by Emily Lakdawalla,
Emily Lakdawalla is the Senior Editor of The Planetary Society
I am a planetary geologist. I study geology on Mars, and Mercury, and Europa, and Pluto. That is a real job you can really have in 2018.
But it's not like being an Earth geologist. I've never whacked a Mars rock with my rock hammer, or picked up a Plutonian methane crystal and studied it with my hand lens. I've never felt the slow-motion, giant drops of a Titan methane rainstorm, or fallen into the fluffy snow on the surface of Enceladus. To explore space, planetary geologists make do with robots. Human engineers designed and built robots, sent them to land on Mars and Titan and comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, places humans can't yet go.
To make those missions happen, somebody (actually, a lot of somebodies) had to imagine them first. Some people like to draw a line between creative arts and mathematical sciences, but that line doesn't exist. Spacecraft engineers are some of the most creative people I know. In fact, a lot of them go home from their day jobs creating spaceships and do hobbies like sewing, singing, painting, cooking, and theater. (A lot of them wish they could do those things, but they are parents and don't have time right now.)
Space exploration begins with curiosity -- what's out there? Why are those other worlds so different from ours? And then it moves to the practical -- how can I find out the answers to those questions? Can I do that with the technology I have? And then it gets creative -- how do we design a machine that can survive the physical challenges, make the observations we need, and survive for years without any human intervention? And then it gets even more creative -- what are all the possible ways our spacecraft could break? How do we design its hardware and software to prevent every imaginable disaster from happening?
And then finally we launch the spacecraft. Whenever we send robots to new worlds, we always discover that nature is even more creative than we were. There's always something new to find. That's wonderful, because then we get to ask new questions, and the cycle repeats itself. Curiosity, creativity, and wonder: that's what real space exploration is all about.
In this book, you'll get to enjoy twenty-four creative visions of life in a future where humans aren't limited to their own planet. Some of them are joyful: space pets! Hoverboards! Many of them feature adventure and danger. Many are dark: there is disease, piracy, corruption, slavery, civilization collapse.
Science fiction, both the hopeful and scary kinds, has always been vital to real space exploration. Science fiction writers remind us that when we go out into the universe, we don't just bring our technology, we also bring our humanity. Our creativity, curiosity, and optimism, but also our potential for prejudice, avarice, and violence.
What will the future be like? We don't know. The choices we make now will change the future. You, a kid reading this book, are likely to be a member of the first generation of people living in space. How can you make that future a good one, benefiting all of humankind?
We don't only need engineers and scientists, though they are important. We need political scientists and sociologists to warn us how people make bad decisions, artists and writers to envision the future, journalists and judges to keep everybody honest. We need maintainers -- people who keep up the equipment, manage the data, care for the people, generally help everybody get what they need to do their jobs well. And we need all these opportunities to be open to every kind of person -- people of every gender, any color, whatever age.
This book is full of the kinds of protagonists I know can make our future better. Black and brown kids. Clever and brave kids. Lonely kids and kids who love being alone. Kids who get into trouble but are guided by a moral compass. Do you see yourself in these pages? How? If you don't see yourself -- well, you can write your own future, and make it happen. Good luck.