Glossopteris

Amundsen at the South Pole; Aldrin on the moon. Photo credits Olav Bjaaland, Neil Armstrong.

This post is adapted from my presentation at Terror Camp 2023.

In December 1911, Roald Amundsen and his team stand at the South Pole, hats doffed, staring up at the Norwegian flag they’ve raised above their tent. Olav Bjaaland photographs his four companions, who stand out starkly in their heavy clothes against the featureless landscape of blinding white that swallows the rest of the image. In July 1969, Buzz Aldrin salutes the United States flag on the surface of the moon. The man himself cannot be made out at all beneath his bulky spacesuit and drawn-down UV filter. From the angle at which his colleague Neil Armstrong captures the photograph, Aldrin’s gloved white fingers can just be made out around the curve of his helmet, bright in front of the inky black nothing.

These images are 58 years and 384,000 kilometers apart, but are both of men becoming the first humans to visit a place. The men are all wearing specialised gear designed to allow for survival in a hostile physical environment. Their accomplishments are billed as feats of glory, of geographic and scientific discovery, yet the nationalistic and imperialistic elements of these exercises of power are made explicit by the acts of planting their flags. Even the landscapes, empty, white, devoid of life save for these men, echo each other.

I am far from the first person to compare early Antarctic exploration to space travel. The Antarctic explorers did it themselves! If you read enough polar books—primary and secondary sources alike—you’ll see the comparison pop up again and again. Often it’s some form of “when the explorers first went to Antarctica, less was known about it than about the moon or Mars.” In his The Voyage of the Discovery, Scott recounts how during the early planning of the Discovery expedition “The Duke of Argyll remarked on the incongruity of the fact that we knew more about the planet Mars than about a large area of our own globe.” Still today, a statement to this effect greets visitors to the Discovery Point museum in Dundee, and if I checked every introduction on my polar bookshelf, I’d probably find it in about half of them. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in the draft notes for his The Worst Journey in the World, made the comparison as well, noting “we shall visit the moon now before very long, probably within the next thousand years.” He was off by a factor of twenty, but the point stands. These comparisons arise again and again, among researchers interested in Mars missions as well as historians: for those studying astronaut psychology, past and present people living at Antarctic bases can be the closest and most useful comparison to those living in space.

Over the past 125 years, we’ve gone from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration to the Apollo moon landings, and to a new landscape today. The US plans to return to the moon soon with the Artemis missions, and governments and private companies alike are looking at a future of sending humans to Mars. So, how relevant is this comparison, between explorers and astronauts, Antarctica and outer space? Can people planning Mars missions today learn anything from Antarctic history? Throughout this post, I’ll be looking at why we make this comparison, and its strengths and weaknesses. I’ve identified four different but interrelated areas in which these links are usually forged: physical (both body and environment), psychological, governance/legal, and fiction and media (particularly science fiction).

And now for a bit of a non-sequitur. It’s related, I promise. To explain the why of the Antarctica/space metaphor, I’m going to talk about Star Trek. If you know me, this is not surprising.

The above is a still from the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise, which aired from 2001 to 2005. Enterprise is almost nobody’s favourite Trek series. It’s a prequel to earlier series, taking place during the early days of humanity’s forays into Star Trek’s populated universe, and as such it leans into a frontier theme. The opening credits take a different route than other series: instead of a voiceover followed by an instrumental, Enterprise’s theme song is a pop rock power ballad called “Where My Heart Will Take Me” playing over a series of images depicting exploration over time¹. Boats evolve to planes evolve to starships. Most footage is historical, with only the last few clips occupied by the CGI starships of Trek’s imagined future. The still shown above overlays a sailing ship on a road, heading towards distant stars, and directly calling to mind Gene Roddenberry’s original pitch for Star Trek as a “wagon train to the stars”. The wagon train in turn evokes the settlement of the American West, and manifest destiny—the imperialist belief that westward expansion was America’s destiny. While the theme song can be read as inspiring and uplifting, celebratory of humanity’s scientific achievements (the opening lyrics are “It’s been a long road/getting from there to here”), there is another key element relevant to the Antarctica/space metaphor. Philosophically, Enterprise’s theme song highlights a very Western type of hierarchical, linear thinking, akin to the Great Chain of Being, in which everything occupies a ranked order, and a civilisation is thought of as moving up a ladder of technological progress: boats to planes to starships. Earth to space. To anyone raised with this sort of philosophy, who feels there is nothing left blank or wild on the Earth after the Poles…where else to look but up?

