Christopher Wanjek’s journey to publishing his book, entitled Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, began when Harvard University offered him the opportunity to write on any topic for a book series.
As a senior writer at NASA for ten years, Christopher Wanjek looked forward to writing on topics that he was already familiar with: the big bang, black holes, and gravitational waves. However, he quickly found that all his topics of expertise were already taken and decided to turn his eyes on a slightly different topic: space colonization.
Most astrophysicists believe that space colonization is so complicated, tedious, and difficult, it isn’t worth discussing yet. We just aren’t at that point where we can think of going to space.
However, Christopher Wanjek’s book doesn’t explore the nitty-gritty mechanics or quantum physics behind humans conquering the moon and stars. Instead, he gives us the opportunity to view the space race and the growing space industry in a different light. The main question he works to answer in his book is: why would we go to space, and then stay up there?
Christopher Wanjek likened our current perspective of living in space to living on Mount Everest. While the most seasoned mountain climbers dream of eventually reaching the summit, nobody lives on the summit itself because it’s not practical. So are there any economic and emotional motivations for people on the ground, like you and I, to reach and settle on the moon?
Alexander McCaig explained that according to Christopher Wanjek’s book, there are three main reasons humans support space exploration. We either want to go to space because we have religious reasons, economic reasons, or for war—like in the space race.
Of the three, war is the easiest reason humans can resonate with. It has already happened before, between the US and Russia. And Alexander McCaig notes that getting there isn’t the big thing—it’s the process of developing the technology that we need to get to the end goal that counts.
Christopher Wanjek gave a comprehensive logical process for making space settlements a reality. First, the involvement of tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is a great first step because it generates interest, and eventually a market, for people to go into space. While this journey is only accessible to the super wealthy, continued hype for this venture could see more people go into space as prices are lowered and it becomes more accessible. Here, the space tourism industry takes its first steps.
The next step is to have people in lower earth orbit, like the International Space Station. Their participation in the market can be valuable because their presence generates competition. This competition serves as an incentive for players in the market to innovate and make resources more affordable, which would in turn stimulate the space industry overall.
Now that we have clear and tangible steps that we can take to make space colonization a reality, the next question is: how can we incentivize humanity to support it?
Christopher Wanjek shared that in his experience, many people doubted the urgency of exploring space. After all, humanity already has tons of problems on earth, so why shouldn’t we just focus on our own planet first?
He pointed out that this is a common misunderstanding because everything developed for the space industry has helped earth. For example, communication satellites help broadcast television signals around the world. Weather satellites allow us to predict future weather patterns.
In the future, space holds even more in store for us earthlings. Since there’s uranium on the moon, we could develop the technology and infrastructure to build nuclear power plants. The moon also doesn’t have any dust clouds, so we could find a way to harness solar energy and then transport it to earth.
Of course, the timeline for this venture will probably span decades. If the ice race to Antarctica took a ton of manpower, imagine how much more it would take for us to be comfortable in space.
Despite our technologies developing at an unprecedented pace, space colonization may still be decades or even centuries away. This is an intergenerational effort that will take plenty of collaboration from humanity as a collective.
Most of us have never really thought about the implications of settling down away from earth. Like climbing Mount Everest, it just sounded like a cool activity to check off the bucket list. Christopher Wanjek’s research has given us so much meaningful insight into the tangible effects of expanding outside our little blue and green globe.
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