not affect earth physically, doesn’t it deem a society with little moral rectitude if it ever was to happen? Wouldn’t the wrong people be incentivized? Shouldn’t we care for principles we believe in on earth and apply them to space?

As we enter the New Space Age, we perhaps remember that dialogue, “Power over spice, is power over all.” Dune’s nihilistic at best, although we can do better to not act on that urge to control and dominate. Perhaps, we can treat outer space too with some respect and the awe we always had for it.

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