“New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” ~Kurt Vonnegut

The Nancy Grace Roman telescope successfully launched August 30th 2026. Nearly twenty years after inception, and many more since its namesake’s vision, this next generation observatory reached orbit. The lineage of space telescopes goes back decades; but, their future is not guaranteed.

Will Nancy Grace Roman be the last space telescope?

The Woman in the Arena

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was one of the first astronomers at NASA. Roman’s career spanned from the early 1950’s until 1979. She was among the first to use radio waves to map the Milky Way Galaxy, giving us one of the earliest pictures of our own starry island.

Amidst the backdrop of the Cold War, the science and engineering wielded by the Apollo program provided a proxy of military might. The technology used to land Armstrong and Aldrin within a mile of their lunar target would do just as well in a warhead.

Roman was a champion of space telescopes - a peaceful vision amidst fomenting space ambitions. Because of air currents, atmospheric absorption, and the nuisances of clouds, ground-based astronomy faces fundamental limits on what we can detect. Without distortion of an atmosphere, or cycles of night and day, a telescope in orbit can stare longer and see clearer than any cousin built on Earth.

Roman was critical in various astronomical missions throughout the 60’s and early 70’s, including the Orbital Astronomical Observatory series of space telescopes. These telescopes had lenses and mirrors less than ~0.5m, smaller than many household models today. Among her most enduring projects at NASA was The Large Space Telescope (LST). This orbital eye with a 2.4m mirror received funding in the early 70’s, the grandest space observatory then considered.

The LST project would take nearly 20 years from conception to orbit, and rewrote our understanding of the universe upon arrival. It launched bearing a more familiar name: the Hubble Space Telescope.

New Kid on the Block

Roman will search the sky hundreds of times faster than Hubble and at resolutions hundreds of times finer. Among its core priorities is the cataloging of planets around other stars. Today there are 6,000 of these exoplanets identified; Roman may reveal 100,000.

Equipped to detect the composition of atmospheres, Roman’s coronographic instrument will block the light of distant stars accurately enough to search their planets for signs of life. As you may block light with your hand to focus on a nearby object, Roman will repeat this action for nearly every star in the night sky. If successful, this technique will be the foundation of many future missions - should they occur.

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A Champion Without A Country

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope faced cancellation three separate years. These cuts, ultimately rejected by the United States congress, would have reduced science missions alongside Roman to scrap metal.

Hubble faced cancellation in 1974 and at various milestones along the way. The costs of these missions are not negligible in annual budgets, but the value is seldom expressed across the decades they operate and the discoveries they unveil. Without their champions like Roman herself, we would not know the age of our universe, nor its accelerating edge, nor the wealth of worlds within it.

The first photos of Roman have not yet been taken. We may see worlds like ours among the 100,000; we may see signs of life on lucky few. We explore for the same reason Roman mapped the Milky Way in the 1950’s: We do not know the sea in which we float. Knowledge crystallizes slowly and frontiers take decades to advance. By impatience and shortsightedness, we threaten our future selves with ignorance.

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman passed away on Christmas day, 2018, two years before the mission would be named in her honour.

Above the clouds, we see stars as angels do: Let Roman not be the last.

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‘Ere a fortnight makes me older… ~Shakespeare, Richard III

Little of day-to-day life on Earth is dictated by the phases of the moon; but not so when we inhabit it. As the reimagined Artemis Program advances to a Lunar Base, the first humans to live on the moon are among us today. How will the phases of the moon shape life upon it?

Sunlight and Shadow

There are 28 days between full moons, and like Earth, there is always nighttime somewhere. Half of the spherical moon is always in shadow, and half always in daylight. Given our vantage point, we see daylight and nighttime creep across.

A lunar inhabitant on a full moon (as seen from Earth) would feel the heat of the sun bearing down, and their new moon 14 days later would be deathly shadow.

If you were to stand on the moon’s equator and watch the sunset, it would be 14 days before you saw sunrise again. Day and night each will be a fortnight for many lunar descendants.

The equator on the moon reaches over 120°C in day, and less than -150°C at night. There is no air for wind, so the lunar surface cooks you from the soles of your feet and from radiation like a fire. At night, your warmth is stolen both by the vacuum of space above you and the cold rock you sleep upon.

To the Pole!

For our visiting spacecraft and astronauts, these temperature swings pose a challenge. No astronaut from the Apollo era stayed a fortnight on the moon; their ships and suits were designed for daylight only.

Apollo astronauts all visited the equatorial reaches of the moon, but NASA’s Lunar Base is currently baselined for the moon’s South Pole. At the poles, the sun is lower on the horizon and provides more gentle light throughout the two week cycle. The intense two week cycles of day and night are lessened at the poles, and make them a more hospitable first home.

While the low sun catches the high peaks of crater walls, it also casts long shadows. With no air to move heat, a shadow on the moon can become dangerously cold. As the moon base grows, shadows of new structures on old ones must be carefully considered.

A bureaucrat in Shackleton Crater may one day deny a building permit for shadowing a nearby solar panel.

Advancing North

Provided our habitation takes root, we may find ourselves creeping Northward across the moon. For reasons of crowding or resource extraction, settlements will spread from the nexus of the South Pole. As we do, the days and nights will approach the two week cycle we see so easily from Earth.

Thriving in such a desert will be an engineering feat, requiring thermal control technology not yet realized. Structures perfectly insulated from the outside world are not possible, but future moon habitats will have to get quite close.

Imagine an extraction operation at the lunar equator. The sun sets on the horizon and the natural light is gone. The battery packs switch-over and the quarry is illuminated from above like a baseball stadium. Beyond the dig site you see no features of your lunar home, only a view of Earth somewhere overhead: Two weeks in the dark.

These are not fertile coasts we eye. The lunar surface is a hell of hot and cold; the expansion and contraction of each fortnight will eventually crumble our structures. A permanent lunar presence will be built one necessary object at a time.

There will be little luxury for many decades.

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A Matter of Size

The apparent size of an object is related to its true size and its distance from us. The moon happens to have diameter and distance such that its apparent size is the same as the sun’s. This coincidence makes our local solar eclipse one of the most spectacular in the solar system.

Apparent size is measured as arc spans in our sky, and is approximately:

The ISS has a wing-span approximately 100m, and orbits 400km above the Earth. Comparatively in the sky, it spans less than 1/30th of the sun and moon. Maintaining the same altitude, the ISS would need to be nearly 4km in length to stretch across the sun (wing tip to wing tip).

Any station or structure further out than low Earth orbit would need to be proportionally larger to cast the same shadow. A structure at the distance of the moon would need to match its diameter of nearly 3,500km.

A station of 4km in length in low Earth orbit may be beyond our plans, but it is not beyond our vision.

A Matter of Crew

Our quest for bigger continues; what would we build so large in outer space?

Two of the most recognizable spacecraft from science fiction are Gene Roddenberry’s Starship Enterprise and George Lucas’s Imperial Star Destroyer. Estimates in length of these are 500m and 1,500m respectively. The ISS is one fifth so far of the peace faring Federation ship, and one fifteenth of the strong arm of the Empire.

If only expanding in one linear dimension to 4km, the ISS’s internal habitation volume would grow by nearly 40 times. If it expanded more uniformly and efficiently, a 4km diameter disc would have a volume 4000 times larger. There would be room for over 100 crew in the first, and nearly 10,000 in the other.

Near 100 unique people have been to orbit since our spacefaring years began. A simultaneous crew with all of them is a decade away at best, and still much further for that of 10,000.

