Why Colonize Space: The Need for Frontier

Why Colonize Space: The Need for Frontier

Space exploration dominates headlines today — from high-profile Artemis program updates and SpaceX Starship flight tests to thousands of smaller missions across space agencies, industry, and academia. Humanity generally maintains a positive outlook on exploration missions, both manned and unmanned. Space colonization, however, proves more controversial. Proponents and opponents clash over a divisive question: some enthusiastically support it, others insist we should fix Earth first, and still others oppose it entirely. Their arguments range from wasting resources and lives to fearing that interplanetary warfare between space colonies could become a new existential risk to humanity — a possibility that, given human nature, cannot be dismissed frivolously (Watch or read The Expanse series for a realistic take on this subject).

So why should we colonize space? Why now? And what kind of future should we build on another planet? Those are not trivial questions to answer.

Some people, like certain penguins in a viral clip from Werner Herzog’s documentary, need no “why”. They would venture to the barren, desolate Martian landscape with no hope of survival tomorrow morning if given the opportunity. There is no need to motivate or explain need for space colonization to such individuals. But these “space cadets”, the fanatics, outcasts and outliers, who have pushed the limits of our ecological niche since Paleolithic times, constitute a small minority in any society or nation.

There is also an argument from survival. On a cosmic timescale, some grand disaster -an asteroid impact, nearby supernova, or the Sun exhausting its hydrogen will inevitably render Earth uninhabitable. In the medium term, more acute risks loom constantly: climate change, ongoing armed conflicts that may escalate into a new world war, the rise of hostile AIs, pandemics (cough, cough), and myriad other threats. Yet humanity’s fundamental qualities are resilience and adaptation. The fears of yesteryear no longer trouble us, overcome by dedicated people who developed the necessary solutions. (Remember the ozone hole? Y2K? Those were simpler, more pastoral days!)

But most people aren’t troubled by threats so distant in time so they need stronger arguments to support establishing settlements on other planets. I will present such an argument, aimed at the larger fraction of the population in developed countries.

Historically, humanity has always had room to explore and expand. More importantly, new, unclaimed territories allowed newcomers to start fresh — to build on pristine foundations, leveraging previous experience without fighting incumbent power structures. Tracing human expansion from its origins in the savannahs of Africa, we see that progressively more advanced cultures emerged only after expansion into new territories. The cradles of civilizations — Egypt, Sumer, China, Mesoamerica — blossomed in newly settled lands of Asia and America after humans, already a distinct species, expanded there from their original birthland. Eurasian nomads became the foundation for European nations, settlers from China founded Japan, and emigrants from Europe created the United States and Australia. The vicious battles between Spanish Conquistadores and indigenous peoples forged the nations of South America, while European and Polynesian seafarers settled New Zealand. Environmental challenges in new territories pushed humans to master new technologies, from agriculture to seafaring. Much of human literature and visual media draws from stories of exploration and discovery — Homer’s Odyssey, Viking sagas, Marco Polo, Jules Verne and modern sci-fi epics. Competition within newly emerged societies enabled the creation of new customs, cultures, and social lifts before ossification inevitably settled in and slowed these developments.

But now we lack this frontier. The twentieth century witnessed the decline and ending of terrestrial exploration by the mid-1950s. The North and South Poles, the bottom of the deepest sea trenches, and the summit of the highest mountains were conquered by brave explorers and soon thereafter became new tourist destinations. Outer space promised to become the next and final frontier, and for a while it was, during the Space Race years, until about 1975. But after the last Apollo missions, the age of space pioneers ended rather abruptly. Government bureaucracies reigned on both sides of the Iron Curtain, emphasizing process over results. Until the early 2000s, space exploration was on a downward slope. Only recently has the number of space launches per year broken the Cold War record, reinvigorated by the massive efforts of SpaceX and many other players in the New Space industry. The world watches the progress of NASA’s Artemis program as we make progress in re-establishing the exploration frontier, but this door is not fully open yet. If anything, we need to double down on these efforts if we want to resume opening new frontiers and truly “make life multiplanetary,” in the words of Elon Musk.

The opportunity to create a better future is inevitably tied to the availability of new physical space. Incumbent powers rarely, if ever, yield their grasp on land and people to new factions, whether internal or external. Nations of the New World were built by voluntary and involuntary exiles — the Mayflower settlers, Spanish conquistadores and Australian penal colonists. Without new external frontiers, opposition to current regimes will have no chance to build a vision of their future without forcefully overthrowing those in power presently.

Therefore, the greatest immediate risk for our civilization is that existing power holders will resort to increasingly devastating measures to preserve their status quo — from omnipresent surveillance to biological or nuclear weapons, destroying a large fraction of humanity only to preserve their grasp on the remaining shard. We already see disturbing patterns of this kind in today’s headlines and new government policies. Humanity evolved to its current state through many wars, civil and international, revolutions and mutinies, invariably bloody. Any hope that future humanity will become a better version of itself is justified; any hope that this process will be bloodless is not. Expansion into space allows us to reduce the carnage and mayhem for both sides of this equation — the old establishment and the new revolutionaries.

This brings us to the second question: Why now? Why should we rush to settle another planet today? Why can’t we wait until humanity evolves into a better state, even if not bloodlessly, “fix Earth” first, and expand later when we’re ready with more sophisticated technologies and a wiser society?

