(T)here is a great hunger for people to have a relationship to the cosmos that is not one of extraction: Lucian Walkowicz

In image: Lucian giving a TED Talk

When I was quite young, perhaps around 9 or 10, my mother's friend gifted me a hardbound, slim book on Space. It was my first introduction to a book dedicated only to what lay beyond our sky, to planets, stars, and questions about the beginnings of the universe.

I would lie in bed, eyes closed after reading, imagining the dark expanse and feeling as if I was floating through it. Bursts of light would appear in the endless distance and I would be floating endlessly. I remember asking my mother once, during one such eyes-closed floating expedition, how do I reach the end of Space? After hearing what I was attempting to do, my mother told me not to think about such things since people lose their minds to such questions. Alarmed that the mind can be lost, I stopped my eyes-closed expeditions. But Space remained a subject of curiousity and interest and I returned to it from different angles and doorways over the years -- through literature, art, astrology, music, astronomy. It was actually a talk on music made by the sound of stars that introduced me to astronomer and astrophysicist Lucian Walkowicz. The now-unavailable talk not only introduced me to the creative in Walkowicz but also the social-minded scientist who was attempting to highlight the importance of ethics and consideration when practising science. Over the years, their talks and essays ranged from focusing on protecting Earth, the ethics of space exploration, sound in space, a case study on how the "greater good" is weaponized to justify unilateral actions, and more.

Impressed as I have been with their continuous and persistent effort in socialising the science and being political across all spheres of their life, it was obvious that I wanted to speak to them for this blog. So, I reached out and they graciously agreed to speak to me about their inspiration behind choosing stronomy, their work on the LSST, running JustSpace Alliance, and practising the circus arts. The following is an edited version of our conversation, accompanied by some photographs, shared here with their permssion.

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Aayati: How did you find astronomy? 

Lucian: In the last couple of years of high school, I was part of a research program where I worked in a physics lab and that was the first time I had gotten a chance to experience what doing research was like and I really loved it a lot, and at the end of that summer I asked the woman who was kind of in charge of the programme if there was any work that I could do during school year. She asked, since I liked physics and chemistry, if I had ever thought about doing astronomy. And I said no, not really. She said I would probably like it; it involves a lot of different kinds of science. And so she connected me to a chemistry professor who did chemistry in planetary atmospheres at New York University (I’m from New York city originally, so that was close to me) and I started working with him and I was like oh! This is great! I can study space and space is cool. So I got to do science, but it was like a cool context where it combines all these different science. 

I also saw that you were focusing on astrobiology and one of the things that I think – especially for someone who doesn’t have a lot of context– one of the first connects with space is extraterrestrial life. Or the prospect of it. And when you see that on somebody’s CV as their area of specialisation, it is quite unique and cool. And by the time that you stopped doing that I think you were also researching LSST?

Yeah

Like what was the moment or the state of the research when you left it and are you satisfied with where you left it? 

Just for clarity, I don’t really think of myself as having left research – yeah I mean I left professionally. The work I do right now is much more at the intersection of the social implications for space exploration. So I think of that as a continuum of the work I’ve done for a long time. 

That makes sense.

But yes I think astrobiology I came to in part because– you know astrobiology is like a big umbrella term that encompasses lots of different kinds of science, all about the question of life in the universe. And a lot of those questions intersect with ethical or social questions that I think are very much part of that research that’s not just on the physical science side, you know? 

Yeah

So yeah I also worked and still tangentially work on the Rubin Observatory LSST. Em, so that project just started to have light through the telescope this year. [1]

Beautiful…

But I have been involved in it since 2006 and mostly my work with Rubin Observatory LSST now is that I run this program that teaches data science skills to astronomy grad students because those skills will be so important for using the data from that telescope. I’ve been doing that now for 9 years and we are starting to see students from our first batch get their professorships and become part of the actual faculty of astronomy which is very exciting. 

So this is the work that you’re doing on the side with JustSpace Alliance? Is that what you are referring to?

Yeah so the JustSpace Alliance grew out of my interest in the social impacts of space exploration so yeah that is some of the work that is ongoing.

Are you seeing a lot of or a lot more women coming into this as a field?