The root of it all is, as is often the case, in the stories we tell. Let’s look at the nuts and bolts. We’ll return to stories at the end.

Physically, Antarctica and space are both extreme, dangerous environments. They are places in which humans need special equipment to survive, and to go on sledging journeys or perform extra-vehicular activity. As well, Antarctica and space are both distant and isolated. Early Antarctic explorers did not have wireless contact with the outside world, and prospective Mars explorers today would experience a communication delay due to light travel time. Different degrees are at play here, of course—Antarctica is clearly much less distant and isolated than space, and the communications delay to Mars is only three minutes. Still, in a crisis situation, that three minutes matters.

Both places are colloquially thought of as “empty”. Antarctica is a place on Earth where no humans have ever lived permanently. At risk of broaching a topic that could fill a hundred more blog posts, the scientific evidence points towards there being nobody on Mars we could have a conversation with. As someone who studies exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), I feel comfortable telling you Antarctica is the closest to an alien planet you’ll find on Earth—complete with altered day/night cycles and a disorienting sensory environment. Astronauts, of course, are taken even further away from familiarity, having to work, eat, exercise and sleep in low or no gravity!

Edward Adrian Wilson, the junior surgeon, artist, and naturalist on the 1901-1904 Discovery expedition, directly compared Antarctica’s physical environment to space in a diary entry:

Thursday, 22 May, 1902

“At 10 p.m. it fell dead calm and cleared to a brilliant moonlight, so we all went out for a walk. It was a wonderful night, the sort of Arctic night one reads about in books, the first we have seen! Sounds carried an immense distance. The stillness was almost uncanny. One could imagine oneself in another dead planet. I could easily imagine we were standing not on the Earth but on the Moon’s surface. Everything was so still and dead and cold and unearthly. We had some nights like it in Davos, but they were noisy compared with the absolute silence here, which one felt as a thing that had been broken by nothing but wild nature’s storms since the beginning of the world. I can’t describe it. It was what other visitors to polar regions have tried to give one an idea of.”

Diary of the ‘Discovery’ Expedition, Edward Wilson, ed. Ann Savours. Emphasis his.

Wilson’s entry evokes an uncanny, almost unsettling experience—the wonder and eeriness that accompanies placing the body in the unfamiliar environment of Antarctica. This dovetails us nicely to the second of my links: psychology. Due to the extreme, isolated environments, the combination of high risks with the monotony of a confined living situation, and disturbed sleep² cycles, Antarctic explorers and astronauts experience similar psychological stress. It’s argued that the psychosocial realm is the one in which Antarctica and space make the most sense as research analogues, moreso than the physical environments. Among Antarctic explorers and researchers, one can draw a throughline from early expeditions reporting “polar madness”—a certain despondency during the long polar night—to what today is called winterover syndrome, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Nathan Smith at the University of Manchester studies the psychology of polar and space expeditions, and his research indicates that “emotion-focused coping strategies, or ways to reframe the situation and distract yourself, are among the most successful techniques” to combat these mental health and physiological symptoms³. People set to spend a few years on Mars could perhaps draw from the litany of such early polar expedition techniques for distractions: periodicals and books such as the South Polar Times and Aurora Australis, plays, debates or lecture series, and music and singing nights.

When faced with dire, uncertain, unknown futures—such as when disaster strikes on an expedition and your ship becomes beset in the pack ice and sinks—those who can employ emotion-focused coping strategies, reframe and distract from the overwhelming panic, are the people who thrive. This exact situation was faced by Shackleton’s crew on the Endurance. In his book of the same name, skipper Frank Worsley described the scene after the men left the relative comfort of their sinking ship and Shackleton spoke to his crew.

“This speech had an immediate effect: our spirits rose, and we were inclined to take a more cheerful view of a situation that, actually, had not one element in it to warrant the alteration. We had food only for four weeks. We had nothing to keep out the biting cold save linen tents, linen so thin that when there chanced to be a moon we could easily see it through the material. And we had to sleep on the ice, on a covering that was not water-proof, so that such warmth as there was in our bodies would melt the ice and cause us to lie in pools of water. We knew that we had to face all this. But there was no point in admitting it even to ourselves, let alone to one another. And therefore we bucked up.”

Frank Worsley, Endurance

On the topic of leadership—my third Antarctica/space link relates to questions of governance. What happens when a group of people live together in close quarters, isolated from the rest of the world and forming a community unto themselves, for years? What are the rules? Are there rules? Do they recreate the society they’ve come from in miniature? Or do they take an opportunity to change?

