Space Race

Despite the fact that in my sleep-addled new mom state, I’ve barely been able to keep abreast of world events, I have sadly been unable to avoid the news of the billionaire space race. On the idea that we might all live in space, I have basically two thoughts: one is that people who are excited about this tend to wildly underestimate how impossible it would be; this thread does a great job of explaining.

And two, nobody seems to be pointing out how incredibly miserable and hopeless it would be for human beings to live in space, even if we could somehow manage it. Imagine never again feeling the grass under your feet and the sun on your face. Never feeling a breeze, or seeing flowers. Never climbing a mountain or swimming in the ocean. Even if it were possible to somehow exist for some time in space or in a highly artificial environment on a nearby planet, we would all be sickly, miserable, and horrifically depressed, and would surely die out in a generation or so. And if I, the world’s biggest indoor kid, who as a child used to regularly fantasize about being locked up in prison so that I could just read all day and nobody would make me go outside for an hour, blanch at the thought of existing in a space vessel or a terraformed bubble, the rest of you normals wouldn’t make it a week.

Incidentally, if you have never read about the Biosphere 2 experiment, I highly recommend it. It’s a fascinating story. Or maybe I’m actually thinking about a short story I once read that was loosely based on Biosphere 2. Whatever.