Talk:Politics of outer space

Redirect

Redirect to Black Holes & Revelations as a plausible search term. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Done, but I'm unsure if protection is necessary again. Watchlisting, and will protect if recreation happens. Cheers. --lifebaka (talk - contribs) 19:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "again" ? I thought exoplolitcs is the speculative extension of politcal science to interaction with hypothetical extra-terrestrial forms of intent.--79.29.110.16 (talk) 13:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Exclusion

While the exclusion of the "Exopolitics" article will in time be seen as one of Wikipedia's more jackass moments. I am happy to see that at least the term, which has 252,000 page returns on Google and 782,000 page returns on Yahoo, is now forwarded to the band Muse. I am a big fan of Muse and very much like their song Exo-Politics. All encyclopedias are, by construction and intent, maintainers of the status quo. Sadly, when the status quo is based in government propaganda and the people behind the encyclopedia fail to see this, they become enablers of state supported reality. It's a disgrace, of course, but not one that isn't shared. Ultimately every person in a society is a victim when the state gets in the reality shaping business. I believe in time Wikipedia will find its way, but not before many of the current administrator are replaced by individuals with much stronger intellectual constitutions and greater insight. SteveBassett (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Requesting a review

{{editprotected}} Requesting a review of this redirect to something more useful.

For example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exopolitics_Institute

or one of the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSETI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life

Jbuchman (talk) 20:03, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I certainly second this request. Exopolitics Institute would be my choice for a more appropriate redirect target. __meco (talk) 01:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Done.  Sandstein  07:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for editprotected

{{editprotected}}

{{R with possibilities}}

__meco (talk) 11:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not clear what you are asking for. dougweller (talk) 12:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I merely want to have the above template added to the article page. __meco (talk) 13:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Done (to the redirect page, not the main article) --Elonka 20:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for Exopolitics Page

Given that the existence of extraterrestrial life (and especially intelligent life) is unproven in contemporary science and politics, the field which has come to be known as exopolitics has been focussed on efforts by various individuals and groups towards open government disclosure on the topic.

I'd suggest then that the redirection to 'Exopolitics Institute' seems a bit limiting, especially given the work by such researchers as Dr. Stanton Friedman or testimony of scientists such as Dr. Dan Burisch. We may disagree with their conclusions but we cannot deny the existence of the field or the body of their work.

I would therefore request that there be an actual 'Exopolitics' page. Would you allow me (Tektites) to write it? [I'm a relatively fresh face to the field (B.Sc. in Geophysics) and don't have any axe to grind; But would be happy to make an effort.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tektites (talk • contribs) 00:54, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You might want to chat to User:Sandstein for advice on this, but what I would say about any article is write it first using a sub-page of your user space, and only when it is ready -- inline citations to reliable sources, etc., add it to article space. But chat to Sandstein first. dougweller (talk) 18:54, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I should add that our problems with the original article weren't helped by the involvement of people very involved in Expolitics, who I expect would get involved again, so it might be a bit of a rocky ride. dougweller (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Doug, and advise you to do the following: Draft an article at User:Tektites/Exopolitics, making sure that you can establish the subject's notability through references to substantial coverage in reliable sources. Then ask for feedback at WP:DRAW. When people there tell you it's good, initiate a deletion review and ask that your draft be restored to article space.  Sandstein  19:02, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I have also been considering creating an acceptable exopolitics article. For that purpose I have acquired a copy of the previously deleted version at User:Meco/Sandbox. Please use anything from it that is applicable in this effort. __meco (talk) 10:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

+1 to restoring a proper "Exopolitics" page. I think the current redirection creates confusion and even equals the hypothetic/fiction/alien-related aspects to real space treaties. Even a redirect to Post-detection_policy, would be better than the current one. 1ucian0 (talk) 1ucian0 (talk) 10:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Sources

I removed this source from the article, but if someone wants to find the story here is the ciation as it appeared:

