Mutupo / Natsai Audrey Chieza (UK), Karl Aspelund (US)
The next chapter of the human story will see us become a space-faring species, wandering nomads traversing the solar system within a century. Today public and private sectors across the world are developing strategies to expand cosmic exploration, beginning with the moon, then to Mars by 2033. New technologies, infrastructure for long-term planetary habitation, and emergent markets are the primary drivers of a colonial space expansion. Innovations required to exist “out there” will generate unimaginable wealth and so-called techno-utopian futures for life “down here”. Urgent questions arise: who gets to colonise the solar system and what does it mean that their ideas seed those human and non-human futures? Is it possible to dream of other worlds beyond the those presented to us through a privatised “cosmos imaginarium”? What new stories could we tell so other ways and reasons to be multi-planetary can emerge?
Credit: Natsai Audrey Chieza, Karl Aspelund
Mutupo / Natsai Audrey Chieza (UK), Karl Aspelund (US)
The next chapter of the human story will see us become a space-faring species, wandering nomads traversing the solar system within a century. Today public and private sectors across the world are developing strategies to expand cosmic exploration, beginning with the moon, then to Mars by 2033. New technologies, infrastructure for long-term planetary habitation, and emergent markets are the primary drivers of a colonial space expansion. Innovations required to exist “out there” will generate unimaginable wealth and so-called techno-utopian futures for life “down here”. Urgent questions arise: who gets to colonise the solar system and what does it mean that their ideas seed those human and non-human futures? Is it possible to dream of other worlds beyond the those presented to us through a privatised “cosmos imaginarium”? What new stories could we tell so other ways and reasons to be multi-planetary can emerge?
Credit: Natsai Audrey Chieza, Karl Aspelund