Yeah I think the field of astrobiology because it has so much interest from younger generations of astronomers is naturally more diverse than previous years. Because you know a lot of what is driving people’s interests is this proliferation of the discoveries of exoplanets or planets around other stars and that really– they were known since the late 90s but it really picked up in 2009 and beyond. So that I think is you know driving interest for a lot of younger astronomers and because people entering the field are by and large more diverse on gender, race, all kinds of stuff (you know astronomy still has a long way to go). In general that means that the average age in exoplanets is younger than a lot of astronomy and it means that the field is more diverse as well. 

Did anything happen in 2009 for that sudden pique in interest?

The thing that sped up the discovery of exoplanets was the launch of the Kepler Mission in 2009. Kepler discovered so many of them, and was such an important mission, that exoplanets became a very vibrant and exciting field for young astronomers to go into.

What you said about diversity in the field is good, hopeful for the future. And given the work that you’re doing on ethics and justice around space exploration, I’ve been wondering a lot on the topic. Private companies, especially SpaceX and obviously Elon Musk, I think have done a massive damage to the narrative that is popular in ways of how to think about interacting with external planets or the solar system or what our relationship should be when we are considering these things. So I do think you have your work cut out for you when you kind of try to do this. What has the feedback been like for you? Because like I started by saying I do think your work is massively important especially given the state of the world. I mean obviously this kind of relationship is always important i.e. the consideration which is lacking (in everyday space discourse), while at the same time we are growing at a very rapid pace. If you think about AI and the possibilities that are now happening (leaving aside the behind-the-scenes we don’t even have access to), where does that leave you given the work you’re doing? What kind of feedback do you get? What kind of hope do you have?

Yeah that’s a great and a very big question. I think I have been very encouraged by the number of people that are interested in visions of what human beings could do in space that are not what we see from people like Elon Musk or other you know space capitalists who are interested in space only to exploit it.

I think there is a great hunger for people to have a relationship to the cosmos that is not one of extraction.

And so you know we get a lot of interest at Just Space from people who are interested in being part of figuring out what another version of space exploration could look like. Because you know human beings have had a long relationship to space and that relationship has looked a wide variety of ways. The part of space exploration that involves sending technology to space that started you know in the middle of the last century umm has very much been about extraction and exploitation. But I think also at the same time many people will draw a great deal of inspiration from considering space and that one of the things that is powerful about is that when we talk about what humans should do in space and how we should live in space and what are our relationship to these other planets are, we are really talking about the way we think we should live and relate to this planet. And I think when people get talking about things that are happening on earth, the conversation very quickly bogs down in all of the details. But when talking about space, it’s easier to get people to think more flexibly and imaginatively about what possibilities exist and that to me is very powerful because the possibilities that exist for space also exist for earth, even when it’s easy to lose track of that. You know the things that are happening in our world, the systems that exist like oppression, all of those things, they have not been here forever. And they won’t be here forever.

The only thing that has ever changed anything on earth is groups of people who didn’t have power, changing conditions for the better.

You know like why would anyone who has power in an oppressive system ever change it? They don’t. Just historically, they don’t. And yet and yet we look at the history of humanity and we see people change things time and again. And so you know I often try to imagine what it must have been like for all of those people who have come before me and how easy it must have been to feel hopeless and remember that they ultimately succeeded. 

For better or worse, lots of changes have happened and not all of them good and so to me space is both like a place that–  like a real location, that is umm frankly not very far away. You know if you could drive a car straight up off of the earth, you could drive to space in about an hour at a normal speed which is you know it’s really not far away and it’s a real location in and of itself. But it’s also an imaginative location, right like we use it in this way where it’s both a real place and an imaginative space. 

Yeah okay that is excellent. Firstly I mean it’s not news because I have been listening to you for a while, you’re so articulate and somehow convey the ideas quite clearly. This is a funny image that you’ve left me, driving a car up to space. I think something is gonna come up– come from it later. Uh yeah. One of the things that I noticed from what you said is that you feel hopeful because you see the kind of people who are coming to interact with you, you know. So it does seem something that you know is happening at an individual level or a small social ripple in different places. Institutionally, how do you feel? Because you have been associated with quite a few institutions. Do you find the people who are already there to be as receptive?