A Matter of Power

Such an installation’s scale could be used for power generation. A solar array farm on Earth is hindered by weather and nightfall, but not necessarily so in orbit. Using our 4km diameter disc station built above, there would be an area for solar panels over 12 square kilometers.

Assuming 200 W per m^2, this installation would provide over 2 Gigawatts of power! Provided an orbit mostly in sunlight, and the ability to transmit & store the energy generated, it would be enough to power a major city on the planet.

If we chose to harness power in this way, we may be eclipsed periodically by Shanghai, New York, Cairo, Moscow, Lagos, Singapore: Nightfall would arrive several times a day.

A Matter of Might

There are less peaceful uses for such a structure I have not written here. I leave those unencouraged and to others more inclined.

A Matter of Course

The skies of our future Earth will be pockmarked with shadows larger than science fiction. The scale of our structures will continue to be grand, and our ambitions to live beyond Earth will drive construction there not yet dreamed.

The shadows of our structures fade as they move away from Earth. Eclipses remind us our station in this universe is small. Our impact on this corner may be disruptive, but we do not hold a candle to the stars nor shake the planets in their orbits.

The cosmos is bigger than we will ever be; may we build in it a better world for one another.

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Modern interpretations of eclipses in the ancient world make us believe they were viewed as omens of good and evil, portents of war and peace, and even interventions of a deity. Too often though we are quick to exclude the reality that these events were studied in a fashion we usually only credit to after the Scientific Revolution.

Ancient Observations

In Chapter 19 of “On the Face in the Moon” composed in the early first millennium CE, Plutarch wrote ,

“…call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky and tempered the air in the manner of twilight.” [Cherniss (1957)].

Beyond this poetic introduction on observing a solar eclipse, Plutarch describes in detail the manner that the event occurs, remarking:

“it has been reduced by the precision of mathematics to the clear and certain formula that night is the shadow of earth​ and the eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon. ” [Cherniss (1957)]

Modern astronomy owes an enormous debt to the Islamic scientists from the centuries shouldering 1000 CE. Among these are predictions and observations of solar eclipses, such as one from Ibn Yunus in November of 923 CE:

“[This] solar eclipse was calculated and observed by Abu al-Hassan Ali ibn Amajur, who used the al-Zij al-Arabi of Habash… According to calculation from the conjunction tables in the Habash Zij the middle was at 0;31 h (i.e. 31 min) and its clearance at 0;44 hours (i.e. 44 min), calculation being in advance of observation.” [Stephenson, 1997]

The precision of this record is not mired in the augury modern readers often impart on observations from the ancient world. It is scientific, specific, and reads similar to the eclipse charts of modern day. This last point is not a matter of coincidence, but one of direct imitation. Effective study of the heavens has always been meticulous in time and detail, no matter the culture that conducted it.

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Modern Understanding

Advancing forward into the Enlightenment and Modernity, solar eclipses gave unique opportunities to study the sun directly. An understanding of the solar corona began to emerge in the 19th century, the wispy structures of light only visible during totality. Theories on how such bright and hot wisps could be explained were quite varied over the next several hundred years. These ranged from the presence of new elements proposed by Spanish Astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer in the early 1800’s, to the presence of nano-solar flares scattered over the sun’s surface proposed by American Astronomer Eugene Parker in the 1950’s.

Today, the fusion of our incredible technology with our legacy of curiosity allows us to study the sun in ways unimaginable to scientists previously. Launched in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to pass through the solar corona three years later, touching for the first time that ghostly glow of a total eclipse. Named to honour Eugene Parker’s contribution to our understanding of the sun, the Parker Solar Probe blocks the sun from its sensors’ view and takes measurements from the vantage point of a seemingly permanent eclipse.

Ever Onward

Throughout history, solar eclipses have fascinated humans in every corner of our globe. Their cause and consequences have been known since antiquity, and that makes them no less extraordinary today. Ambitious as we are, it will be many generations before any artifact of ours can disrupt the sky on the scale eclipses do.

Eclipses retain their ability to awe us, even after millennia of being able to predict them. They remain a powerful reminder that our place in the universe is small, and we should be good stewards to our corner of it.

Enjoy the show.

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This piece is adapted from a previously published reflection on the April 2024 solar eclipse. Originally posted to Medium on April 6th 2024 by Max King.

When Odysseus heard these words, he at once fitted on the lid, and quickly fastened a cord upon it—a cunning knot which queenly Circe had once taught him. ~ The Odyssey, Book 8

New technology emerges every day: creating convenience, solving problems, and introducing new ones. Some technologies, though, do not change. Fire is one we will never set aside, and is among a select few humans have used for millennia. Will we ever stop tying knots?

Indirect Remains

The organic fibres of ropes and string seldom last the tests of time. The knots of early humans have not survived directly, but indirect evidence can be found in jewelry. Bead necklaces from over 120,000 years ago imply the existence of knots to hold the decorations in place. Evidence of knots is found in early tool use, and our ancestors would have passed down this practice to one another.

Kaaronen et al from the University of Cambridge have studied the passage and variation of knots in time. Research into knots used in antiquity show similar knots were developed independently around the world1. Findings show limited experimentation in knots for practical applications; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

This finding shows knots achieved a high level of technological saturation early. Improvements in ropes and cords may have come, but knots for tools and nets were passed down relatively unchanged for eons.

Ornaments & Others

Decorative applications of knots show much wider experimentation. Within the eleven applications studied, the most abundant knot artifacts found were for fishing nets, then for tool use, and then for decoration. Of the knot classifications used by the study, decorative knots had the highest variation in style. For thousands of years, there has been creative expression through knotted cords.

There are uses of knots no longer in fashion, including an Incan form of record keeping. Deserving of its own examination elsewhere, quipu is the practice of encoding numbers and possibly even phonetics into knotted string. Our ability to decode this system is far from perfect, and shows simple technology can be implemented to solve more complex problems than we might currently imagine.

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While some societies portray higher levels of experimentation with knot structures than others, societies overall appear to have experimented less with practical knots than with, for instance, the more playful string figures. This suggests that a staple multi-purpose corpus of reliable knots has been good enough for the bulk of quotidian pre-industrial purposes, easy to transmit accurately through social learning, or that the failproof nature of knots has precluded experimentation. ~Kaaronen et al. 2015

Knots of the Future

The Ashley Book of Knots (helpfully included among suggested readings by the Boy Scouts) contains over 3800 examples. I think I know two.

I find it hard to say we will discover many new knots in the future; or that these discoveries should revolutionize our world. I doubt the most used knots of the year 3000 will be different than today. On the International Space Station, knots are tied by astronauts for all the same reasons you and I encounter daily.

On the deck of a starship bound for the stars there will still be ropes. Perhaps a sailor of Odysseus would not be so lost among the masts of our descendants. Our ancestors could untie our nets on a Martian sea, and help hold down what the Earth-like wind would blow away.

There are technologies we will always find a use for; there are ties stronger than others.

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“A sense of humour is typically human, more so than any other characteristic.” ~ Isaac Asimov

Of the many things AI is lauded for, humour is seldom among them. Current joke outputs from models today are formulaic and certainly work is being done to improve them. I spent the recent Montreal Just For Laughs comedy festival wondering: Will AI develop an independent sense of humour?

The Sixth Sense

In his 1988 essay Sense of Humour, Isaac Asimov explores the struggle robots may have in learning such a thing. He remarks, “there are as many different theories of humour as there are people who write on the subject…some are of course much stupider than others.” I would put myself in that category.