With isolation and lack of timely communication comes a decreased influence of whatever governance system the explorers come from—and an increased need to create their own system. In a situation with high risk and life-or-death decisions needing to be made, often quickly, environments themselves may restrict individual freedoms in a way that runs a high risk of authoritarianism from whoever is in charge. Many early Antarctic expeditions were run, often de facto rather than de jure, on Naval rules. Earlier space exploration often also had military ties, but with the rise of commercial spaceflight, this is changing. Another area in which Antarctica and space might be different as regards governance is that Antarctic explorers did not intend to stay long term. However, there are voices today, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, that advocate in no uncertain terms for long-term human colonisation of Mars. This deeply concerns me ethically for a number of reasons, but from a perspective of governance it concerns me because I worry that human rights are not a priority—how do you guarantee basic human rights to your space travellers in a situation where it is very easy for freedoms to be curtailed?

One example of these burning questions of governance in a small, isolated society was brought up by Robert Falcon Scott, commander of the Discovery expedition, in his diary. He considered a long-ignored coin on his desk and pondered:

“Meanwhile it is rather fascinating to consider the moneyless condition in which we live. With an absence of wealth, community of interest, and a free sharing of comforts and hardships, we must realise much that is socialistically ideal, yet in recognition of rank and supremacy of command the government must be considered an autocracy; and indeed, just at present I can more fully realise my position as autocrat when I see how eagerly everyone is awaiting the sledging programme which is to foreshadow their lives for the coming season.”

Robert Falcon Scott, diary, quoted in The Voyage of the Discovery

I’ve seen space ethics scholars at modern academic conferences⁴ make this exact point about the appearance of freedoms but actual presence of autocracy. Even in an activity that erases some class distinctions, as early manhauling did between sailors and officers, the decision of who will sledge with what party can be literally life-or-death, and raises a leader’s power to absolute, as Scott recognised.

These are really big topics with really pressing questions. I certainly don’t have all the answers—space ethics is a small and emerging interdisciplinary field, one I’ve occasionally delved into throughout my PhD, but it is not my focus. And to be honest, I don’t know if anyone has the answers just yet—as regards space, my main concern is that I’d prefer people sit down and discuss this before anyone is in a life-or-death situation.

What I can do is give you an overview of the current legal situations for space and Antarctica. In the first half of the 20^th century, many countries made territorial claims on slices of Antarctica, often with pretences like needing to legally regulate the whaling industry. These claims were often contested and overlapping. In 1957-1958, the International Geophysical Year included an extensive scientific programme in Antarctica and many countries built new bases. As a result of all the scientific activity during the IGY, the twelve countries that were involved negotiated and signed a treaty in 1959 that regulated the continent for peaceful, scientific use. The United States and Soviet Union were among initial signatories, and were strongly motivated by a desire to prevent the Cold War from spreading to Antarctica, especially in the form of nuclear weapons. The treaty “froze”—but did not abolish—all territorial claims, and essentially gave the continent over for scientific work. The initial Antarctic Treaty has become the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), with several additional agreements adopted over the years, including prohibiting mineral extraction for non-scientific purposes. 56 countries are now party to the treaty.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is the basis of space law. Like the Antarctic Treaty, it came about as a result of concerns about the proliferation of weapons. Both treaties are of the same Cold War era, coming into being between Sputnik and the moon landing. The Outer Space Treaty (OST) drew heavily from the text of the Antarctic Treaty, and also allowed no new sovereignty claims—although this time, there were none to begin with—and no nuclear weapons. It holds space as the “province of all mankind”. It has a few differences from the Antarctic Treaty, which make it weaker: it allows for some military activity such as remote sensing, and there is nothing banning the use of conventional weapons in space. The OST is also silent about economic exploitation. In the absence of any clear international law about activity like space mining, it is likely that the rules would be made up by whichever company gets there first, which is not the most comforting scenario.

While the ATS is in use and living and growing with new scientific activity in Antarctica, the OST has seen relatively few additions over the years. Largely, this is because space is not really a theatre in which many people operate—if no one is doing much, there’s not a need for regulation. To draw very broad, very different arcs: Antarctica has gone from a free-for-all with multiple territorial claims, to a peaceful continent for scientific purposes. Space has been the “province of all mankind” almost but not quite from the beginning of human activity there, but is at risk of becoming a free-for-all of corporate claims in the absence of a robust new international treaty or update of the OST.

