Abstract: This article examines the semantic shift from Spaceship Earth to Lifeboat Earth in contemporary planetary discourse. Taking recent rhetoric surrounding the Artemis II mission as its point of departure, it argues that the description of Earth as a “lifeboat” marks a significant radicalisation of an older metaphorical field. Whereas the Apollo era helped naturalise the image of Earth as a closed, fragile, and governable spaceship, the lifeboat metaphor recodes planetary closure in the harsher language of scarcity, emergency, triage, and conditional inclusion. The article first reconstructs the semantic formation of Spaceship Earth, showing that it emerged not as a spontaneous by-product of astronautic experience, but as part of a broader political, scientific, and cultural preparation. It then revisits the argument that spaceship semantics are already structurally totalising before turning to Garrett Hardin’s lifeboat ethics to show how lifeboat semantics radicalise the older spaceship imaginary from within. A final step situates this semantic mutation within a broader planetary theatre in which both Earthrise and contemporary Artemis discourse function less as innocent revelations than as powerful condensations of historically prepared ways of seeing and governing the planet. The article concludes that the re-emergence of lifeboat language signals a passage from planetary control to planetary selection.
Keywords: Carrying capacity, scarcity, triage, closure, Spaceship Earth, emergency governance.
Recommended citation: Roth S. (2026), From Spaceship to Lifeboat: Artemis II and the Radicalisation of a Planetary Perspective, Manuscript, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23679.16804.
This preprint is available for download ↓ here ↓ or at reseachgate.net: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23679.16804.
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