Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

by Sylvia Engdahl

This essay was written for my 2020 book The Future of Being Human and Other Essays. It is also included in my collection of space essays From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward.

*

SPACEFARING WITHIN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

I have described my view of the relatively near-term future on Earth in my essay "The Future of Being Human" (available in my book by that title) and several others. Life won't be as different as most current speculation suggests. Artificial intelligence (AI) will alter many aspects of it, but will never take over from humans. We aren't going to become shapeshifters or cyborgs, though we will benefit from genetic and neurotechnological advances where they are useful. No matter how many new technologies are developed, people will have the same underlying wants and needs that they do now. Couples will still fall in love. Their feelings about their families will remain unchanged, as will their sense of what's important to them, however unlike today's their appearance and activities may be.

This will be true, I believe, as far into the future as it is possible to imagine. Human nature isn't going to change. Whatever it is that makes us human--which is at present beyond our understanding--is not subject to transformation by time. But as far as humankind as a whole is concerned, there will be one major step in our evolution that will redefine our status forever. We will become a spacefaring species.

The expansion of our civilization into space is vital if we are to survive indefinitely. There are four major reasons: first, because we are vulnerable to a number of catastrophes, human-caused or natural, as long as we are confined to a single planet. Second, because sooner or later Earth will run of resources, no matter what is done to conserve them; the claim that they can be made sustainable forever is a dangerous illusion. Third, because like all species we have a built-in drive to increase the population, and attempts to frustrate it would lead only to setbacks such as war, pandemics, or mass starvation. And fourth, because throughout human history exploration of new regions has led to renewed creativity and intellectual progress; in time we would decline from boredom if we never moved outward, even if not from the other perils.

In addition to these survival imperatives, we need to become spacefaring because it will bring great benefits to Earth. Initially, the development of space-based solar power will solve the energy crisis; bring about a significant reduction in atmospheric pollution; raise developing nations out of poverty; and provide enough cheap power to desalinate sea water, a process that will be necessary if climate change requires an increase in irrigation, as well as to meet the needs of a growing population. Next, manufacturing in orbit, using raw materials from the moon and asteroids, will result in further reduction of pollution, plus lowered cost of minerals and products imported to Earth. And in the distant future, hunger and poverty will be relieved by enabling population growth on other worlds.

Eventually, settlement of such worlds will reduce the pressures that result from confinement of our species to a single planet with finite space and finite resources. This in turn will lessen conflict and, ultimately, bring an end to war. Once sufficient material resources are available to all nations and a commitment is made to the challenge of establishing large-scale colonies, the reasons for war will disappear, although it will always be necessary to maintain a defense against terrorists and attempted dictatorships. Only expansion beyond Earth can bring this about. If we fail to make the effort then sooner or later, our species will die out.

*

The first step in becoming spacefaring was, of course, the 1969 landing on the moon, which at the time was rightly called a major evolutionary milestone. Yet despite its symbolic significance, it proved to be more or less of a false dawn, although we have made important advances in space technology since then and I believe no support for faster progress should have been expected. As to why, fifty years after setting foot on the moon, we have neither returned there nor gone further into space, see my essay Thoughts of the 50th Anniverary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

The true turning point in evolution will be the utilization of resources from space, the moon, and eventually the asteroids to benefit Earth, beginning with the construction of solar power satellites. By far the best solution to the energy shortage and pollution on Earth is to beam down solar power collected by satellites in space. This has been proposed since the 1970s but has been stalled by financial and political problems. It is now desperately needed for adaptation to climate change and to provide electricity to developing regions where millions of people are still living without it, as well as to meet the expanding demand for power in the industrialized nations. Hopefully, opposition to the environmental damage associated with current energy sources will finally bring about its implementation. China and Japan, which are already working on it, may lead the way.