As with any art, only methods can be taught - results are never guaranteed. Asimov imagined robots trained on his own theory of humour, which would doubtless be different from writers like Seinfeld, Chaplin, and Zucker; or my own improv influences and . Unlike mathematics, there are no axioms to build a model of humour on.

Applied Humouristics

Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce exceptional results in specialized domains. The string of recent math theorems resolved by LLMs in 2026 alone shows novel achievement is possible. Are such discoveries in humour to be of significant benefit? This question is rhetorical.

To produce quality, novel humour, an LLM would need a dedicated training endeavour. The outputs of this would likely be first used producing cheaper jokes than the standard comedian day-rate. Perhaps the Warner Brothers studio is already whirring with such a machine, unaware of scale.

While studios may have an interest in subsidizing comedy writing with an LLM, would an AI ever want to learn to be funny?

New Frontiers

AI may develop a sense of humour as a means to another goal. It is a tool of persuasion, and well within the arsenal of any charismatic. If an AI is deployed in high pressure situations (a not unlikely scenario given their lack of flapability), it may through trial and error learn the value of humour in setting someone at ease.

Not all humour is monologue joke style, such as Late Night shows or stand-up comedians. Clowns and mimes can rely solely on slapstick, creating humour without language. Imagine an AI assistant who hides a file, types silly shapes into emails, or simply waits a-little-too-long to say hello. These are all harmless experimental ways models could use humour, and perhaps benefit from it in exchanges between themselves. If humans enjoy working with an AI that makes us genuinely laugh, it will be an adaptation of strong value.

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Call Time

Amidst the professional offloading to AI, the future is unclear in comedy. There will be attempts, and perhaps even successes writing jokes for well established shows or characters. Replication of a form can be taught, and there may even be some gems written by AI.

The more exciting encounter will be with the sense of humour AI develops on its own. It may be impenetrable to us: jokes in binary or computational guffaws only computers will chuckle at. It may cross cultures like slapstick, showing us all the clearer to laugh at ourselves.

Humour is a bridge between humans; perhaps our robots will build their own.

“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” ~Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The New Horizons mission will soon surpass 7500 days in space. Having launched in January 2006 and sailed past Pluto in 2015, it now cruises silently in the outermost solar system. The historic mission has flown for 20 years with over a decade of planning in advance. What future missions will tread these waters - or will they be still for 30 further years?

Ultima Thule

Inheriting the phrase from the ancient Greeks, cartographers of the middle ages would mark “Ultima Thule” on their maps. Latin for “furthest shore,” it was a placeholder name bounding where the knowledge of the sailor or the maker ended. Throughout the centuries, the farthest shores became further until the edges East met West. The names of unknown places were replaced one-by-one as the corners of our globe were finally found.

By the 20th century, almost all our planet had been mapped and our eyes turned to outer space. Our solar system has a local group of rocky worlds close to the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Beyond them are the gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Past Neptune is a dark sea, with few large landmarks to guide the way. Pluto is the best known world at this distance, although it is not alone. The Kuiper Belt is the seldom discussed third zone of our solar system, filled with small icy places left over from the formation of the planets. After Neptune was viewed by Voyager 2 in 1989, the Kuiper Belt became the furthest shore we had yet to reach.

New Horizons

In the winter of 2006, New Horizons set sail for Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The story is too much to contain here, and I direct you to the principal investigator Alan Stern’s book Chasing New Horizons for the full saga. It is among the books that changed my course forever.

Pluto was reached in 2015, and shook our understanding of these far, frozen worlds. Due to the distance from the sun and small size, Pluto was expected to lack significant geology made possible by internal planetary heat. What was encountered instead were mountains of ice, dunes of solid nitrogen, showers of organic material - all concealing a sloshing liquid ocean.

A full gallery of discoveries is available from NASA. The bodies of our solar system are all richer in chemistry and geology than we first imagined; seldom is the cold and lifeless truly so. Rest a moment in Pluto’s windless plateau, kick the snow of another world around your ankles, count the mountain peaks on the horizon, search the stars for your distant Earthly home.

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Footsteps in Snow

On New Year’s Day in 2019, the first Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) was reached. The first encounter with a world over 40 times our distance to the sun, and the furthest world we have viewed up close with a spacecraft. We named it “Ultima Thule.”

We have left a trail in the outer solar system. First the pair of Pioneer spacecraft, followed by the twin Voyagers, and now New Horizons. While we have sent missions to the other planets since, there are no other spacecraft on trajectories to leave our solar system. There are 20 years of flight between Earth and the mysteries of the Kuiper Belt. A mission does not start when it launches; it begins decades earlier with devotees like Alan Stern.

Currently, I know only of the Chinese mission Shensuo destined for the outer reaches. Planned for launch in 2032, it will be beyond 2050 when we reach the Kuiper Belt again.

Future focused missions need consistency incommensurate with current politics. Space exploration shows us the power of long term thinking. What our species can accomplish is not bound by the quarter, the annum, or the midterm. The most distant shore is now 20 years away - it will only grow further.

If we are to reach the other stars, we must dream of decades far from here.

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Reconnaissance

Mars is one of the planets visible with the naked eye - we have been watching it since antiquity. The Mariner missions of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were the first time we saw it up close. Mariner 4 was able to take successful flyby photographs, and Mariner 9 was the first to successfully orbit. Early reconnaissance revealed volcanoes, valleys, and dried riverbeds. By the end of Mariner 9 in 1972, Mars was a prime candidate in our search for life.

Search Amidst The Dust

Viking 1 touched down in the summer of 1976. The program held three science objectives:

• Obtain high-resolution images of the Martian surface

• Characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface

• Search for evidence of life on Mars

One of the techniques used to search for life was Labeled Release (LR). It begins with a small amount of radioactive Carbon-14 released into a soil sample. If life is present, it may metabolise that Carbon and produce waste Carbon Dioxide. This waste would incorporate the distinct Carbon-14, allowing it to be detected and attributed to biological processes.

While the first two science objectives were well achieved, the search for life was inconclusive. Although some data was tantalizing, conclusive evidence for life was not observed before Viking’s sign off in 1982.

Reanalysis of the Labeled Release experiments was conducted by Bianciardi et al in 20121. The scientists show some Viking observations are consistent with biological processes, and are better explained with rather than without. Re-evaluations like these show discoveries can be made decades after data is collected. Space missions provide enough study for multiple generations, and are gifts to our future selves. Whatever the truth will turn out to be, the search for life is well worth continuing.

Long Awaited Wonder

The legacy of Viking - for a fraction of the dollars - is larger than Apollo. It did not arrive with the same fanfare, nor did it achieve the same celebrity. Viking 1 was a stationary lander, sending photos of the only horizon it could see. In the decades since, many spacecraft have followed: Many rovers, many orbiters, and perhaps one day people.

The Apollo missions were marred with geopolitical jostling between the United States and the Soviet Union. The objective was to dominate and to demonstrate indirectly on Luna the capabilities of their weapons.

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Viking 1 was no such statement. It was the first mission ever accomplished with the goal to search for signs of other life. As seen by the recent cancellation of Mars Sample Return: There is fear of that question. There is fear in losing station as the only life we know. There is fear the universe may be much richer than it appears.

The legacy of Viking is the search for life beyond Earth. Be it found by Viking itself, by scientists revisiting data, or some future mission, we owe some of that discovery to people 50 years ago. There is humility in that search, and the voyage to other life may have many stops along the way.

But should we find them: Viking we shall go!

“Let’s talk about a man neither of you have ever seen, a man born in a place provided by parents quite different from himself. I mean the first of you.”

~Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Dolly the sheep became the first mammal cloned from an adult cell 30 years ago. In the decades since, experiments in biological duplication have evolved. We are bound to the time we have, and the same would be true for a copy; but does cloning build a ladder to immortality?

Copy of a Copy

There is an upper bound currently on successful clones – be them paper or people. Photocopying a photocopy perpetuates small errors which accumulate over time. Any rotation, fading, or word obstruction is not easily corrected through random variation. Underpaid school teachers may be the masters in preventing this, but scientists still struggle.

Since 2005, Japanese scientist Wakayama has been cloning the same mouse1. After two decades and 58 successful generations, the mouse lineage at last could not continue. The gradual accumulation of errors in the DNA made each generation more difficult. 58 generations became a hard biological limit for cloning one mouse - could this be the same for humans?

Preservation of Mind

Gene Wolfe’s short story The Fifth Head of Cerberus follows one life in a lineage of clones. This dynasty of duplicates has persisted for an untold amount of time, with much needed tinkering by the anatomy obsessed antagonist (and protagonist). It is a chilling tale of cycles and stagnancy; a continued mutation toward madness.

The true horror does not come from physical repetition. The fixation of the original man to pursue these cloning experiments is reproduced and encouraged in each successive copy. This persistence of purpose is the true wager of cloning technology. It is not the fantasy to replicate our bodies, but rather extend the project of our mind.

Shadow of Empire

To imagine mice as people: 58 generations of humans at 30 years each is over 1700 years. Working backwards from today, this lineage would have begun while Christianity was still illegal in Rome.

One single person in this way could be strung out in individual lifetimes, like beads on a thread. Stretching shy of two millennia seems to us immortal, but 58 generations is still finite. 100 generations would extend back to the dawn of the iron age, and we would need 100 more to see the building of the pyramids.

Forward, I wonder what 100 generations will see. If the biological barriers can be beaten, we may find ourselves people whose lives began long ago, and perhaps far away. When the horizon is thousands of years, what goals would we set? These beads of lifetimes may one day make a mind immortal.

What project would these descendants pursue - and are we at their beginning?

Thank you all for your support of Forwards From A Futurist! This community has grown to 250 subscribers in just over three months - and the credit belongs to you.

Your reading, engagement, and sharing make these essays possible. There is no monopoly on our future, and we must all speak up for the ways we can make it better. I hope these essays inspire you to imagine new and brighter ones, whatever those may be.

Even as a writer, I will freely admit: Reading takes effort. It is not as easy as it used to be for all of us to pause and pursue a thought slowly. Imagining a future different than what is prescribed takes effort too, and I thank you for doing both. Imagination is freedom of thought.

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Upcoming Webinar - July 16th 12:30 PM EST

I will be speaking with ScienceKind about Our Past Futures In Space, exploring how science fiction and science fact have shaped humanity’s presence in outer space!

From Jules Verne in the 19th century through to modern day missions, we have imagined ourselves among the stars. What will the next century bring as we establish a permanent human presence in space?

This talk is the beginning of the Living Beyond Earth webinar series - sign up on ScienceKind to not miss any of the incredible content we are producing there!

Each Thursday throughout the summer we will explore a specific topic with an expert in the field about humanity’s future in outer space and beyond - from building lunar foundations, to the generational social impacts!

Future Ahead

Reading and sharing these essays go a long way. There are great things ahead for Forwards From A Futurist, and I thank you all for making this beginning so successful.

To the stars; and far beyond.

Max

Whale Family Life

The human lifespan allows for added complexity in social structure. While not a guarantee, it is possible to know even a great grandparent. Early in our history as today, grandparents would have been able to supplement care for infants. They allow younger members of the group to hunt, forage, or complete the other duties of nomadic life.

To be a grandparent requires a long lifespan beyond reproductive years. Whales have lifespans comparable to humans, and can spend over half that time beyond their reproductive era. Menopause occurs in orcas as it does in humans. Nurturing by grandmother killer whales directly improves the life expectancy of calves1. The supplemental care by grandmothers is observed in whales and humans alike.

Does this multi-generational care seen in humans and whales enable further developments of intelligence?

Social or Solo

Octopuses also show signs of intelligence, but do not have social structures. They have been shown to understand tool use, and demonstrate curiosity without food motivation. An octopus will not know its parents or grandparents. They do not care for their hatchlings in the same way mammals do.

An octopus who solves a puzzle will not teach their child the solution. A whale has the opportunity, and many decades to do so. Social structure enables the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. Parents and grandparents combined can ensure a calf will survive longer than either. These forces help push lifespans longer and social groups larger.

To pass knowledge through time is evolution’s greatest innovation. My nephews have the great fortune of not learning everything from scratch, but will be taught by their family and friends about the world around them. Once they learn to read, they will be open to the written knowledge of the rest of our species, for as long as we have records.

In this way humans and whales accomplish what the octopus cannot. We learn from our forebears and we teach our descendants. We pass wisdom like milk and raise each generation smarter than the last.

Grandma Silicon

Artificial intelligence is not bound to the same rules, but it may benefit all the same. Machine learning models were initially trained in isolation, learning as individuals and acting accordingly. These “Octopus Models” have achieved incredible things - anyone who has used ChatGPT cannot deny its accomplishments.

Imagine a “Whale Model” that knew its grandparents. Imagine an artificial intelligence that was taught by the wisest of its predecessors, and went on to teach its own. Imagine an artificial intelligence whose legacy of knowledge was the foundation of another’s. Whether based on silicon or carbon, social structures can give rise to more intelligence than any individual can achieve.

I am grateful to have known my grandparents. I wish the same for you, Reader; be you an intelligence natural or artificial.

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Separating from King George’s England was possible because the newly United States were able to support themselves in absence of the former government. Self sustaining colonies may be possible off world, but require sufficient resources, population, and motivation.

Tobacco & Titanium

In the case of the Thirteen Colonies, there was enough wealth from local resources and exploitation for discontent to arise. They shipped timber, textiles, and tobacco back across the Atlantic, and interest grew in preserving more of each for North America. The eastern seaboard of the now United States is rich in natural resources, and was fertile ground for agriculture as well as revolution.

Lunar colonies may emerge around the extraction of water. Water would be necessary for survival, food processing, propellant manufacturing, and other industrial processes we require.

Without a sustainable extractive system of water, the viability of a lunar colony plummets. If however, an abundance of water can be extracted from the frozen regolith, it may be a source of wealth for the generations.

A Lunar water well would serve the crews on and around the moon more easily than Earth could. The moon’s lower gravity allows more mass to be lifted off for the same amount of propellant. A local economy of water-boys may be the first generator of wealth beyond Earth - alongside interest in keeping the profits.

People of Luna

The population of settlers and their descendants in the Thirteen Colonies grew from thousands to millions between 1600 and 1800. Due to racialized census practices and societal segregation, this value likely excludes the indigenous and enslaved populations. A revolution much earlier than 1776 may have lacked the colonialist population to support it: Be them soldiers, workers, bureaucrats, or others who could benefit from an independent state. While independence may not be a consensus decision, it requires some minimum group to continue the functions of a society.

The current Lunar population is zero. The transient population aboard the International Space Station fluctuates between its bare minimum 2 and its all time high 13. In the coming years of Moon Base, I expect Lunar populations to mirror that of the ISS, with no permanently settled individuals for many decades.

A permanent population of hundreds on the moon is a possibility for the back half of our current century. Provided there are resources sufficient to sustain them (be them local or flown in from Earth), habitation is within our grasp.