To understand this, one must examine humanity’s current state. Right now, we are at the peak of our strength as a species, in both quality and quantity. Despite modern media focusing on negative news more than positive ones, total economic might and population of humanity is on the rise while global poverty keeps dropping down. We live in a better, safer, more prosperous world than ever before in the history of our species. But this position will not last forever. Demographic forecasts predict we have only 30 to 50 years of population growth remaining. Our civilization’s capabilities are directly proportional to the number of people engaged in advanced industry sectors. Without enough engineers and scientists, our progress stalls. While AI is introducing massive labor disruptions, it still depends on vast underlying infrastructure maintained and operated by humans, as well as requiring consumers to buy goods and services from companies leveraging it. If human population begins to decline, so will our industrial and scientific base. With declining numbers, ever-increasing surveillance, and more and more sophisticated oppression by ruling castes, the incentive to expand diminishes while the risk of sliding into a perpetual “1984”-like society increases.

The best time to expand beyond our home planet was fifty years ago. The second-best time is now. Humanity stands at a crossroads: expand beyond Earth or remain planet-bound, potentially forever. While we have no previous experience with large-scale space colonization efforts, this fact should not slow us down. You can never be ready for something you’ve never attempted before. Worthiness to become interplanetary comes from the act of becoming, not from preparation.

In case of the interplanetary colonization, there is a credible pathway for building a sustainable interplanetary colony today, without ignoring challenges of extraterrestrial environment: low gravity, radiation risk, lack of breathable atmosphere, overall scarcity of resources and lower solar power levels. We can’t expect technological solutions to these challenges to work right on the first try, but on the tenth iteration they absolutely will, as proven multiple times through the history of our science and engineering. Therefore, expansion of human civilization beyond Earth allows us to re-establish a proven historical track of building a better version of ourselves in the terra incognita.

This path goes through the following steps: scaling up low Earth orbit capabilities for astronaut training and technology, establishing lunar surface base to understand deep space operations and master the challenges of self-sufficiency in space and then expanding beyond. For the case of Martian colonization, we can start with deploying Martian orbital assets: satellite constellations and manned orbital base(s). The latter allows creating a supply depot that can be supported from Earth without risky EDL (entry, descent, and landing) step to Martian surface. Orbital stations with Earth-equivalent artificial gravity and sufficient radiation shielding for worst-case solar flares (a foot of water, approximately) will provide the capabilities for long-duration stays for human crews in deep space environment as well as nominal support and emergency assistance to surface outposts in hours, not months for surface dwellers.

Early interplanetary settlements should prioritize survival, focusing on two major factors: energy and food. Energy redundancy isn’t optional when Mars receives a fraction of Earth’s solar energy, aggravated by frequent dust storms, and a blackout means imminent death — small modular nuclear reactors can provide the baseline that solar power can’t for the surface bases. Food security isn’t optional when you are months from Earth and transit windows open only every 26 months — a single lost resupply means starvation, so agricultural self-sufficiency must be a priority from day one too. Better solar power availability in Martian orbit combined with the nearby resources of Phobos and Deimos, accessible at minimal transportation cost, suggests that orbital farms for in-situ food production will be easier to build compared to the surface ones.

Drawing lessons from polar expeditions of early 20th century, where leadership quality and crew preparation often mattered more than technology, the first wave of explorers should consist of small, elite scout teams, drawn from existing astronaut pool, identifying the best locations for the larger settlements on the surface. The second wave of specialist builders scales infrastructure both in orbit and on the surface. The third wave brings settlers of all kinds to grow the population and forge a new culture, relying on the foundation constructed by previous waves.

This brings us to the final question: What kind of society should we build on another planet? Taking lessons from history, we should treat the first interplanetary settlements not merely as survival tools, nor expect them to become utopias in space, but rather see them as opportunities to create incrementally better versions of ourselves. For example, creating a new civilization on Mars would force humans to develop advanced technologies and robust cultural patterns to overcome adversity far greater than anywhere on Earth. Collaborating against the harsh environment of another planet will build the foundation for strong, healthy communities, and given time, a new nation. And without any indigenous population, settlers will not face the ethical conundrums of past colonization history.

While we cannot foresee what kind of civilization will develop on another planet, the challenges of new environments will also create tremendous new opportunities. For example, any extraterrestrial culture will be inherently spacefaring. On Earth, astronauts are a select few. Beyond our home planet, due to environmental necessities, everyone will be an astronaut capable of activities in space. Additionally, adversity isn’t the only catalyst for development. On Earth, the “gravity well” (energy cost to orbit) is deep, making orbital access difficult. On Mars or Moon, it is much shallower, and surface-to-orbit transportation can become as common as air travel. The first generations of colonists will be busy dealing with day-to-day hardships while building infrastructure to flourish and prosper. But the next generations, no longer burdened with survival struggles, will develop their own ambitions and dreams. The unclaimed islands of the asteroid belt will lie immediately within reach of their spaceships, tempting them to claim new, unvisited lands. The landscape of the Solar System allows for gradual expansion into farther regions for centuries to come with only modest improvements in propulsion technology along the way, requiring no physics breakthroughs beyond mastering fusion power.