Yes, sometimes. I think there are different ways that people and this is just in general, not just with space, but like there are different ways that people see the role of institutions. There are many people who believe that the best way to make change is through institutions, umm and that you know this is sort of the classic version of people who go into government service for example. There are people you know who are very willing to work within these institutions, as flawed as they might be. Umm I think there is a role for that. I also think that in general institutions are never the sites of real change umm because of the fact that they are tied to so many other things that the role of institutions is never really to uhm rock the boat, you know? But I do think that within institutions there are people who have good motivation, who are determined to try and use whatever institutional power they have to make change and you know I do think that in some ways, large institutions like NASA are interested in some of the ethical questions around going to space. I also think that sometimes something that can happen when there’s sort of like a new piece of discourse– so with space ethics becoming sort of part of a larger cultural conversation, something that is perhaps a danger is that it makes people think like oh people are talking about space ethics, we should talk about that too but in many cases a large institution say for example NASA is not really interested in doing things that differently and umm in particular with the ethical questions that face us in space one of the things we have to consider is that sometimes the best choice might to be– might be to not do something, to not go to space, to not go to Mars, to not send something to some location, to not mine the moon and in general because large institutions whether they are private companies or you know public institutions like NASA, they have a vested interest in going to those places and doing those things regardless of the ethical questions that face them. And so what they are looking for is ways to do it more ethically. But sometimes the real answer is you shouldn’t do something and they don’t want to hear that. Um so i think that this is a serious challenge when working with large institutions is that sometimes the answer should be that we don’t do something at all and that because they don’t want to hear no, they will look for ways to sort of improve their image while doing the same thing anyway.

Fascinating and makes you kind of a prime candidate to not be in an institution because I’m guessing you might have been rocking the boat quite a bit. Have you– I was actually wondering when you were speaking about space and especially because clearly you feel very strongly about it and um but most of it occupies space for you psychically like in your psyche, right? You are not an astronaut, like you have not visited space right? Has the desire ever come like do you still want to? 

You know I think that I was very influenced by being a child in the 80s who saw the Challenger explode live on television. Um, I– it didn’t occur to me until several years ago, probably within the last 10 years or so because people often ask you know if you care about space like have you ever wanted to be an astronaut? And while I love studying space, I don’t actually particularly have any urge to go there. I and I think it’s actually because I watched the space shuttle blow up on television as a child that I think I was like aah, I’m good.

Hmm okay, that does give it a perspective but um yeah I’m just thinking about people who have that I strong urge of wanting to go to space and I think I think mostly of astronauts when I think that because I’ve heard a lot of people say they want to be an astronaut when they grow up. So there is also already within them that fascination for space working, but not in the same way (as what you described). 

Yeah 

The physical presence there makes a difference (to them). So I think I am trying to connect if you have had an interaction with maybe an astronaut while you were working in this field and what has that been like?

Yeah um I have met a couple of astronauts. I think they are really interesting people. You know they’re very um, I guess in part because some of them have military backgrounds they have sort of a vibe about them that feels like military or feels like a pilot. Like they’re very clearly– and this is i think true of astronaut selection in general– they are chosen to be highly competent but they are also chosen because they have a very specific image. So they are often very clean-cut, they’re very– and this is what I mean by they have like a military air about them– they’re very clean-cut, very put together, very uhm– i don’t know how to exactly describe what the word is that I’m looking for—

In a way, rigid, but not that word?

Yeah sort of buttoned-up, put-together, not necessarily ideologically conservative but they you know are very measured in their tone, they’re very like they tend to be somewhat apolitical and none of these are things that I really use to describe myself. So they’re very different people from me but they have sort of these qualities that seem similar amongst each other which you know, I can understand right? The astronauts in many ways are ambassadors for the space program and um so they are chosen to be not just highly competent but also very palatable to as many people as possible.

Makes sense. So they already are–believe in something that kind of aligns to something like NASA like it’s unlikely NASA would choose a dancer for example or or– by dancer I mean like a very specific artistic profile or a stereotype. 

Yeah and I think there have been people going to space now who are not of traditional astronaut backgrounds but that’s a very recent development.

Oh! Okay, that’s quite cool. 

Yeah

I was wondering because we’ve discussed ethics so much and especially what you said, I mean it’s a radical thought especially in Western thought that sometimes it’s– the right thing to do is to do nothing at all. I think– so one way of looking at so-called West and East (it’s not a great idea to divide the world like that but just for the convenience of conversation) is that West has very much been focused on doing and a very aggressive approach to most things like to see, to do, to put things out, and to take things– there’s a lot of activity going on.