• El Amraoui, Ahmed (2006-06-04). "US-Iran: The truth is way out there". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2007-04-02. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Here are some other sources:

• http://www.thestar.com/article/270984
• http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/11490
• http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=g5skkMudyHAC&dq=exopolitics&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=ZUJbY9QTR7&sig=JaVdByjnRKYJrV2E7lnPiDy0Tpc&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPP15,M1
• Google News stories from the past month: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=exopolitics
• http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272611767.shtml
• http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=552&fArticleId=331918
• http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2FArticleNews%2FTPStory%2FLAC%2F20050903%2FNOTEBOOK03%2FTPNational%2FColumnists&ord=12998132&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true
• http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2005/11/26/1324951-sun.html
• http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-14565762_ITM
• http://www.nationalledger.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=9&num=11767

I didn't see much criticism. But I always like to include some for balance if anyone has found some. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality

This article appears to presume that aliens exist, an interesting idea but sadly one completely unsupported by sources of a respectable kind. Can we work together to remove the POV presumptions from this article? --Johnnyturk888 (talk) 10:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

This article should be merged

This should be merged with Michael Salla.Simonm223 (talk) 14:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

His name is Michael Salla and though being one of the leaders of the exopolitics movement, he is far from the only moving force within it. __meco (talk) 15:03, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I meant Michael Salla just slow on the correction.Simonm223 (talk) 15:09, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Michael SallaSimonm223 (talk) 17:22, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Science fiction and scope

This edit restores a sentence about the concept of exopolitics as used in science fiction. On the one hand, this is an obvious statement - Babylon 5 is pretty much all about political machinations and aliens, in David Brin's Uplift books humans hurriedly whitewash their history after first contact, in Iain M. Banks' The Algebraist pre-spaceflight humans are manipulated for later political gain, Campbell's Black Star Passes considers the problem of a unified world government in context of interstellar war, and Larry Niven does the same for trade ... and that is just works I can see without getting up. On the other hand, to my knowledge none of these make any explicit or implicit reference to Salla or his ideas. Do we want to expand the scope of this article to include speculative fiction or non-Salla-related speculation, or should it focus specifically on the movement he founded? - 2/0 (cont.) 18:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I could go either way however, as it stands, this article is not about the use of inter-species politics in speculative fiction but rather about a UFOlogist movement. As such, pending a reference showing that UFOlogist movement being relevant to speculative fiction the statement was inappropriate.Simonm223 (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I would be wary about doing so -- particularly as, AFAIK, nobody links the themes in these SF works to 'exopolitics'. It is just 'politics as normal' with some of the political factions happening to be from non-human races. But then again, 'exopolitics' is itself just a form of what might be termed 'cryptopolitics' (cf cryptobiology) -- hypothetical study of political relations with groups which cannot be demonstrated to exist (be they aliens, humans-from-another-dimension, angels, fairies, ghosts, etc, etc). Thereafter we could have 'cryptoaesthetics' (the hypothetical study of the art forms of such beings), etc, etc. All of which is WP:Complete bollocks. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Thus the proposed merge. But it looks like more folks think this is bigger than Sallah than don't.Simonm223 (talk) 18:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Revert

Could you explain this revert? The material I added is directly relevant to active communication with ETI—which is a precondition to any kind of human-ETI diplomatic or political relations—and to existing, clearly-defined protocols for dealing with human-ETI contact. When you seek to limit this article to the barely-notable, fringe theories of a single researcher, then this should become a redirect to Michael Salla as proposed above. --Issuesixty soulsgreat (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

None of the sources you list are about "exopolitics" — none of them even contain that word. They all pertain more generally to SETI. Placed here rather than in the SETI article, they give the false impression that all these notable people have considered exopolitics as a serious non-fringe topic and that their criticisms (that SETI is misguided because aliens might not be benign) are the primary criticism of exopolitics. I think this is a seriously unbalanced representation of the subject. I think a more accurate description of criticism of the area would be that few people have heard of it and the few that have see it as fringe because of its proponents failure to distinguish between hypothetical aliens and actual aliens. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:33, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

The article lead defines exopolitics as the "hypothetical exploration of the concept of political relations between humans and extraterrestrial civilizations". While admittedly the referenced statements do not use the word "exopolitics" or endorse this as a notable concept, they clearly are the most notable and prominent comments about hypothetical relations between mankind and ETI's.

