“Colonizing” Mars / space colonization
The terminology debate over the word “colonize” off-world
“Colonize” was long the default verb for permanent human settlement off Earth. Astrobiologist Lucianne Walkowicz and others argue the word imports Earth’s colonial violence and erases that history; Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin prefers “settlement” but argues that, absent natives, colonial analogies don’t apply; NASA and other agencies have quietly dropped “colonize.”
What happened
Walkowicz (then NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology) hosted “Becoming Interplanetary” and a linked “Decolonizing Mars” discussion, arguing the vocabulary of “colonization,” “frontier,” and “conquest” recycles harmful narratives.
it’s still not OK to use those narratives, because it erases the history of colonization here on our own planet. (Lucianne Walkowicz)
Under each definition
No existing population or metropole; there is (as far as known) no one to colonize — the crux of the “clean hands” argument.
Settlement without a native population to replace falls outside Wolfe’s definition (no “logic of elimination” target).
No post-independence economic control at issue.
The entire dispute is whether “colonize” is an apt or a poisoned metaphor for off-world settlement.
The case that the label applies
The term normalizes a mindset of conquest and extraction, glamorizes the Columbus/frontier analogy that accompanied real dispossession, and teaches people to see expansion through a colonial lens; agencies’ shift to “settlement”/“human presence” reflects this.
The case against
Zubrin argues that, barring extraterrestrial natives, “the history of Earth’s colonization isn’t really relevant,” and that Mars offers “a chance to create something new with clean hands.” Others note “settlement” carries its own baggage, so no term is neutral — arguably making the whole dispute a semantics debate rather than a colonialism case.
In their words
the one word he shies away from is colony, preferring settlement… ‘On Mars, we have a chance to create something new with clean hands.’
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.