Yeah

So when somebody goes and says you know the best thing to do would be to– and nothing is probably not even the right word because I think for example observation is not doing nothing, studying is not doing nothing, but there is that connotation that has become associated with like direct action and more placid (so to speak) action. So yeah I was wondering if you met someone, had an interaction with someone who was very into, let’s say, going into space, exploring space. How would that ethics kind of you know meet or interact with yours? 

Yeah. It depends on the person I think. You know– so to choose the sort of most oppositional people that I’ve interact(ed) with over my life, there are many people who are very determined to go to space who will take a position like mine and say that I am against progress or against learning or that I don’t like space or I am against technology. You know I think the framing of it is often that people are backwards or that you know we all don’t want to have technology or learning or anything like that which is very silly, obviously. And I think your comment that in the West people are very focused on doing is very correct and I think that that should be recognised as a colonial impulse and that historically you know people who are sort of in dominant US culture now are descendants of European colonists for the most part. We are not the original people who were here. So the thing that you run up against is that people who are the beneficiaries of colonisation by which I mean white Americans in space as an industry, they are not used to hearing “No” and cannot imagine a world in which they don’t get to do at least some version of exactly what they wanted to do before they started the conversation about ethics, and one sees this over and over again with for example directly colonial projects like the telescopes in the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Yeah 

Those are highly contested because of the fact that the land was never given to the University of Hawaii to put telescopes there and now you know like what the sort of powers that be do is they create for example education programs for students who are of native Hawaiian descent and they do all of this outreach for the community. But the trade-off that they are offering is you can have this education program as long as we get to keep your land. And it’s a way of trying to make something that has ultimately been refused by the community like obviously native Hawaiians are not a monolith and people have different opinions but there’s a strong objection from a lot of the native Hawaiian community against the telescopes. And what the colonising force of the telescopes and astronomers are trying to do is offer them a consolation prize that they are not offering it out of the goodness of their hearts; they’re offering it because they have this colonial outpost and so you know the starting point from which most astronomers come to that conflict about the telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea is what can we give you that will let us do what we want and not what do you want? Because if the answer is no telescopes, they don’t want to hear that answer. And so you know I think– truly to think about going into space for example, going to another planet or something like that, there’s no reason that that has to happen now, if it ever happens. There’s– the cure for cancer is not on Mars. Like the reason that you hear people like Elon Musk imply that we will have to go somewhere besides Earth to save humanity is because otherwise he doesn’t have a justification and on its best day, Mars is much worse than planet Earth and like if we knew how you know– as you’ve heard me say I’m sure– if we knew how to change a planet so that its environment was more hospitable, we wouldn’t have climate change. So, you know the idea that not doing things as fast as humanly possible might be a better choice is very alien to a lot of people who have vested interests. And by vested interests I mean financial interests, egotistical interests. Like it is okay to want something. You know human beings all have egos.

We all want to do certain things, but we don’t get to do everything that we want to do because some of the things we might want to do are not good ideas!

Yeah but I think not enough people tell some people that this is not a good idea. That’s why they reach those places. 

Yeah

So quite quite sad because it’s very rare for me to interact with scientists and that’s another thing. You’re highly interdisciplinary and I think that’s incredibly needed, especially in our day and age– previously also, I mean it’s not like polymaths haven’t existed, but right now things have become so set. It’s not just traditionally, it’s also in the way people look at and think about things and talk about them that I don’t think there’s been a more urgent time for things to interact. So when… you see some of the things that you’re doing which connects music and then art and then the circus arts, you have astronomy and you’re teaching– in a way it shows like the way a human being ideally should be functioning in society like with arms kind of you know– haha I just realised I spoke about you like that but I honestly mean it. Like there has become like a siloedness and a kind of rigidity and boxing of human beings which I also think contributes to the way people look at and think about things and discuss, right? So, I think now I will also kind of connect– cause we are also kind of closing in on time – you have made a rather, from what one can see from an external view, a very drastic move into the circus arts. Again I don’t think so because I think everything is connected; it’s just about how you want to make that connection. I mean we all have a body and what we want to do with that body is what it essentially boils down to. So you’ve found your way to I think trapeze and the silks? So how did that happen?