Again, when you consider the concept of exopolitics to be synonymous with the fringe theories of a single organization, why not redirect this article to Exopolitics Institute or Michael Salla? --Issuesixty soulsgreat (talk) 12:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Rather than boldly redirecting I decided to play it safe and propose a merge. That discussion has not currently met with consensus.Simonm223 (talk) 13:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Exopolitics Institute already redirects here. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Over at Talk:Michael Salla if we can reach consensus on the merge than this article will merge with that one.Simonm223 (talk) 16:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Definition of term, and separation from musical reference.

Would this page not benefit from opening with a brief, neutral, summarizing statement or definition of the concept of exopolitics, and a clear separation between links to articles about that term (Salla, Webre) and links to secondary, pop-music references to the core term (Muse album)?

Such formatting can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon/, and elsewhere.

I propose the following:

This article is about the UFO-related concept. For the 2006 song by the English band Muse, see Black Holes and Revelations.

Exopolitics is a proposed political science concerning the possibility of extraterrestrial societies and/or humanity's interaction with such.

See also

• Michael Salla, Australian ufologist
• Alfred Webre, American lawyer, futurist, activist, and author of Exopolitics: Politics, Government, and Law in the Universe

Category:Extraterrestrial life

{{disambiguation}}

Startswithj (talk) 18:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Are Salla and Webre really both talking about the same thing? Past discussions seem to have indicated they had two different ideas of what exopolitics is. And is there a neutral third-party source that discusses both of them together, providing evidence that they really are a single topic and giving us a less-biased source to use as the basis for an article? Re your idea of keeping this a dab, but adding a neutral statement at the top: in principle this seems like a good idea, and doesn't need references (disambiguation pages don't use references) but again, it depends on whether the Salla and Webre forms of exopolitics really are the same. Your overall proposal doesn't look like a disambiguation page, though, because it doesn't have any pointers to articles on topics that this ambiguous title would refer to. And disambiguation pages don't have the hatnote at the start. Please see MOS:DAB for what disambiguation pages are supposed to look like. It might be better to modify the existing dab by (very briefly) stating more clearly in the lines for Salla and Webre what their theories are, in enough detail to allow people to tell them apart. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your question as two whether Salla and Webre are talking about the same thing: More people than just Salla and Webre are talking about exopolitics, a simple web-search verifies that. That would be the reason for summarizing the concept in a brief, neutral statement. Reducing the topic to only the opinions of these two individuals is a misrepresentation.

I'm not hip to the nuanced differences between dabs and stubs, or other page-types, so I don't have an opinion on that detail. Startswithj (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Latest edit attempts to introduce the reader to the subject of this entry on a basic level, in an effort to minimize a need to browse further unless desired, or a chance of browsing in an undesired direction. Should this edit be beneficial, would it call for a re-classification of the entry? Startswithj (talk) 03:06, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Anything more would be a recreation of one or more articles deleted via AfD, (eg Expolotics, Michael Salla, etc) so no, it would not be beneficial and would be reverted. Dougweller (talk) 05:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Pleased to have reached an agreement. Thank you. Startswithj (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome. Dougweller (talk) 20:51, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

