Why explore and settle space?

Many people ask this question, mainly to determine if the costs involved are worth it, both in terms of human life and money. Visionaries are capable of discerning a future when societies travel among the planets and stars. But convincing taxpayers, policymakers and the general public has been difficult.

Perhaps the best way to think about this issue is to approach it from a different perspective -- one that looks from afar and focuses in.

We have about a million years of evidence showing that humans (and our near-ancestors such as Homo erectus) have roamed extensively across the globe. Migration is a key aspect of human behavior.

All life is mobile to some extent, but humans have taken migration to a sophisticated extreme, having explored and settled some of the most hostile regions of Earth. Human migration can take place for reasons ranging from war, to famine, to curiosity, but the process generally follows four stages: exploration, pioneering, settlement and maturation.

Initially, an individual or group will venture into the unknown, perhaps in hopes of locating new sources of food, wealth, territory or even self-esteem. Often, these explorers never return, their voyages becoming legend over time. Occasionally, however, some emerge from their journey to tell of great riches to be had or of fantastic places worthy of further investigation.

The coming century is the beginning of another revolution in biology: the period when life on Earth awkwardly enters space and eventually finds new homes among the planets and stars.
     

Since most of us are attracted to mysterious places and the acquisition of things, we eventually will follow the explorers to find out what the fuss is about. This second stage of migration describes a pioneering effort, when nature becomes significantly altered by organized human interaction with natural resources.

Pioneers who are successful at making a living in an environment once considered hostile become founders of a settlement. Settlements are permanent social constructs and require a host of capabilities including adequate access to resources and a set of rules or laws overseen by some sort of government.

Over time, if the settlement grows, it matures into a city, usually surrounded by territory. More cities are erected, and infrastructures are designed to take on heavier loads of human traffic. The territories around cities undergo further evolution into complex social systems called kingdoms, empires or nation-states.

This migratory process occurs all the time, although in today's world it might not appear so obvious. The daily migratory behavior of humans can be called micro-migration, while macro-migration typically takes place over great expanses of time and involves entire populations. It is the study of human macro-migration that illuminates the sometimes confusing and occasionally frightening processes of our civilization, processes that can overwhelm us at the individual level.

Our migration into space, a matter that is confusing and frustrating to those of us going about our daily lives, suddenly appears as a reasonable extension of our macro-migratory behavior when the entirety of human history is considered. Barring unforeseen circumstances or catastrophes, it is highly likely we will explore, settle and erect a civilization at least spanning the solar system.

From a national policy perspective, the process described above serves as a foundation from which carefully crafted direction and leadership could effect our first true steps into space. Our national space policy should specifically address the three space sectors: civil space, commercial space and military space. The movement into the space medium should take place in progressively expanding wave fronts away from the Earth, with civil space programs (exploration) leading the way, commercial space industries (pioneering and settling) filling in rapidly behind and military operations bringing up the rear to provide security for established settlements and infrastructures.

This simple picture makes the messy business of national space policymaking more consistent, purposeful and efficient. We are on the threshold of a totally new level in the evolution of civilization, and we have the opportunity to take the first purposeful steps into this infinite natural environment.

Our remarkable achievements in technology and society brought about a revolution in biological systems that's justly given its own place on Earth's geological timeline: the Holocene Epoch. The coming century is the beginning of another revolution in biology: the period when life on Earth awkwardly enters space and eventually finds new homes among the planets and stars. This period will be called the Astracene Epoch.