Yeah so I started doing aerial arts about 9 years ago. I have a disability – autoimmune arthritis – that requires me to exercise quite a lot. It helps manage my pain, keeps the inflammation down. Unfortunately when you exercise a lot, it gets very boring. So for many years, I experimented with what would work well. I used to be a runner but then that stopped really working very well. I also sort of got tired of it and then I did a lot of rock climbing, I did a lot of surfing and then when I moved to Chicago, I met the woman who owns the school that I just graduated from– Aloft Circus Arts, and she was at a conference I was at and she was having a session called, Learn to do a Backflip. It was an hour long and I was like how is someone going to teach me to do a backflip in an hour, that doesn’t seem possible. So I was like I am gonna go see what this is about. And so yeah she was teaching us what I now realise is pretty easy acrobatics, but very accessible and I was like wow, this is so cool! Uh, and I was looking for– because I’d just moved to Chicago and all of my friends who did rock climbing and surfing were back in New York, so I didn’t have that anymore and I was looking for something interesting to do that would give me movement, strength and flexibility because all of those things sort of helped keep my issues in check so I was like oh, I will start taking these classes. So I started taking classes and I really loved it. I started on the silks and then got much more interested and much more into it. I branched out and tried different apparatuses. In 2018, about 3 years into it, I started performing. And then the transition for me to doing it professionally was that in 2021, we were deep into the pandemic, I was working from home and the school announced that they were going to have this part-time, what they call, Prep Program which was intended to be like 3-months where you could get 20 hours a week of Circus School. So it was like a taster of what going to Circus School might be like and at the time I didn’t think I was going to drop my life and go to Circus School. I just thought it would be like a nice thing to do. So I signed up and I rearranged my job and everything around it so that I could like work nights instead. 

I was in it for 3 weeks and then I got hit by a car while I was walking and was very seriously injured. My external injuries were okay but I had a brain injury and I had to go on Disability Leave from work for 12 weeks and you know I had already paid tuition for this program and my physical therapist was like, “look I know you don’t feel good but you need to start trying to do these things because it will help you heal from your injuries.” So I started going back to school. I was off of work completely and I wasn’t able to do very much but I would go and try and do a little bit of stuff every day. I was like I can’t get my money back, so… and it really helped me heal from my injuries, it helped me regain function, it was artistically very fulfilling. Then my Disability Leave wore off... and I had to go back to work. And I was already very unhappy at my job before this happened. I wanted to leave before the Pandemic. And when the Pandemic happened, my partner was unemployed so I couldn’t afford to. So I was already very unhappy at work and I went back and I had a meeting with my manager where she asked me to quantify how much slower I was like mentally–

That’s such a strange question.

I got off the call and I was like I hate this job and I need to quit. And by then I was like you know what? Maybe I will apply for Circus School. Who knows? I probably won’t even get in but maybe I will apply. So I applied and then I got in. I did like the audition and everything; I still had brain injury and it took me another 6 months to heal from it. So I did the audition and everything with brain injury and yeah I got in and then I was like I’m going to quit my job and go to Circus School. 

Speaking of artistic things, are you still making music?

Yeah I just started a new band a couple of weeks ago. Very fun, very chill. Low pressure, just lots of fun, silly songs. 

Footnote

1. The Rubin Observatory is the flagship telescope for astronomy in the US (with many international partners). A gigantic observatory like Rubin takes a very very long time to build, not only because it is costly, but because it is cutting edge technology. Both the hardware for the telescope and camera need to be built, as does the software that runs the telescope and camera, and also the software that handles, processes, and stores the data. Observatories are like building any huge scientific project, like a particle collider-- they are enormous feats of engineering, and require many years to complete. I am not the head of the Rubin Observatory by any means! But, I have held various leadership positions in different aspects of the preparatory work to build and deploy the telescope, especially with regard to helping the astronomical community build the skills they need to use its data. - Lucian Walkowicz

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Lucian Walkowicz (Lucianne Walkowicz) is an astronomer, movement artist, and educator. As co-Founder of the JustSpace Alliance, Walkowicz studies how outer space serves as the site where humanity crafts its futures, and works to make those futures more just (both in space, and on Earth). Over their 20+ years in astronomy, Walkowicz has contributed to major astronomical projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, NASA's Kepler Mission, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Walkowicz speaks and writes regularly on topics at the intersection of science and society, with works appearing on TED.com, Slate, The Washington Post, Vox, and more. Their multidisciplinary artworks have been shown at Carnegie Hall, the New York Hall of Science, Artisphere in Washington DC, and in many other formal and informal settings.

Walkowicz holds a BS in Physics and Astronomy from Johns Hopkins University, an MS and PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington, and held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and Princeton. You can learn more about them here.