exopolitics is not a song

• "Exopolitics" is not a song title. This redirect cannot remain. The correct title of the song is "Exo-Politics" (hyphenated and capitalized), whereas "exopolitics" is a field of political science pertaining to the politics of outer space (including very important topics such as the history of the Space Race, the politics of current and future space exploration, and issues of industry, private ownership, and the exploitation/colonization of space). See my edit at "exopolitics (disambiguation)" for clarification between the two spellings. "Exopolitics" is used in a number of articles in Astronomy magazine, and I believe I have also seen it in Popular Science as well. If that is not enough for the attestation of the term, then the "exopolitics" Wikipedia page should be redirected instead to "outer-space politics" or "politics of outer space" (which is synonymous with "exopolitics," with "exo-" simply meaning "outside the atmosphere of Earth"). "Space law" is a subfield of exopolitics, dealing specifically with the laws of outer space, as opposed to broader political issues in outer space (such as international cooperation, privatization, controversies over public funding of space programs, etc.). Nicole Sharp (talk) 02:33, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• @Staszek Lem: @David Eppstein: Text partially copied from "user talk:Staszek Lem#exopolitics" and "user talk:Nicole_Sharp#Exopolitics." Nicole Sharp (talk) 02:33, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• You say these are "very important topics" but the consensus of the past deletion discussions (most recently Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alfred Webre (2nd nomination)) disagrees. In the meantime, until how to interact with polities of hypothetical space aliens somehow becomes significant, "Exopolitics" is a very plausible spelling of the song title Exo-Politics. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:22, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• There are three separate issues going on here. The problems are that:

  A) There exists a severe conflation between the political-science topic of exopolitics, and a rock song by the title of "Exo-Politics." This can easily be resolved by redirecting "exopolitics" not to the song album's Wikipedia page (which is extremely confusing for anyone searching for political science, and not music), but instead to "exopolitics (disambiguation)," which clarifies that there are two very different subjects with similar titles.

  B) There seems to be a question on whether the actual word "exopolitics" is attested enough to be used as the title for an article on the politics of outer space. This again can be easily resolved by moving the article title and content of "exopolitics" to redirect to "politics of outer space" instead, which is more cumbersome, but perhaps has less ambiguity and better acceptability due to not using a prefix.

  C) The third issue is whether or not the politics of space exploration is a relevant topic for an encyclopedia article, for which I believe is a very relevant topic that should have an article (while the article only exists as a stub at the moment, it is a huge topic with the potential to eventually become a featured article, and will become even more relevant in the future if e.g. there is a second space race to Mars).

  • I will go ahead and fix the redirect for "exopolitics" to go to "exopolitics (disambiguation)" for now, and then move the current article for exopolitics (which you have deleted) to "politics of outer space" instead (which apparently seems to be a less controversial title), until a consensus can be reached on whether or not it should be moved back to the "exopolitics" namespace, or whether the subject matter is truly irrelevant for a comprehensive encyclopedia of all human knowledge. If the subject matter is truly irrelevant, then the article should only be deleted after extended discussion, preferably with inputs from any experts in political science and/or space exploration. For what little it counts, I myself have at least a college degree, with some experience in international politics and Big Science (at TJNAF). I did go through some of past logs for the "exopolitics" article, and it seems that there was a large amount of material from extraterrestrial conspiracy theories, which is really only a very narrow focus within the much broader goals of exopolitics, which is the international politics of space exploration. Whether or not an extraterrestrial conspiracy exists and is being covered up by any governments or agencies is a topic that is better discussed within the article "UFO conspiracy theories" instead of here. I roundaboutly addressed some of these issues within the "Exopolitics in Fiction" subsection, the principles of which would also apply to any alleged current visitation or agreements with extraterrestrial visitors (there will always be a back-and-forth correspondence between science fiction, science theory, and science fact).
  • If there was a consensus to delete the former article content (which based on what I saw, I think I would agree with), it does not mean that a new rewritten article should also be deleted. The new rewritten article needs to have a new consensus since the subject matter and focus is significantly different from the previous (deleted) material. Nicole Sharp (talk) 06:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

