[ As space travel changes, not every single person in space will
be an astronaut; eventually, someone will have to clean the space
toilets. And when that day comes, we’ll need to talk about labor in
space.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE SMARTEST SCI-FI SHOW OF 2023 JUST DROPPED A PAINFULLY REALISTIC
TWIST  
[[link removed]]


 

RYAN BRITT
November 17, 2023
Inverse
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ As space travel changes, not every single person in space will be
an astronaut; eventually, someone will have to clean the space
toilets. And when that day comes, we’ll need to talk about labor in
space. _

, Apple

 

Some sci-fi tropes can extend to real life. If everyone who goes into
space is an astronaut, then we view them all as heroes, or at least as
people with really cool jobs. But as space travel changes, not every
single person in space will be an astronaut; eventually, someone will
have to clean the space toilets. And when that day comes, we’ll need
to talk about labor in space.

In the second episode of _For All Mankind
[[link removed]]_ Season
4
[[link removed]],
a painfully brilliant twist brings that future-tense conversation to
the forefront. Here’s how “Have a Nice Sol” foreshadows real
issues humanity could face in space. SPOILERS AHEAD.

[Toby Kebbell as Miles in 'For All Mankind' Season 4.]

Toby Kebbell as Miles, who has some pretty rough work days.

APPLE

In “Have a Nice Sol,” Season 4 newcomer Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell)
begins his work as a Helios employee at the Happy Valley Base on Mars.
We quickly see that life for the maintenance folks is nothing like the
perks enjoyed by the upper-echelon astronauts. In a brutal sequence,
we see a typical day for Miles side-by-side with Danielle’s
experience as Happy Valley’s new NASA commander. Dani is getting
nice coffee, good food, and having a pleasant, almost Star Trek-ish
experience in space. Miles, meanwhile, is slogging through endless
menial labor, and he can’t even send a message to his family back on
Earth.

Could this happen in real life? This form of science fiction is more
urgent than you might think. According to Erika Nesvold,
astrophysicist and author of _Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and
Quandaries for Living in Outer Space_
[[link removed]]_, _pushing
concerns about ethical labor practices in space to the back of our
minds is dangerous. In an interview with _Wired
[[link removed]]_ earlier
this year, Nesvold said she started “reaching out to experts in the
social sciences,” after being concerned Silicon Valley employers
trying to tackle space weren’t concerned about workers’ rights.
“They were just dismissive,” she said, and adopted a “we’ll
worry about that later” policy.

In the same _Wired_ interview
[[link removed]],
Nesvold outlines a future space-labor concern from her book, which
predicts the most recent _For All Mankind_ episode.

“How do we protect the rights of people who go to space as workers?
I talked to someone in the book who works at the International Labor
Rights Forum, and she pointed out that there’s a clear parallel with
a problem she dealt with regarding fishermen in Thailand
[[link removed]]. The workers would be
taken out to sea. Their passports would be taken away. They could be
out there for years; there were lots of abuses that weren’t being
monitored. She could foresee the same thing happening if you’re
going off to work in space on a rocket you don’t control.”

[Tyner Rushing as Sam in 'For All Mankind' Season 4.]

Tyner Rushing’s Sam brings up an uncomfortable labor issue.

APPLE

In _For All Mankind’s_ latest episode, this is more or less what
happens. The workers at Happy Valley are treated as second-class
citizens, a development foreshadowed in the new season’s first
episode, “Glasnost.” That saw the loss of courageous Cosmonaut
Grigory “Kuz” Kuznetsov (Lev Gorn), who’s mourned by Ed Baldwin
(Joel Kinnaman) and other base personnel in “Have a Nice Sol.” But
as Helios worker Sam Massey (Tyner Rushing) points out, fellow worker
Tom Parker (Mac Brandt) also perished with Kuz while attempting a
salvage operation, but no one is wearing his initials on their
uniforms in memoriam.

This episode highlights one of the strengths of _For All
Mankind’s _writing, because it makes us uncomfortable about our
heroes. We’re used to thinking about Ed and Danielle (Krys Marshall)
as the good guys, but here Dani comes across as oblivious, while Ed is
downright hostile to Miles’ complaints, echoing a
take-what-you-can-get dismissal prevalent in so much of corporate
America. It’s chilling and hard to watch, because we’re used to
rooting for Ed even when he’s being a jerk.

Because _For All Mankind_ is a fundamentally optimistic series, some
of the woes of the Helios workers are addressed in this episode. Dani
pushes Ed and the corporate bigwigs to repair a shoddy communication
satellite, which restores bandwidth for those in the lower parts of
the base. This raises morale a bit, we get to see Dani as the
equitable, heroic astronaut we’ve admired since Season 1
[[link removed]],
and we see Miles smiling as he gets video messages from his family for
the first time in months.

But this storyline isn’t over. The Helios workers are still being
exploited, and in the closed system of this new Mars economy, it’s
only a matter of time until there’s a bigger labor backlash. Science
fiction often likes to present a future in which going to space erases
our socioeconomic problems, but as _For All Mankind’s_ creator,
Ron Moore, pointed out
[[link removed]],
“We still take a lot of our baggage out into space.” Hopefully
policymakers take notice of _For All Mankind’s_ cautionary
aspects, and prevent a humanitarian crisis in our future before it
happens.

_For All Mankind_ Season 4 airs new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.

* for all mankind
[[link removed]]
* Space exploration
[[link removed]]
* worker rights
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]