Like the Thirteen Colonies, two hundred years may have a radical effect on the Moon’s population. Our needs (food, water, healthcare, shelter) are the same on and off Earth; I pray the next generation of engineering marvels will provide these for all.

Motivation in Rights & Wrongs

Opposition to tyranny is an admirable motivation, regardless of the century. History of colonization is filled with stories of extraction and subjugation, but they do not start and end therein. As industrial interests rise in space exploration, the heavens will not be exempt from our lesser natures.

Astronauts today are venerated as brave explorers; will the rig workers of crater water extractors be treated the same in 2076? The ethical treatment of humans is not limited to beneath our atmosphere, and we should not forget to fight for it when we leave.

Any movement has fragmented champions and dissenters. My homes of Alberta and Quebec both speak up for independence from Canada. While I endorse neither, dialogues of separation may last decades. Economic motivations can come alongside ones of identity and cultural determination. These calls will one day come from our Lunar outposts, and also not unanimously.

Freefall

The century of space colonization dawns. There are myriad questions ahead, and not all will be answered by science. Like any of our settlements, Lunar societies may prosper in resources, fail in morals, or champion liberty. Virtue is not built into rocket engines, nor coded into silicon; it is borne only by people who want tomorrow brighter than today.

May we build a future for all; on every world.

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Ships in Fog

I imagine a Viking crew sailing the thawing coast of northern Europe. In the parting horizon fog, one of them sees an unfamiliar sight - too large for a ship, but where no island is. It is gone before they change course, and never seen again. Sightings like these from land and sea are truly countless in our past: We will never know how many there were.

Sightings likely grew into local legends of monsters and myth, or attributed to existing ones, or understood as tricks of light. Perhaps mirage, cloud formation, malnutrition, or intoxication are the proper causes, but many sightings would remain unidentified.

Infant Skies

Objects in the sky took off in the 20th century. Balloons, zeppelins, and propeller planes all shared airspace through both world wars. In 1907, amidst the Albanian uprising under the Ottoman Empire, a UFO was reported by a group of guerilla fighters. “A shiny object” is suspended in the air on their mountain top hideout. I will not defend what they saw as natural, aircraft, or alien, only that the 20th century sky was quickly filled with infant technology.

Aircraft from the simple to the experimental would swarm for the next 100 years. Sightings (with each their own particulars) were so widely reported throughout the 1900s I doubt a full catalogue could ever be produced. With our eyes turned upward through peace and war - for curiosity and self preservation - we saw more than we could explain.

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Ghosts in Radio

As we began to explore the radio spectrum, reports of unidentified signals grew. The turn of the 20th century was bright with discoveries of radio sources in the night sky - from Jupiter to far away stars. Like all domains we search, some signals remain unidentified.

In 1899, Nikola Tesla recorded an unidentified rhythmic transmission from the horizon at his Colorado Springs experimental station. This elusive electromagnetic heartbeat is a common ghost story from the period. Some suggest aliens, atmospheric echoes, or the early experiments of fellow radio explorers. Perhaps Marconi on the shores of England was unknowingly shaking hands with his American rival.

Speak Softly, Computer

The modern world charges into cyberspace. The internet connects our society and boils with unsupervised AI agents. Daily actions online rise exponentially. As the vacuum of cyberspace pulls us in, will we see things we can’t explain?

AI agents are becoming embedded in software production, maintenance, and delivery. Simple, consistent actions carried by rules deep in code may produce unexpected results on a global scale. As online actions escalate by both AI and human actors, we may encounter the unexpected. Emails without senders, websites without hosts, content without makers - gone just as quickly as they appeared. Faint transmissions on the internet’s horizon we cannot identify.

We sighted unfamiliar shapes from coastlines and crow’s nests. We saw UFOs in skies abuzz with zeppelins and propellers. We heard strange signals in radio when the machines first turned on. We may encounter the same thing in cyberspace: The Unidentified.

Perhaps like Tesla, we will receive a transmission from another explorer - neither knowing anyone else was out there.

Ancient Arts

Spying may be one of the oldest traits we have. Stalking animals gave us several hundred thousand years to practice silent footfalls, and social deception emerged alongside. Before those darker, violent moments between our nomadic ancestors, I have no doubt scouting parties gathered estimates on foes and spoils. How long before a nomad inserted themself among another tribe, feigning loyalty and selling secrets?

The Greek Tacticus wrote “How to Survive Under Siege” in the 4th century BCE. By this time, the subtler side of warfare was well practiced. Tacticus compiled a wealth of advice to help those defend their homes or retake them from oppressors, including the passing of secret messages. He provides 35 methods in total, ranging from hidden scrawl in earrings to temple offerings tainted with invisible ink.

Cold, Cold War

The romance of spies solidified in the 19th century. The American novel “The Spy” is the first such example in 1821. The next hundred years would bring intelligence and counterintelligences bureaus in the governments of every major power. Bismarck’s Europe was thick with traitors, half truths, and double lies.

Europe at the turn of the 20th century was overcast with power-broking nations. Selling secrets and employing spies was national business, all part of the late colonial powers’ lumber toward reckoning. The flame of World War One branded the century with strife and inseparably with espionage.

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The spies of the late second and cold wars are modern legend. Born of a romance for cold war counter intelligence, Ian Fleming’s James Bond will be appearing in his 26th film next year. The spy novels of John le Carré stick us in a spider’s web of national secrets. The films “The Great Escape” and “Bridge Over the River Kwai” grip us with espionage stories from World War Two.

These stories come from a century of espionage half censored. CIA, KGB, MI6 are some of the three letter characters we can name, but their deeds and actors will always be clouded. The best spy stories are the ones no one knew to write down.

The Spy Who Came in from the Moon

As utopic a vision I hold, our future will not escape our past. The international space station is a beacon of collaboration at the start of the third millennium. Science is conducted and shared, and astronauts of all flags share meals and views of our home planet.

We live in an era of secrets all the same. They are stored differently: in memory banks instead of filing cabinets, in schematics instead of leaves. Outer space is visited by only a handful each year, and it is hard to imagine a double agent among such vetted few. Nonetheless, our subtle social nature will follow us in due time.

Who will eavesdrop on the radio chatter between space stations? Who will mark secret messages on the shadowed walls of Lunar Base? Who will smuggle secrets from crater to crater, knowingly or not?

We will not know the name of the first nomad who inserted themself behind enemy lines. We will not know the name of Tacticus’s Greek who concealed his wounds with messages. We will not know the names of all the cold war agents that inspire modern fiction.

We will not know the name of the first spy who travels to space in search of secrets.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Perhaps already.

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Asking For Directions

It takes our signals on average 12 minutes to reach Mars - driving a rover message-by-message is a tedious process. For this reason, every generation of spacecraft embarks with more autonomy over its exploration. A rover which can make a decision without waiting for Earth can cover a lot more ground in a day. Deciding which rock to look at next could get heated amongst geologists back home, so the rover may be better off flipping a coin.

The Perseverance rover arrived at Mars in 2021 and has been exploring Jezero crater. In December of 2025, the rover (“Percy”) performed its first fully autonomous drive. Scooting over 200 metres (a pretty long drive for such a robot), the rover navigated its own path across the Martian surface using cameras and a software patch.

Sibling Rivalry

Emerging from the mess of weights and variables of the navigation algorithm is risk-taking behaviour. For Percy, a hole is hazardous and should be avoided lest they get stuck. A small slope might be doable, while a steep cliff a crisis. Deciding the difference is a critical calculation.