The next step will be a large privately-owned space station, and perhaps a permanent base on the moon. This will be a gradual process, but by the end of the twenty-first century it will significantly increase resources, and products derived from them, available on Earth, as well as reducing pollution of the atmosphere. Moreover, working in space will provide experience essential to the eventual establishment of colonies on distant worlds, as well as enable entrepreneurs to earn the money to finance them.

Perhaps even before major orbital activity will come human exploration of the moon and Mars and the establishment of bases there. One or more expeditions--the first one already planned by Elon Musk--will go to Mars before the middle of this century and a small settlement may be established by its end. The speed at which this occurs depends on how soon the problems due to the effect of prolonged zero or low gravity on the human body can be solved. Before many people can go it will be necessary to develop ships with artificial gravity, but even with them, it may not be possible for those who have spent much time on Mars to return to Earth. They may not care; after all, most early settlers of America didn't expect to go back to Europe.

I don't believe there will be a large self-supporting colony on Mars, one that can survive without supplies from Earth, until the twenty-second century, but it will surely be established by then, and will continue to grow. If it proves possible to produce large quantities of lightweight materials such as graphene--which is 100 times stronger than steel and almost transparent--through nanotechnology, numerous domes can be easily constructed by self-replicating robots. (I don't think they'll be human-shaped robots, as other shapes might be more useful; but I find that NASA has already designed one.) In that case, a breathable atmosphere won't be necessary; but on the other hand, it may be feasible to terraform Mars. Many proposals for doing so have been developed, and it would eliminate the need for artificial life support and facilitate agriculture, even if a large population can survive without change to the natural environment. However, terraforming will be a slow process, and by the time it is complete the early settlers may be accustomed to their way of life and have no desire to change it. So whether it's worthwhile may be a question of how much ongoing immigration from Earth is expected.

The other planets in our solar system are not suitable for colonization, although some of their moons are promising and in the late twenty-first or early twenty-second century exploration of them, first by robots and later by humans, will begin. Almost certainly we will mine the asteroids, which are rich in minerals needed on Earth and for construction of facilities in orbit. How soon this happens will depend on the progress of technology, but it will start in this century and could be well underway even before the settlement of Mars.

At some point we will build orbital colonies. It has been believed since the 1970s that large colonies could be constructed in Earth orbit with materials from the moon--little worlds with the living space, including parks containing plants and trees, on the inside surface of huge orbital structures. Many people (and I was among them) thought this should be done soon, before the colonization of Mars. Since then it has been realized that it's too big a project to be accomplished easily, and it is not a high priority because there is no short-term financial incentive. With the AI that will be available to process extraterrestrial resources, there will be no need for many people to work in orbit. But in the far future when more room is needed for population growth, orbital colonies will be essential. Living conditions in them will be much better than in crowded cities on Earth, and eventually they may make it possible to abandon large cities and restore much of Earth's natural beauty.

Before that happens we may aim for the stars with interstellar probes and perhaps primitive starships. As soon as a means of propulsion is found that can reach the nearest star within a century or less, robots will be sent and explorers may follow, even if it means they must travel in frozen sleep or raise new generations before they reach the destination. But because it will take up to another century for messages sent back from them to reach Earth, this won't be done on a large scale. It's unlikely that we'll attempt to colonize exoplanets until we have faster-than-light (FTL) starships. To relieve population pressure it will be easier to construct orbital colonies surrounding not merely Earth, but our sun. Nevertheless, the search for a means of FTL travel will continue.

MIGRATION TO DISTANT STARS

According to what is known of physics today, faster-than-light travel is absolutely impossible even in theory. I believe a breakthrough will come, but there’s no way of predicting how soon; it could be in the twenty-second century or it could be much later. It will necessarily involve some form of what science fiction refers to as a space warp or wormhole, though those are merely metaphors for ideas that are not yet understood. Or perhaps some principle beyond our present conception will be discovered. I feel sure that eventually there will be some means of traveling between the stars in a reasonable length of time so that our civilization, and not just humans in the biological sense, can spread throughout our galaxy and perhaps throughout the universe.

