Shifting Baselines

Giant, gleaming letters spell out STARBASE. As eccentric rocket-launch enthusiasts flock to Elon Musk’s playground in Boca Chica, Texas, local ecosystems bear the hidden costs of humanity’s ambitions for Mars. 

“This is our Apollo program,” one Musk devotee proclaims. Yet, as in the 1960s, space travel was never destined to be sustainable. While some gaze skywards, entranced by the gleam of SpaceX rockets and the promise of an interplanetary future, ecologists and biologists move carefully through scorched earth and scattered debris, meticulously documenting the damage inflicted on fragile habitats – and the ever-expanding halo of space junk encircling the planet. In this arresting black-and-white documentary, an elderly fisherman in Belize reflects on how the steady shrinking of average fish size goes unnoticed just two generations on. Our sense of what is ‘normal’, the film suggests, is constantly shifting. 

– Thomas Streekstra

Can’t make it to this screening?

InScience 2026 continues from 11–15 March at Visum Mundi, Wageningen. Discover the full InScience Satellite programme here to find out when this film screens in Wageningen.