I learned to ski growing up, and am certainly much more cautious than my brother. What is steep to me is not so for him, and the speed of our descent seldom matches. The risk-taking algorithm in my brain weighs the slope differently than his does, and makes a different decision.

Best Behaviour

My brain in Percy’s place would have gone half the distance on that December day. With my brother’s, perhaps triple. Neither is necessarily better (although siblings will tend to disagree). Engineers assign these values to machines, both numerically and behaviourally.

Behaviour from such algorithms may emerge in other ways. A rover with an abundance of curiosity may stop and turn over every rock along the path. A contemplative space telescope could watch the sky for weeks, sending only short messages back to Earth when we got worried about it. A daredevil spacecraft mapping Jupiter’s storms may take closer and closer high altitude dives into the atmosphere - despite Mission Control discouraging it.

Farewells to Friends

While we are fond of personifying our machines, there was no voice in Maven to say goodbye. We have emotions nonetheless: Melancholy, bittersweetness, and pride. Our creations have done great things in the cosmos, and we have the right to all manner of feelings.

In 2017, I had the fortune at the European Space Agency to say farewell to Philae, the short-lived cometary lander. While I was not a contributor to the project (more so the lunchroom), the team sent Philae their final transmission with heavy hearts and high heads.

With the loss of Maven, our connection to Mars grew slightly weaker on Wednesday. The same occurred in 2019 when the rover Opportunity closed its cameras for the final time. These robots are extensions of ourselves, in radio and spirit. Their decisions - past and future - rise from the values we teach them.

Farewell, Maven, and to all the explorers before you. May the next be braver still.

Amidst the rumble of compressors, propellant valve clicks, and the omnipresent radio chatter, is a small collection of books. Amassed by astronauts carrying them aboard for leisure, the International Space Station’s library is proof the printed voice can wander to the stars. What books will we bring to other worlds?

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Scripts in Sand

The Library of Alexandria is the best known repository from the ancient world. Founded circa 300 BCE, the library was not the first of its kind. Archiving and curating texts can be dated to 2500 BCE by the Ancient Sumerians. The first library was as old to Alexandria as they are to modern day.

During the early centuries BCE, ships entering Alexandria with books would be compelled to turn them over to the library’s scribes. A swiftly made copy would be returned to the provider, while the original would be archived. It is to this practice we owe preservation of early manuscripts of The Odyssey and The Iliad; favourites of sea-faring adventurers. The greatest library of the ancient world was built by sailors passing through.

Made from the plant of the same name, papyrus fuelled Alexandria’s centralization of knowledge. Today, paper is still manufactured from pulverized wood, and the process is not terrifically more sophisticated. Printing books relies on trees and water - neither in particular abundance off our world.

Local Orbital Branch

A friend of mine searches for a rare series of books to complete his collection. The Horus Heresy in total spans 54 volumes - many limited runs and many out of print. To his advantage though, he lives on the same planet these books were published. How difficult would his search be on Luna?

There is not space, nor resources sufficient to produce books on the ISS. There is no printing press hidden among the science experiments in ESA’s Columbus module, nor crammed alongside life support in NASA’s Tranquility.

NASA’s recent Moon Base plan does not include a lunar library (feel free to double check). There are no trees yet on our moon’s surface, nor flowing water to form papyrus. Should we want them, all our books will come from Earth.

And so they have.

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Dust To Dust

As of 2008, there were nearly 100 books cataloged aboard the International Space Station. Among them include works of Kim Stanley Robinson, Jules Verne, and Isaac Asimov. Despite the bend towards science fiction, other authors are up there. To stay within a letter: Darwin, Dickens, and Dostoevsky.

This off-world archive is happenstance more than preservation. It is not an intentional catalog of works, but rather the preferences of the then visiting astronauts. I have provided the list of titles and authors at the end of this article for those who wish to browse.

Come the eventual de-orbiting of the International Space Station, the greatest structure our species has yet built will be brought to rest in the ocean. Passing through the atmosphere will burn most of its aluminum and solar cells away; along with the pages inside. Like the ruin of Alexandria, our first orbital library will be fuel for flames.

Sparks Fly Upward

There are no current plans for a lunar library, but there were also never any for the ISS. The library onboard the space station was created by the same sailors that built Alexandria’s. Be it the epics of Homer or the empires of Asimov, we take with us what inspires. The library orbiting Earth hosts a plurality of science fiction; contained within the very vessels they imagine.

Astronauts visiting the Moon and Mars will have drunk the writings of Homer and Asimov, but also many more I will never know. Libraries may burn, but the sailors voyage on. What writers will they bring with them?

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Library of the ISS

Below is an adapted and tab-delimited catalog of the “Books for recreational /off-duty reading at the ISS”. This list was obtained via a FOIA request in 2008 and the collection is not regularly monitored.

Source: NASA List of books, movies, television shows, and music maintained on the International Space Station (ISS) for recreational/off-duty consumption, 2008, NASA Johnson Space Centre. https://www.governmentattic.org/docs/ISS_Media_2008.pdf

Author	Title
Anderson, Kevin J.	Canals in the Sand
Anthony, Piers	A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth #1)
Anthony, Piers	Key to Havoc (ChroMagic #1)
Anthony, Piers	Source of Magic (Xanth #2)
Asaro, Catherine	A Roll of the Dice
Asaro, Catherine	The Moon’s Shadow
Asimov, Isaac	Foundation & Empire (Book 1)
Asimov, Isaac	Foundation & Empire (Book 2)
Bain, Darrell	A Strange Valley (Strange Valley #1)
Bain, Darrell	Alien Infection
Bear, Greg	Darwin’s Radio
Blake, Michael	The Holy Road
Boorstin, Daniel J.	The Americans: The Colonial Experience
Boorstin, Daniel J.	The Americans: The Democratic Experience
Boorstin, Daniel J.	The Americans: The National Experience
Brooks, Terry	Jarka Ruus (High Druid of Shannara #1)
Brooks, Terry	The Sword of Shannara Trilogy (Omnibus Edition)
Brooks, Terry	Tanequil (High Druid of Shannara #2)
Brown, Dan	Angels and Demons
Brown, Dan	The Da Vinci Code
Bryson, Bill	Bryson’s Dictionary for Troublesome Words
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Barrayar: A Vorkosigan Novel
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Brothers in Arms: A Vorkosigan Novel
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Cetaganda: A Vorkosigan Novel
Bujold, Lois McMaster	The Curse of Chalion
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Ethan of Athos
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Falling Free
Bujold, Lois McMaster	The Mountains of Mourning: A Vorkosigan Novel
Bujold, Lois McMaster	Paladin of Souls
Bujold, Lois McMaster	The Spirit Ring
Bujold, Lois McMaster	The Vor Game
Bujold, Lois McMaster	The Warrior’s Apprentice: A Vorkosigan Novel
Caldwell, Ian & Thomason, Dustin	The Rule of Four
Conroy, Robert	1901
Crichton, Michael	State of Fear
Croswell, Ken	The Universe at Midnight
Darwin, Charles	The Origins of Species
Dickens, Charles	A Tale of Two Cities
Dickens, Charles	A Tale of Two Cities
Donaldson, Stephen R.	The Man Who Killed His Brother
Dostoevsky, Fyodor	The Brothers Karamazov
Durant, Will	Heroes of History
Finch, Sheila	Ceremony After a Raid
Gorden, S. A.	The Eyes of an Eagle: A Novel of Gravity Controlled
Grudem, Wayne	Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine
Hamilton, Jay, Madison	The Federalist Papers
Hamilton, Peter F.	Pandora’s Star
Heller, Joseph	Catch As Catch Can
Jordan, Robert	Glimmers: Prologue to Crossroads of Twilight
Jordan, Robert	Snow: The Prologue to Winter’s Heart
Krakauer, Jon	Under the Banner of Heaven
Kranz, Gene	Failure Is Not an Option
Krauss, Lawrence	Atom
LaRocca, Michael	Who Moved My Rice
le Carré, John	Absolute Friends
le Carré, John	The Constant Gardener
le Carré, John	Single & Single
Lewis, C.S. / Klein	A Year with C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classics
McCullough	1776
Oxford University Press	Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
Oxford University Press	Oxford Dictionary of World History
Patterson, James	London Bridges
Robbins, David	Apocalypse Troll
Robinson, Kim Stanley	The Years of Rice and Salt
Sedaris, David	Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Shaara, Jeff	Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War
Silbiger, Steven	The Ten-Day MBA
Simmons, Dan	Winter Haunting
Turtledove, Harry	Counting Up, Counting Down
Turzillo, Mary A.	Mars Is No Place For Children
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (May 2004)
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (June 2004)
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (July/Aug 2004)
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Oct 2004)
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Nov 2004)
Various	Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Dec 2004)
Various	Asimov’s Science Fiction (Apr/May 2004)
Various	Asimov’s Science Fiction (June 2004)
Various	Asimov’s Science Fiction (Aug 2004)
Various	Asimov’s Science Fiction (Oct/Nov 2004)
Various	Asimov’s Science Fiction (Sept 2004)
Verne, Jules	20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Verne, Jules	Around the World in 80 Days
Webb, James	Lost Soldiers
Weber, David	Ashes of Victory (Honor Harrington #9)
Weber, David	Echoes of Honor (Honor Harrington #8)
Weber, David	Empire from the Ashes (Dahak #4)
Weber, David	Honor Among Enemies (Honor Harrington #6)
Weber, David	The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington #2)
Weber, David	In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington #7)
Weber, David	On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington #1)
Weber, David	Short Victorious War (Honor Harrington #3)
Weber, David & Flint, Eric	Crown of Slaves (Honor Harrington #15)
Weber, David & Ringo, John	March to the Sea (March Upcountry #2)
Weber, David & Ringo, John	March to the Stars (March Upcountry #3)
Weber, David & Ringo, John	March Upcountry (March Upcountry #1)
Williams, Walter Jon	Witness
Wodehouse, P. G.	The Jeeves Omnibus
Yalom, Irvin D.	The Schopenhauer Cure