Sooner or later we will have settlements on planets of many stars. Eventually Earth may become a backwater world, honored as our ancestral home but no longer central in human affairs. The human population will be spread among its colonies, which I envision as self-governing and perhaps quite different from each other, with free trade carried on between them. There may be some kind of overall organization; I hope it won't be an overbearing bureaucracy but that is all too likely, at least until humans outgrow the impulse to control each other, if rapid communication across interstellar distances becomes possible.

Most people won't have opportunity for interstellar travel, which will surely be expensive; if communication technology proves slow, they may not even be aware of planets other than their own. But they will all be human. I don't think they will evolve into separate species as is sometimes suggested. They will adapt to new environments by means of technology, as humans have always done, not by natural genetic change of a kind that would prevent interbreeding--the latter would require centuries, and technology will surely progress much more quickly even if not adequate to begin with.

Whether technology is used to enable humans to live in new environments or to change environments to meet the needs of humans remains to be seen. Either way, pioneering on exoplanets won't be like the traditional image of farmers taming a fertile new land. The world or the people, or both, will have to be modified. We don't know how hard it would be to terraform an alien planet, but it would certainly take too long for settlers to survive during the process without equipment such as breathing masks. We do know that to change humans drastically by genetic engineering would require either that parents raise children very different from themselves, or that embryos be created in laboratories and raised in creches of some kind; and I suspect that people would not accept either of those alternatives. The family is basic to human life. Without families and homes a settlement could not thrive.

Colonists will probably adopt a combination of strategies--terraforming slowly where feasible, but in the meantime becoming so used to necessary technological aids that they seem natural. Insofar as neurotechnological devices such as implants are helpful, they will be used. Relatively minor genetic changes may be made, but not to the extent of affecting sexual attractiveness. People will adapt to such conditions as low gravity or high temperatures simply putting up with them; children born under such conditions may have some physical characteristics unlike their parents but will not be fundamentally different. Humanity lies in inner feelings, not outward appearance.

If terraforming of a planet proves essential, small settlements of experts to oversee it will precede large-scale colonization. It is often said that the initial population of a colony must be large to avoid genetic damage from inbreeding. This idea arose before anything was known about genetic engineering. Inbreeding in itself is not detrimental; for it to be harmful, genes causing damage to offspring must be inherited from both parents, which inbreeding makes more likely. Surely by the time we can reach worlds of other stars, we will know how to detect and eliminate mutations through germline modification. We may need to do this in cases of radiation exposure, too, although perhaps long-distance space travelers who want future children will bank eggs and sperm routinely.

It has been seriously suggested that since robots will be better able than humans to make centuries-long voyages and to adapt to alien environments, we may leave interstellar colonization to them and never go ourselves. I cannot imagine anything more pointless. Certainly we will send robot probes to investigate other planets just as we have sent primitive ones to Mars, and self-replicating robots (not human-shaped, but in various forms suited to their tasks) will do the heavy work of building colonies. But that will be only a preliminary to human settlement. A colony, as distinguished from a research station, would be useful only as a place for people to live. If it weren't going to be inhabited by humans, there would be no reason to establish it. The purpose of colonizing other worlds is to ensure the survival of our species. What good could it do to populate the galaxy with robots?

An even crazier version of this scenario envisioned by some is that eventually robots themselves will take the initiative and colonize the entire galaxy, or even other galaxies. Furthermore, these people see it as a desirable goal, the takeover of the universe by superior intelligence we have created. (It's a potentially genocidal aim, since it makes no allowance for any unknown primitive civilizations that may be developing.) As senseless as this seems to me, I must admit that it is a logical conclusion to draw from the premise that mind consists solely of "intelligence"--and it is thus a reductio ad absurdum with respect to that premise. For more about its fallacy, see my essay "The Roots of Disbelief in Human Mind Powers" (in my book The Future of Being Human).

