Let's make puppies in space a thing.
Humanity won't be spacefaring until we can bring our kids, parents, and pets.
How do we measure humanity’s progress to becoming a spacefaring civilization? A previous post outlined several broad categories and this post will flesh that out even further.
First, the goal must be defined: humanity will becoming a truly spacefaring species when it’s as easy to live in space as it is to live on earth. Today, one can relatively easily move to a remote country or region, get a job, find a place to live and generally just live one’s life. Humanity will become spacefaring when space stations or the Moon or Mars are just as easy to access, move to, and live in as, say, Tahiti or Central Asia are today. In short, we will be spacefaring when space is no longer hostile and remote to everyday human life.
Humanity will becoming a truly spacefaring species when it’s as easy to live in space as it is to live on Earth.
Before that will happen there needs to be better transportation, accessible habitation, employment opportunities, and community support. Let’s take these one at a time.
Humanity will be spacefaring when:
You can get there. Regularly scheduled commercial transportation is essential to becoming a spacefaring civilization. In other words: one can buy a ticket on a rocket to a destination in space where one might want to live. Before one can live in space, one has to be able to get there first!
You can live there. Habitation is also essential to becoming spacefaring. There has to be apartments or cabins or modules or something for the newly arrived space settlers to rent or purchase. In short, people need a place to live!
You can get a job there. Once a person is in space and has a place to live, they’ll need a way to support themselves.
You have community support up there. This is a vague concept that is more easily understood as: would you want to have a baby or a pet or an elderly relative with you up there? In other words is the community developed enough to support the most vulnerable and needy members of our communities? Humanity will not be spacefaring until babies are born in space, the elderly can retire in dignity up there, and people can bring their pets.
So, in order to become spacefaring, let’s make puppies in space a thing!
Future posts will discuss how to measure these four categories to understand if humanity is progressing towards becoming spacefaring.
What do you think? Are there other factors that will contribute to humanity becoming spacefaring? Send me a tweet @CuriousCosm0 on Twitter!