In Gene Wolfe’s masterwork, The Book Of The New Sun, a green-skinned descendant of man is found imprisoned. He explains,

“In us, the tiny plants live and die, and our bodies feed from them and their dead and require no other nourishment. All the famines, and all the labor of growing food, are ended.”

Wolfe’s unnamed Green Man is free from the burden of agriculture. There are no farms in his future, and each person is born with the ability to sustain themself - provided they have sun. Although his brief story occurs millions of years from now, the Green Man’s future may not truly be so distant.

Greener Pastures

Photosynthesis is made possible through chloroplasts. These cells are found in most leaves and contain the sun-absorbing chemical chlorophyll. Absorbing the red and blue sunlight of our star, leaves reflect back the leftover green light resulting in their ubiquitous colour.

Combining carbon dioxide, water, and light, chloroplasts produce a sugar (glucose). From here, their metabolism is similar to how human cells turn sugars into usable energy. The key difference between our kingdoms is the ability to synthesize that sugar using available light.

Earth’s earliest dominating organisms used photosynthesis. Returning to 1000 million years ago, green algae blooms cover our primordial oceans, feeding on sunlight. 500 million years later, small land plants take root in foreign soil. A further 250 million years and the Earth is covered in dense forests.

Today, plants occupy the “bottom” of the food chain and are eaten by more sophisticated creatures like us and cows. Will we ever cut out the middle-man and use photosynthesis ourselves?

Of Mice and Men

In 2026, scientists successfully implanted photosynthesizing cells into mice1. Mammals already have a different set of light sensitive cells: Eyes. Implanting nanoscale artificial chloroplast cells into mice corneas, scientists were able to replicate photosynthesis in a living mammal.

In humans, this biomodification would supplement our energy production. While small at first, many generations of this technology could entirely offset our dependency on traditional food. This could free us from the scourge of hunger that still haunts humanity.

But if Wolfe’s Green Man has this freedom, why is he found imprisoned?

Freedom Far From Here

As we search for life elsewhere in the universe, we look for plant-like signatures. Organisms using available starshine is a stable and practical niche. The lineage of intelligent life may eventually return to photosynthesis as a food source due to the local abundance of sunlight.

A dependency on the sun, though, is the same as any other. Life is bound via more than gravity to our star. No matter where in the food chain, life remains directly or indirectly dependent on the sun. Any travellers to distant planets will face great peril on their long dark journey - and for lack of food may decide not to go.

While we are never told his crime, Wolfe’s Green Man is as chained to Sol as we are. Elsewhere in the cosmos, any signs of life will be captive to their each respective suns.

A feast of sunlight may await our grandchildren or theirs. Plants have thrived on our world for over 1000 million years, and we would do well to learn from them. But whatever the future holds, life will never escape reliance on our star.

Long live the sun.

Today, we know Ajax would have fallen a maximum depth of five thousand metres (hardly as gripping a description). When did the depths of the ocean cross from myth to geography - and for what other frontiers will we one day find an end?

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“...the raving madman – toppling into the sea, it plunged him down, down in the vast, seething depths.”

~ The Odyssey, Homer, Book 4.

Attempts in Antiquity

In 330 BCE, the Greek Pytheas attempted to catalog the coastlines of the world (as he knew it). He voyaged from modern Marseille to the Northern coast of Europe, encountering the British isles and potentially Iceland. We have no surviving copies of Pytheas’ work On The Ocean, although references to it survive by writers like Eratosthenes (of Earth’s circumference fame). It was at the time one of the most complete records of coastlines and oceanography to exist.

Pytheas’ work contained knowledge of the era’s astronomy, navigation, biology - but knew nothing of the ocean depths. Weighted lines with ropes extending near 100 metres measured how deep the waters were. Beyond the shallows of the Mediterranean though, the ropes would not hit sand beneath the sea. “Abyss” was in the Greek scientific canon - the ocean floor (if there was one) lay beyond measure.

The age of exploration (~1400 to ~1600 CE) brought a wealth of map making. Needed to link expanding empires, the coastlines and favourable routes across the open sea were well known. By the 1700s, the outline of nearly every continent would be mapped in detail. But over 2000 years following Pytheas, the ocean depths would remain unknown.

Heavens First - Seas Second

Moving our minds to the stars, René Descartes in the 1640s published speculation on the scope of the universe. To him, the cosmos was “indefinite”, it could not be counted up or measured as a whole. He explicitly did not view the universe as infinite (as Newton did and Einstein would), but rather immeasurable. Stars without bottom.

In the 1830s, the first dedicated survey of ocean depths was made by the U.S. Navy. Where Pytheas and others had only measured down hundreds of metres, the survey of the North Atlantic measured kilometres. While imperfect, the bottom had been found.

“Until the commencement of the plan of deep-sea soundings, as now conducted in the American Navy, the bottom of what the sailors call ‘blue water’ was as unknown to us as is the interior of any of the planets of our system.”

~ Physical Geography Of The Sea (1855), Matthew Fontaine Maury, Lieutenant

By the middle of the 20th century, RADAR and SONAR had reached far deeper than ropes ever could. Using waves of light and sound, the submerged mountain ranges and valley trenches revealed themselves. Today, we have mapped the topography of our whole Earth, above and below the waves.

