Space for Everybody Else
There are people out there who don't watch rocket launches for fun. Some of them don't even know what an O'Neill cylinder is. How do we talk to those who don't live and breathe this stuff?
If you met me in real life, you wouldn’t think I devote a substantial amount of time to thinking about and talking about space colonisation. I don’t usually walk around in a SpaceX t-shirt and I tend not to use Starship flight rates as a conversation starter with strangers.
However, if colonisation is to succeed, it needs broader support than a small group of enthusiasts. The space community seems to me to spend a lot of time talking with itself, at conferences and on podcasts and on social media, and not a lot of time broadening the circle of people interested in and excited about the prospect of becoming a multi-planetary species.
A Note on Terminology.
I tend usually to talk about space colonisation. For many people, the term “space settlement” is preferred, due to the perceived negative associations of the word colonisation. I had thought this was a reasonable substitution until I saw peo…
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