Our Space Future
Our Space Future
Contents
The Reality Facing Us
Choices
Our Fragility
We Are The Architects Of The Future
Ad Astra
Positive Gain: Humanity’s Native State
Shared Purpose
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Space Age 2.0 is underway.
If we’re to make it a success, it will require our collective determination. That we once again have “the right stuff”.
Our space future depends on each of us increasing our own knowledge and understanding of the things that will get us there.
Space is the answer.
We should all be interested.
The Reality Facing Us
Earth is vulnerable, and not, primarily, because of us.
The Earth is vulnerable in a cosmic sense; a problem for us because we don’t yet have other options.
Until we do have options we have a bit of a situation which creates two major—if seemingly in conflict—mandates when it comes to our current world.
We must:
Take care of it.
Find ways off of it.
Not to escape; Earth is great. Merely to have that choice. Your home town is probably great too, but you’d hate never being able to leave.
Especially if a hurricane was on the way.
Choices
Whether you yourself ultimately ever go to space isn’t at the root of it. You may not even want to.
But in the same way not everyone went to sea back in the day, it was important they supported and encouraged those who did (or at least didn’t try to stop them). The promise of those journeys were what set us free.
The same will be true with space.
The main thing is that we develop new technologies so we can go elsewhere, when and if needed, when and if wanted.
In the home town analogy, you may never want to leave, but how terrible to imagine you never could?
Our Fragility
This isn’t Chicken Little (the scared chicken who was afraid the sky was falling), or doom and gloom. Becoming extraplanetary should be a game. We’re too amazing, too powerful not to continue to expand – and have a little fun doing it.
It’s merely worth noting the facts facing us, which sets the premise of the directive for constant improvement and expansion.
Our playing field at the moment is inherently fragile to our existence, no matter how sturdy it seems.
Let’s rephrase that a little.
The Earth, this ball of rock, even by our current standards, is indestructible. Even at our current level of technology, with our bombs and our guns (did anyone just hear the refrain from Zombie by the Cranberries?), there’s nothing we humans could do to fundamentally alter its shape. To us Earth is an impervious home.
Yet, one well-placed other-rock could change that.
And there are plenty of other rocks out there.
If our planet was a basketball, the crust we live on would be like a wrapping of tin foil. If it were an apple, the land we walk and build on would be the thin skin.
Pretty easy to envision that crinkled away with the right application of force, whether internal or external.
We’re fragile, not the Earth. It’s our own fragility we must safeguard against.
It’s never good to be that desperately dependent on anything.
We Are The Architects Of The Future
These are all obvious conclusions drawn by many over the centuries. None of this is anything new.
However this is finally the period in civilized history during which we could conceivably, finally, do something about it.
Now is the time. Though many have said that before, too. For the first time in history we’ve reached a point where we actually have options. We could figure this out. Engineer solutions.
But we have to work for them. Make them priorities.
Together.
Fortunately, many among us already are.
Space is hard. Yet we’ve demonstrated, time and again, we have what it takes to do hard things.
Earth can’t be our only option.
Ad Astra
A classic phrase, Ad Astra means “thus one goes to the stars”. That’s the translation from Latin.
In the space community it’s used simply to mean “to the stars”.
Can we achieve such a grand goal?
Only if we cooperate toward that end.
Throughout history we’ve demonstrated we can both help and harm each other. It’s true that with increasing power comes an increasing capacity to do each other in. There’s no denying most new tech is driven by the dollar sign, the demand for newer/better weapons systems, the competition to gain ground on and exceed those who aren’t us, etcetera, etcetera.
Awful headlines to the contrary, our human impulse, at the end of the day, is more toward help, less toward harm.
We’ve possessed the ability to wipe ourselves out in small or large numbers for some time, and while we occasionally do so, survival and improvement always prevail.
Else we wouldn’t have come forward, building the massively complex civilizations we have today.
And so, looking objectively at these facts:
Humanity is still here.
Humanity has advanced.
One must conclude that, despite any self-destructive impulses, despite any bad seeds among us, the intentions of the vast majority are basically toward improvement.
Though we often fall, we more often redeem ourselves, leading to positive growth.
Positive Gain: Humanity’s Native State
Humanity tends to correct the problems we ourselves cause. Less and less are we the effect of our environment, increasingly we’re its master.
With that power, and with our human faults, that control often errs, but, again, we are self-correcting, and our overall thrust is toward the betterment of our existence.
Our native state finds us striving toward positive gain.
Sure, the next world we call home may be no more utopia than this one. We might continue bad habits.
But we need that next world.
Because we’ll also continue the good habits. Which far outweigh the bad.
And we’ll have another world on which to live.
Our existence may at times be flawed, duly noted, but it’s worth ensuring.
Shared Purpose
With a bigger challenge to occupy us, other problems tend to fall away.
Nothing works without a humanity in alignment, without a shared purpose. The goal to conquer space must become that shared purpose.
Such a goal could be stated:
Space and the furtherance of our abilities to advance as a world, achieving a sustainable extraplanetary and – eventually – extrasolar existence.
The future will not just happen. We must reach for it and grab it.
We must create it.
What might the future hold?
That is entirely up to us. After all, the best way to predict the future is to create it.
Ad Astra.
Together, to the stars.
Want to hear from us Friday mornings?
Every Friday our chief correspondent, Tai Rade (you’ll love her take on things), sends a recap of the week in space.
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