Artemis II and populating the solar system

From the King Charles III Space Station, Tom and Calum welcome Louise Perry — reactionary feminist, space romantic, and descendant of Second Fleet convicts — to discuss Artemis II, the furthest humans have ever travelled from Earth.

Louise makes the case that enthusiasm for space exploration is an overwhelmingly Anglo phenomenon, something between an anthropological pathology and a civilisational birthright. But the last great age of exploration coincided with an incredible cheapness of life, a tolerance for suffering and death that modern societies have entirely lost. Can you be expansionist with a 0.7 birth rate and no appetite for risk?

This leads into Louise’s theory of the century: that birth rate collapse is not a policy failure but an evolutionary bottleneck. The people who make it through — more religious, more conservative, more willing to bear the costs — will inherit the Earth. Democracy probably can’t survive the gerontocracy that’s coming. The state pension certainly won’t. Your best hedge, she argues, is several children.

The episode explores:

• Why space exploration is an Anglo pathology — and why that’s glorious
• The Moral Maze’s case against Artemis II, including the claim that astronauts are defiling Navajo ancestors on the moon
• Whether modernity has made us too comfortable to be expansionist
• Louise’s infant mortality theory of everything: low death rates cause low birth rates
• The evolutionary bottleneck and why wokeness is demographically doomed
• The techno-theocracy: orienting innovation towards the Christian good
• Why your pension won’t exist and children are a better investment
• The overview effect as a threat to chauvinistic adventure
• Mars as tax haven, Noah’s Ark selection criteria, and the Bishop of Mars

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