This false premise also leads to another suggestion made by several distinguished scientists, the notion that robots might prepare distant worlds for light-speed transmission of coded information describing individuals' bodies and then reassemble those individuals, complete with their memories, at the destination. I suppose, since people are used to the transporter in Star Trek, the idea of converting humans to energy patterns does not seem too outlandish, and at least one noted theoretical physicist has predicted that the technology will be invented within 100 years. But while transmission of matter may be achieved, human minds are not wholly material. For the same reason that the commonly-envisioned uploading of people to computers will never happen, electronic transportation of them is inherently impossible; even if they arrived in human form they would be mindless zombies. The idea is simply another consequence of the materialistic assumptions that limit today's science to a narrowly-defined segment of reality.

*

What about contact with extraterrestrial civilizations? According to those who believe robots will colonize the entire cosmos, the fact that they haven't already done so means that there are no civilizations more advanced than ours. I'm more inclined to believe that it means advanced aliens haven't produced such robots because it's not possible. Nevertheless, there is a long tradition of believing that the failure of aliens to show up means there aren't any. Some space enthusiasts want to believe it because they fear that existing aliens not having come here might mean FTL travel isn't possible. Others believe it because they are convinced that it's our destiny to seed the universe with life, which in my opinion is a revival of the ancient hubristic idea that Earth occupies its center in terms of importance. SETI enthusiasts are beginning to believe it because we haven't received any radio messages. The absence of aliens is known as the Fermi Paradox because physicist Erico Fermi long ago expressed surprise that no evidence of their existence has appeared. Personally I have never been able to see anything in the least paradoxical about it. Many plausible reasons why they haven't contacted us have been suggested, but I think the most likely one is that they have chosen not to do so.

I don't believe such contact is going to happen--via SETI radio communication or in any other way--in this century, and maybe not for many centuries. As stated in my novels, I believe truly advanced "human" species do not reveal themselves to less advanced ones because they do not want to interfere with their evolution, A speculation similar to this is generally known as the "zoo hypothesis," but that is not the same thing. When we observe animals in zoos, we do not expect them to someday become our equals. We do not expect them to progress while we are watching; on the contrary, we take it for granted that their capabilities will remain the same generation after generation. Planetary civilizations, on the other hand, advance. And it seems to me that ETs significantly ahead of us would want us to reach our full potential before joining them, not only for altruistic reasons but because they would value the contributions that diverse civilized species would make to the supercivilization of which they are members--not to mention that they'd realize what trouble admitting an immature species into that confederation might cause.

Some readers of my novels have felt that the advanced civilization I portrayed was rather arbitrary in decreeing that the younger species were not their equals, and certainly I have maintained, in both fiction and nonfiction, that people of cultures at all stages are equally human. I extend that principle to people of extraterrestrial species also. But it isn't a matter of innate qualities, for culture has a bearing on the development of minds. The science of epigenetics is discovering that this is true even on the physical level; DNA is not the sole determinant of a person's brain. Thus cavemen who didn't yet have tools or a spoken language were certainly not our equals; if there were a time machine, we couldn't bring a caveman into our time and expect him to hold his own, even if he was educated. And if we were to hear from an extraterrestrial civilization that has existed for many millennia longer than ours, I don't think we would expect to be the equals of its members. We'd expect them to be advanced in ways we can't even imagine.

This natural assumption is obscured in my novels because I have to make the characters enough like us for readers to identify with. I chose to make them physically similar not only for plot purposes but as a literary device to suggest the universality of values and feelings among thinking beings throughout the universe. But of course if they exist, they are not so much like us either physically or culturally. And if there is such a thing as progress--which I maintain that there is (in contrast to official scientific theory, which defines evolution simply as "change" without any "forward" movement)--then they have developed abilities far beyond ours. I do not think we could hold our own if in contact with their worlds.