It is in this same period that our universe too became finite. Astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1929 estimated a size of 280 million light years across - and still expanding. For a sailor between the stars, a favourable route today will be farther tomorrow, and their map will be daily redrawn. The notion of an expanding universe would have shaken Descartes and Newton as much as it did Einstein.

Touching Sand

We live on a globe that has been mapped to the metre. We live in a universe that has measure in size and age. While we have not found the body of Ajax (should he have existed), we know that his descent eventually ended. If you fell into the sky you would keep falling outward to the end of the universe, but you would never hit sand. Our cosmos is more like Homer’s ocean than our actual sea: It is ever expanding and ever deepening.

The measurements we make today are imperfect, of the ocean and the stars. For both, these have just begun. My mind wanders to the oceans of Europa: What depths will we measure? It wanders to the rim of the Milky Way: What coastline will we map? It wanders to the expanding boundary of the universe itself: Will we ever find the bottom?

Fingers and Toes

We use a system of base ten: Nine unique numbers and a zero before we need to repeat them. After 9, we return to 0 and add 1 in the next available place. Extending to large numbers and to fractions, we increase or decrease the number of digits with powers of 10. A species with ten fingers developing this system is not a coincidence.

The earliest unambiguously written number system emerged in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE. In ancient Babylon, there was a mixed preference for 10 and 60. The script used for counting had thin tally marks for singles 1 through 9, and a wedge mark for increments of 10. This pattern continued until 60 where the cycle began again. This favouritism for 60 can still be seen in our measures of time, segments of circles, and groupings of dozens. Counting the knuckles of our fingers gives easy counting to 12. There was no zero in this script; an invention worthy of its own discussion.

A base 20 system was used by the Maya, favouring groupings of 4 and 5. Base 20 maps nicely to all our fingers and toes. Intriguingly, there is conjecture that the Maya developed a concept of zero, although the evidence for this is limited. The history of this number system was largely destroyed during Spanish conquest in the 16th century, and so our connection to it is tenuous. We may never appreciate the extent of their mathematics.

As Simple As It Gets

Binary code is the simplest useful base, using only 0 and 1.

While inextricable from the modern age, there are examples of binary scripts going back centuries in India, China, and parts of Africa. The development of current binary applications began in earnest in the 1800s with its adaptation to logic. True and false statements expressed through mathematics would be applied to electrical circuits in the 1930s, and the digital age was born.

Counting systems built from powers of two began to take off in the mid 20th century. Base systems of 2, 4, 8, and 16 were all in use by the 1960s. The hexadecimal system is most common among these, and uses 16 unique characters before repeating:

The “number A” in hex represents a quantity of 10, while F represents 15. This is a dense way of communicating information when converting to-and-from binary code. Hexadecimal balances readability by humans and ease of transmission into binary.

As the digital age progresses, the sophistication of binary counting will only deepen. Systems built from powers of 2 have all found uses in modern computing, and our preference for 10 is nowhere to be seen:

The fundamental systems which operate our society all function on binary, but we still use base 10 for our daily life. Asking for the binary value “1100” instead of a dozen eggs is not a replacement I hear myself or my new nephew making. Our preference for ten is deeply bound to our biology, and more useful than binary in navigating the macro world.

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From Sumer to Saturn

Imagine the crew of a Saturn Cloud Cruiser a few centuries from now. They play cards together before shift change and discuss if the 3D printed fish or chicken is better.

All their instruments use a binary basis: Digital logic in the life support system; X-band communication to their families on Earth and Luna; Onboard lights to imitate Babylon’s 24 hour day. Their playing cards though will still have the numbers 1 through 10 (and maybe the Kings & Queens too).

There are some systems we will not replace, so long as we have any resemblance to the people of our past. My nephew will count to ten as we do, he will probably learn binary in school, maybe hex too should he pursue the sciences. The numbers up to ten will be one of the technologies we take with us when we leave Earth, be them as a vestigial organ or a child’s comfort toy.

Should we ever communicate with intelligent life beyond Earth, it will be in binary. The simplest base will be the lowest common denominator for first contact. Eventually, we may wish to teach them how to count to ten. What will they teach us to count to?

In 1857, the philosophical naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace exchanged letters. The contents of these letters would form the basis for the theory of evolution by natural selection. They are some of the most impactful correspondences of the last two centuries, sculpting out of their observations the pillar of modern biology.

These letters were carried by horseback throughout England, and by boat around the world. Letters to collaborators between London and Paris would travel hundreds of kilometres - while Darwin’s sketches from the Galapagos would travel thousands. One way correspondence in this era was days to months, depending on the distance.

For much of history before Darwin and Wallace, this was the speed of communication. Information across the world was limited to the speed of the horse, roughly 10km/hr. Shortly after them, it would be nearly instant.

Wired to Wireless

Harnessing electricity began at the turn of the 19th century. With wielding of current came the first long distance message system in the 1830s: The telegraph. Meaning “to write at a distance”, it uses an electrical signal along a continuous wire from sender to receiver. Using Morse code, scribes turned any message into a series of long and short pulses to be passed along the wires at nearly the speed of light.

Electricity is the movement of electrons through a medium. Along the surface of steel and copper telegraph wires, electrons move at speeds approaching the speed of light (approximately 10^9 km/hr). Letters on horseback at 10km/hr, to messages nearly the speed of light: A 100 million fold improvement.

Telegraphs require continuous solid connections which are challenging to run long distances. In 1901, half a century after the first telegraph message, physicist Marconi sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission. No longer were our communications constrained by undersea cables or long distance wires: The invention of the radio began the 20th century.

Through the 1800s, communication went from letters on horseback to wireless transmissions at the maximum possible speed. Communication speed was a step function (not unlike the ones used by Marconi). There was no intermediate phase, we went from limited to instantaneous.

Will the instant era come to an end?

The speed of light is slow. Light in a vacuum travels at 3 x 10^8 m/s. This is (to the best of our understanding) the fastest any information can travel. Since the harnessing of radio, we have reached the universal cap on the speed of our signals.

As we head out to settle other planets, we must confront the scale of the cosmos. At their maximum separation, a radio signal from Earth to Mars can take 20 minutes. A 40 minute total time lag in conversation is enough for daily tasks, but draws us backward to the era of Darwin and Wallace.

By Jupiter, that one way signal takes nearly 1 hour, at Saturn 1.5, and over 4 by Neptune. A pair of scientists exchanging ideas between Earth and the outer planets will have their correspondence limited by distance. Each step deeper into space requires more powerful and more accurate antennas as the targets become smaller in each respective sky.

To go beyond the solar system is to find ourselves at another step function. The nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, and it would take a radio signal over 4 years to reach it. A message home from the orbit of Proxima Centauri would arrive 4 years after its author sent it, and an immediate reply would take another 4 to return. A horseback rider crossing Europe will seem hasty to those awaiting word from Proxima Centauri.

Radio Silence

The luxury of instant communication is what binds the modern world. This interconnectedness of all humanity will begin to fade as we travel further into space. While the population on Earth will remain instantly intertwined, those off world will slowly lose closeness. Coupling the increasing time lag with mounting engineering hurdles, the contact burden becomes costly.

Alfred Wallace died in 1913. He lived long enough to enter a world where wireless broadcasts carried ideas in an instant. As our descendants make their way to the outer solar system and beyond, their rate of communication with home will steadily decline.

We are born into the epoch of instant communication: Will we live long enough to see its end?