consensus to keep new article

• I am opening a new section here for any discussion on whether the politics of outer space is a relevant topic to be kept on Wikipedia, or if the article should be removed. Please keep in mind that the current article is only a stub for what is a very large topic, and needs a lot of improvement. I think a new subsection that would be good to add would be an overview of the political and ideological arguments for and against the past and future exploration of space (e.g. being an unnecessary tax burden versus being the Manifest Destiny of humankind). Nicole Sharp (talk) 06:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

merge exopolitics with astropolitics

• @Ymblanter: I think that "astropolitics" is an even more controversial title than "exopolitics," especially since "exo-" means "outside" (the atmosphere of Earth), whereas "astro-" means "star" (implying a theoretical galactic politics), though from the article it seems that it is just a borrowing from the use of "astro-" in "astronaut" (i.e. anyone who travels into outer space, and not necessarily someone who is traveling out of the Solar System to the stars).

  I would propose that the article "astropolitics" be removed and redirected to the (less controversial) title of "politics of outer space," with the content currently at "astropolitics" (which seems to be referring to specific theories within political science, and not the politics of outer space in general) to be merged into the more general content (deleted from) "politics of outer space." Nicole Sharp (talk) 07:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

  • @Nicole Sharp:, I am certainly fine with any decision (I have no interest in the subject and came here patrolling new pages - everything created on top of the redirect shows up in the unpatrolled list), but edit-warring is definitely not a good solution. I would propose that you restore Politics of outer space with the comment that a merge request with astropolitics will be filed, and then start a merge request. In a couple of weeks, the problem will be resolved.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Really, both of the articles are just stubs right now in my opinion. As a stub article, I am hoping it will not be a big deal to copy and paste the sections from "astropolitics" over to "politics of outer space," with some minor rewriting. I have the article in my paste buffer at the moment and am in the process of copying and rewriting "astropolitics" to fit into "politics of outer space." I'll fix the redirects in a bit. If there is an opposition to merging the articles, it can be changed back. My biggest concern is whether or not "astropolitics" is a specific theory within political science, and not simply the general study of politics in outer space (i.e. whether it is really synonymous with exopolitics). The stub article as it is written now does not seem to make that clarification. In particular, the wording of "astropolitik" makes it seems more like a specific/applied theory (within exopolitics) and not a general discipline. Nicole Sharp (talk) 07:42, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

    Please do not forget reliable sources, since your version had none. They should provide an answer to this question.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

    • Going through the article titles in the journal Astropolitics, they seem to cover a broad range of topics, so I think it is safe to say that the usage of astropolitics and exopolitics is synonymous. Another excellent source is the DVD documentary Race for the Moon (Dir. William Kronick), which was actually made in 1965, and provides a contemporaneous perspective on the amount of controversy that the Apollo program generated in being regarded as a waste of money that could have been better used for terrestrial problems. There is another well-written but controversial article I read in college (I do not remember the author or title) arguing against the philosophy of a Manifest Destiny into space, such that the entire concept of space exploration has been horribly misguided by science fiction, and that humanity should be working instead on issues of sustainability and environmentalism here on this planet before running out into space and wrecking the rest of the Solar System (so to speak). I think a summary of these kinds of pro versus con perspectives would be really interesting, but would take a good amount of research to complete with references of course. Nicole Sharp (talk) 08:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Neutrality

The last section(Neoliberal advocacy) , in my opinion, does not comply with the NPOV requirement for Wikipedia. The section, several times over, pushes an opinion on space. Quote from article:

" Outer space is becoming a space for capitalism. Space commercialization includes satellite launches, space tourism, asteroid mining and related ventures. This era, driven by private companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, has been dubbed "the new space" by industry insiders."^[who?] Spatial justice in outer space increasingly means the 'justice' of capital, with capitalism replacing humanity."^[opinion]" Geardona (talk) 01:07, 19 November 2023 (UTC)