Today is the start of a momentous period in the history of humanity.
Today may be the first launch of the rocket that will allow humanity to escape the bounds of Earth and become a multi-planetary species.
[Source: SpaceX]
Starship and Super Heavy
This is by far the largest rocket ever created by humanity and its capacity, efficiency and, most importantly, rapid reusability, heralds a new era of cheap access to space. Not just earth orbit, but the entire solar system and potentially beyond.
This will enable humanity to settle the solar system in large numbers, access the endless resources of the asteroid belt and open to human settlement tracts of land as large as those on Earth.
It will mean an end to dangerous (and incorrect even on Earth) Malthusian ideas about limited resources, provide the physical space for freedom, liberty, innovation and entrepreneurship to flourish without the dead hand of established interests.
Why this is immensely important
Hiveans and others who share the genuine belief that cryptocurrency can dramatically improve the world, see every day how established interests fight back against positive change.
This is natural in a seemingly closed system, which too many people wrongly believe is a zero-sum game. Elites fight to preserve their positions of power and privilege and have the means to block or subvert most developments (including technological ones) which threaten their positions and wealth.
The last frontiers on Earth closed more than a century ago. There is barely a single scrap of land on the whole planet that is not claimed by one nation state or another. Projects like Liberland (
Because even if we achieve freedom in the online world, we are still physical beings and need to be free physically, not just mentally.
This is just one of the many reasons why the exploration and settlement of the Solar System, starting with Mars, is so important.
The best expression of these reasons is set out in a document of which I was a founding endorsee 25 years ago and which is a major inspiration for Elon Musk himself.
I have highlighted what I consider the most important paragraphs.
The Mars Society Founding Declaration - August 1998
This declaration describes the motivation for the Mars Society. It was ratified by 700 attendees at the organization’s founding convention held in August 1998 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.
The time has come for humanity to journey to the planet Mars.
We’re ready. Though Mars is distant, we are far better prepared today to send humans to the Red Planet than we were to travel to the Moon at the commencement of the space age. Given the will, we could have our first crews on Mars within a decade.
The reasons for going to Mars are powerful.
We must go for the knowledge of Mars. Our robotic probes have revealed that Mars was once a warm and wet planet, suitable for hosting life’s origin. But did it? A search for fossils on the Martian surface or microbes in groundwater below could provide the answer. If found, they would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and, by implication, reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view learning our true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.
We must go for the knowledge of Earth. As we begin the twenty-first century, we have evidence that we are changing the Earth’s atmosphere and environment in significant ways. It has become a critical matter for us better to understand all aspects of our environment. In this project, comparative planetology is a very powerful tool, a fact already shown by the role Venusian atmospheric studies played in our discovery of the potential threat of global warming by greenhouse gases. Mars, the planet most like Earth, will have even more to teach us about our home world. The knowledge we gain could be key to our survival.
We must go for the challenge. Civilizations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. The time is past for human societies to use war as a driving stress for technological progress. As the world moves towards unity, we must join together, not in mutual passivity, but in common enterprise, facing outward to embrace a greater and nobler challenge than that which we previously posed to each other. Pioneering Mars will provide such a challenge. Furthermore, a cooperative international exploration of Mars would serve as an example of how the same joint-action could work on Earth in other ventures.
We must go for the youth. The spirit of youth demands adventure. A humans-to-Mars program would challenge young people everywhere to develop their minds to participate in the pioneering of a new world. If a Mars program were to inspire just a single extra percent of today’s youth to scientific educations, the net result would be tens of millions more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers and doctors. These people will make innovations that create new industries, find new medical cures, increase income, and benefit the world in innumerable ways to provide a return that will utterly dwarf the expenditures of the Mars program.
We must go for the opportunity. The settling of the Martian New World is an opportunity for a noble experiment in which humanity has another chance to shed old baggage and begin the world anew; carrying forward as much of the best of our heritage as possible and leaving the worst behind. Such chances do not come often, and are not to be disdained lightly.
We must go for our humanity. Human beings are more than merely another kind of animal, -we are life’s messenger. Alone of the creatures of the Earth, we have the ability to continue the work of creation by bringing life to Mars, and Mars to life. In doing so, we shall make a profound statement as to the precious worth of the human race and every member of it.
We must go for the future. Mars is not just a scientific curiosity; it is a world with a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, possessing all the elements that are needed to support not only life, but technological society. It is a New World, filled with history waiting to be made by a new and youthful branch of human civilization that is waiting to be born. We must go to Mars to make that potential a reality. We must go, not for us, but for a people who are yet to be. We must do it for the Martians.
Believing therefore that the exploration and settlement of Mars is one of the greatest human endeavors possible in our time, we have gathered to found this Mars Society, understanding that even the best ideas for human action are never inevitable, but must be planned, advocated, and achieved by hard work. We call upon all other individuals and organizations of like-minded people to join with us in furthering this great enterprise. No nobler cause has ever been. We shall not rest until it succeeds.
[Source: https://www.marssociety.org/founding-declaration/]
I am immensely pleased that this most noble cause which I embraced over 25 years ago is now becoming a reality.
I hope to see human cities on Mars within my lifetime (perhaps even with my own eyes).
Please vote for my Hive witness. (KeyChain or HiveSigner)