Ryan Haraki
This is an essay on what I believe the world will look like with an early iteration of the space economy, and why it is inevitable.
Our next obvious step is space. All living species are conquerors by nature. As the numbers of a population of a species increase, that species needs more space to accommodate its increased population. Not all of Earth is habitable. It can be accommodated because we are intelligent, but not comfortable. A logical argument would be that space is much less habitable than Antarctica or the middle of the Sahara desert, to which I would respond asking if one would rather live uncomfortably confined to the inevitability of overpopulation and natural disaster or live uncomfortably with the hope of finding more comfortable accommodation amongst the stars.
By now, we have conquered Earth. Great discoverers have made the unknown known. It’s our turn to conquer the Solar System. I believe this is going to start with the Moon, rather than the popular opinion that we are going to Mars. The Moon may be less habitable, but it is exponentially more convenient from a logistics perspective.
The Moon is only 3 days away, as compared to Mars being a 7-month trip. This makes transportation (the most difficult problem) exponentially quicker. By building tech aimed at early space colonization, like human-friendly space stations, gateways, and self-sustaining bases on planetary bodies we will see an exponential growth in technology across all sectors. This is because of the nature of space. When you study space and planets, you study all areas of science. Planets include fields like geology, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, biology, and everything else we use to study Earth. When creating technology to conquer and travel throughout outer space, we are dealing with physics, math, and many of the previously mentioned sciences (studying humans in zero-gravity habitats, for example, helps broaden our understanding of the human body). The need to innovate to get to space will lead to us discovering many new things we would not have otherwise discovered if we were not working on such difficult problems.
An early space economy within the next 10-50 years is going to feature day-one versions of what we will have in the future. I believe this will include things like a self-sustaining base on the Moon complete with a mining operation, a lunar gateway to help spacecraft prepare for the journey across the solar system, significantly more space stations in orbit of Earth, the beginnings of a commercial space economy, and potentially even more for ships across the solar system. Many humans will be permanently living in space, a plethora of new jobs will be created to help drive the space economy. Launches will be such a regular thing for both interplanetary travel and space travel that spaceports - airports for launches - will exist to accommodate the increased demand. The price of spaceflight will go down exponentially as new and more efficient methods of spaceflight are discovered. This will present new problems and pose new questions. For example, what will the environmental effects of a space economy and regular launches be?
I believe much of this will be accomplished within our lifetimes, sooner than many may think. Much “movie tech” is being developed faster than it seems. Brain chips, gene-editing, baby cloning, space factories, and even humanoid robots are all currently being worked on by ambitious teams. The more people we have solving difficult technical problems, creating life-changing technology, and breaking new grounds, the faster this is going to accelerate.