I’ve spent my life interested in spaceflight. I kept subscribing to Omni as a kid even though I didn’t have the pocket money for it (I’d get the first couple issues free as part of the promotion…then try again the next year). I was excited, then crushed, by the launch of the Challenger in 1986. I desperately hoped for, and received, the super cool transformer, Sky Lynx, in the 1980s (I kept that toy a very long time, divested it myself of it during a move, and regretted it deeply soon afterward). I’ve talked about the 1969 Moon landing with my mom and looked into my college’s archives to see if we have records of student activity (we don’t, but I imagine it’s because the landing was during the summer).

As you might imagine, then, I’m rather enthusiastic about the current Artemis II mission to the Moon.

Anyway, it’s exciting that, for the first time in more than half a century, we are sending people to the Moon. It’ll be awesome to land people there for the first time in my life. But just the other night someone asked me how I do want us to travel into space (if I oppose Elon’s path), and I answered. I’d like to see international cooperation. A post-Earth government of shared internationalism will be an enormous amount better than Elon’s libertarian, company-town fascism (see here and here). The Overview Effect for us all.

I want us to go to space, but I want us to go together. If we want an indefinite (even infinite?) future for humanity, that’s the path.

If you want to know more, see my new book.