A Few Steps Closer

Earth is inching closer and closer to the future envisioned by Spacewalker.

• 2023 was the hottest year on record. 2024 is shaping up to be even worse -- we just survived the hottest August yet.
• Corporations are larger and more powerful than ever. They price gouge us on our groceries and track our every activity. In the United States, one of our best weapons to keep them in check--strong regulatory agencies--was blunted by a recent Supreme Court decision. 
• In search of out-of-this-world profits, large and largely unaccountable private equity firms are turning their eyes to the stars.

With the pieces almost all in place, enter SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission. This privately funded orbital mission included the first ever commercial spacewalk, and it splashed down safely earlier this month!

If left unchanged, it's not hard to imagine fast-forwarding to 2056. When the battle for Earth's climate is all but lost; the government is good for little more than violent peacekeeping at the borders; corporations have slithered into society's cracked foundations and subject the lowest among us to horrific working conditions; the largest hedge fund on the planet has turned its eyes to deep space, and they need the best private astronaut they can find...

Despite the particularly horrid examples I cherrypicked up above, it's not all bad. Lowering the cost to orbit and expanding access to outer space is generally a good thing, and it will take investment and pioneering companies to get us there, given world governments' chronic underfunding of space agencies. 

It's the rest of it that worries me. All my life, climate change and corporate power have been slowly but surely moved in the wrong direction. That hasn't changed since I started writing Spacewalker so many years ago. Ready or not, the world inexorably marches toward the future.