Of course, that is the simple version. While the ATS bans economic exploitation of Antarctica, this only passed because few were interested in the first place, due to expense. Plenty claim interest in space mining, but this is even more expensive! I do wonder about the future of Antarctic resources, especially given oil drilling in the Arctic, which has no similar treaty⁵. As well, the ATS has been criticised for not incorporating voices of countries until they can prove their scientific clout. Overall, from a legal perspective, space and Antarctica can act as useful mirrors for each other.

The final of my four links is science fiction—that is, fictional stories about science and technology, often including people stepping out into the unknown. During early polar exploration, science fiction writers like Verne and Poe wrote books featuring polar explorers. Verne’s Captain Nemo raised his flag at the South Pole in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. These works are the key to the broader public’s psyche, and the conquest of the poles was rehearsed many times in fiction before it happened. There was a thriving contemporary literature—as literature scholar Will Tattersdill puts it, end-of-19^th-century fiction was “presenting empirical discovery and imperial conquest as inseperable”⁶. The space connection was made then, too, with Wells having a character say “After all, to go into space is not so much worse, if at all, than a Polar expedition. Men go on Polar expeditions.”⁷ If contemporary polar sci-fi features lots of nationalistic conquest, certainly it only takes a quick glance around at today’s space sci-fi to notice a whole lot of capitalist hellscapes⁸. As the pole was rehearsed in fiction, so too is Mars. Sci-fi can offer a valuable ethical check on science and repository of possible futures—we ought to listen to it.

This has been a whistle-stop tour of the various facets of the longstanding Antarctica/space metaphor. Antarctica and space are both shrouded in the unknown and built-up in myths, often expansionist ones, that we tell and have told each other. I hope you’ve found this thought-provoking, at least, and I want to leave you with a quote from Scott’s Voyage of the Discovery. Upon first reaching the polar plateau, he writes:

“I do not think it would be possible to conceive a more cheerless prospect than that which faced us at this time, when on this lofty, desolate plateau we turned our backs upon the last mountain peak that could remind us of habitable lands. Yet before us lay the unknown. What fascination lies in that word! Could anyone wonder that we determined to push on, be the outlook ever so comfortless?”

Robert Falcon Scott

Addendum: It was an honour and a privilege to present on this topic at Terror Camp this year! It’s near and dear to my heart, as it was an opportunity to combine some of my PhD research with my love of polar exploration. As my panel moderator said, there’s a book in this topic. Perhaps someday I’ll write it. For now, here are my sources if you want to do any further reading:

• Voyage of the Discovery, Robert Falcon Scott
• Endurance, Frank Worsley
• Cherry, Sara Wheeler
• Diary of the Discovery Expedition, Edward Wilson, ed. Ann Savours
• “Outer Space as International Space: Lessons from Antarctica”, Armel Kerrest
• “Does Space Law Prevent Patterns of Antarctic Imperialism in Outer Space?”, Henry Padden
• “How do you like your regulation? Hard or soft? The Antarctic Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty compared”, Steven Freeland & Anja Nakarada Pecujlic
• “Policies for Scientific Exploration and Environmental Protection: Comparison of the Antarctic and Outer Space Treaties”, Margaret S. Race
• “How the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 Influenced the Outer Space Treaty of 1967”, Bailey DeSimone
• “What Polar Explorers Can Teach Us About Mental Health”, Heather Hansman
• “Further northward: Polar exploration and empire in the fact and fiction of the popular press”, Will Tattersdill
• “The Norwegian Who Became a Globe: Mediation and Temporality in Roald Amundsen’s 1911 South Pole Conquest”, Estren Ytreberg
• “Antarctica and space as psychosocial analogues”, Peter Suedfeld
• “The Institutions of Extra-Terrestrial Liberty”, Conference, University of Edinburgh, June 2021
• The First Men in the Moon, HG Wells

1. Detractors call it “sappy”, and indeed it has been known to make me cry. I’m a sap. ↩︎
2. “Antarctica and space as psychosocial analogues”, Peter Suedfeld ↩︎
3. “What Polar Explorers Can Teach Us About Mental Health”, Heather Hansman ↩︎
4. Like The Institutions of Extra-terrestrial Liberty at the University of Edinburgh in 2021 ↩︎
5. And lest anyone think the flag-planting days are over, Russia planted a flag on the seafloor beneath the North Pole in 2007 ↩︎
6. “Further northward: Polar exploration and empire in the fact and fiction of the popular press”, Will Tattersdill ↩︎
7. H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon ↩︎
8. The Expanse and Outer Worlds both feature working-class people sold on a dream of getting rich by going to another planet, only to find themselves essentially indentured servants of corporations. ↩︎