These past few weeks, I’ve been
dedicating more of my time to audio and video recording and editing.
This includes creating the audiobook version of my book Rise of the Space Age Millennials. Because I live with three other humans, two of
them very energetic and noisy, I can only record late at night after
others have gone to bed so I can achieve the necessary quiet to
hopefully pass Audible’s quality standards.
(Tip to authors who plan to release an
audiobook: consider recording it before you release the paper and
ebook versions of your book. It’s embarrassing how many typos I’m
discovering even after reading the book aloud to myself previously
and passing it by an editor. A second paper edition of my book might
be in order!)
The last chapter of my book, How Far
We’ll Soar, provides an outlook on the hopes and dreams of
millennials working in or studying to work in the space sector. From
the first footsteps on Mars to private space stations to discovering
life on exoplanets, millennials have high hopes for the future.
That was before the coronavirus
SARS-CoV-2 infected the world, locked many of us in our homes, and
disrupted work in all industries, including the space industry.
A few days ago I conducted an informal
poll on Twitter asking when NASA will achieve its first human lunar
return in its Artemis program, currently still officially scheduled
for 2024. With 265 respondents, 88% predicted 2026 or later. Some
commented doubting whether, in our current times with our current
financial and political priorities, NASA would return humans to the
Moon at all, let alone go on to Mars and do the other things.
I haven’t yet narrated and recorded
the last chapter of Rise of the Space Age Millennials, but I have
recently recorded the second chapter, Why We Boldly Go. I asked
millennials why we humans explore space. Opinions are varied, but one
concept kept coming up again and again: we are explorers. Exploring
is in our nature. No matter the challenges needed to climb the
mountain, we will climb it, because it’s there, and that’s just
who we are.
We rise. We are a people who rise to
challenges, who rise above the confines of Earth that pull us down.
We see the horizon, the distant lands containing the unknown,
and we want to know. We need to know. And so, we go. And eventually,
we take all of humanity with us.
I recently read Carl Sagan’s book
Contact for the first time after seeing the movie many times since
childhood. Very few things could ever unite a diverse, conflicted
planet of nations. In Carl Sagan’s view, the puzzle of an
extraterrestrial message could unite us all as a human species to rise to
the occasion of communicating with an alien civilization.
In today’s world, we see the planet
uniting to solve the problem of COVID-19 and the resulting public
health and safety issues. We work together to overcome global
challenges. We can work together to achieve global successes.
Will millennials see humans land on
Mars for the first time, create affordable space tourism
opportunities, send robots to distant Solar System moons in a search
for life, and the many other dreams filling the pages of the final
chapter of Rise of the Space Age Millennials? I don’t know. I hope
so. We have the ability to come together and rise above today’s challenge and the challenges to come to explore new worlds
for all of humanity. We’ve never let a setback define us.
I’d like to think the goals and
dreams of millennials working in space are the same now as they were
then. Mine are. Maybe the current world’s challenge gives us in the
space industry more motivation to become more multidiscipinary, share
more new technologies and methods with the medical community, and
inspire people with how the world could be.
We could all use the inspiration to
help us rise above this storm to a new day.
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