I could hardly depict advancement in ways we can't imagine in my stories, so I tried to symbolize this with the controlled psychic powers. Unless the reader stops to think a lot about it, the implication of those powers being common everyday abilities in an advanced civilization may not be apparent--but of course, if people were not hiding them as my characters do on younger worlds, it would be a very different kind of society than has ever existed at any time in human history. Could people of our time get along just fine among beings who habitually communicate telepathically and move things around with psychokinesis, and do other psychic things that we cannot do? It would be as if a caveman who couldn't learn to speak tried to function among modern Americans. What's more, the vast majority of human beings as we know them not only are incapable of using controlled psychic powers, but would be all too likely to do harm with them, unintentionally or otherwise; a culture based on them with members no different from ourselves is inconceivable. It goes without saying that I don't know just how a species gets from "here" to "there," to the stage where the widespread use of these powers is both possible and practical--but I believe it happens. And in the terms of my fiction (which should not be taken as a literal definition of species maturity) this is the turning point. A species is accepted into a supercivilization, if one exists, when it has reached the stage where psychic abilities are commonly and safely used by its normal members, who can therefore mingle freely with others without posing a threat to anyone or finding themselves at a disadvantage. It is not a matter of subjective judgment.

This is only an example, of course, We do not know what the actual turning point is, but it may be something beyond our present ability to envision. Surely development of starships is a prerequisite, as without it we are far behind species who can travel between the stars.

Might we not come into contact with species at our own level or younger, who have not yet decided to conceal themselves? The chances of that are extremely small, considering the vast number of stars in the universe and the vast distances between them. SETI listens for signs of supercivilizations, not isolated ones that can just barely transmit signals and which only by incredible coincidence could be close enough to detect. And when we begin to explore, it will be only by luck that we find even one suitable planet within range, let alone an inhabited one.

It may be wondered why, since we are able to find exoplanets by detecting their effect on observation of stars, we won't eventually detect the presence of a supercivilization's home worlds. This issue was raised by my editor way back in 1969 before Enchantress from the Stars was published, before we had found any exoplanets at all. I have always assumed that supercivilizations are able to shield their worlds from detection. We don't know of any technology that could accomplish that, but it's no more unlikely than a great many other things we don't know. It might be a useful technology even apart from altruistic aims if a world feared aliens might be hostile.

I don't believe there is any need to worry about hostile aliens as some scientists have begun to do, despite the well-established precedent set by science fiction. I have discussed this issue in my essay "Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War." In the first place, a starfaring species would have no reason to attack, as the universe is full of planets and resources that any species with the ability to cross interstellar space could obtain more easily than by invading an inhabited world. And in the second place, such species must have advanced far beyond aggressiveness, which I view not as innate but as a stage of immaturity. The invaders in Enchantress from the Stars are an anachronism included because the book is intentionally based on both traditional and recent mythology.

So I don't expect us to meet extraterrestrials, hostile or otherwise, in the foreseeable future. If there are any supercivilizations they will conceal their existence even if they are observing Earth, which it's possible that they may already be doing in ways we cannot detect. Surely in the future they will observe our colonization of exoplanets, which may occupy our full attention for centuries.

There will come a time, however, when settling new worlds is not enough. Humans require challenge in order to thrive, and in time colonization will no longer be sufficiently challenging. I believe the next step in evolution will be the acquisition by large numbers of people of the ability to use psi consciously, which will mean radical change on both the individual and the social level. But even that will not permanently satisfy the need to progress into the unknown. And without progress, humankind will inevitably decline.

I see only one way forward: contact with advanced extraterrestrials, when we are at last ready to meet them as equals. We will then confront, as the hero of my novel Herald of the Flame says, "a universe larger than the one we've been living in, a universe full of alien worlds with their own people, their own civilizations, a multitude of worlds that will take centuries to learn about and explore. A challenge that will last virtually forever. . . . Worlds and peoples different from those we know must exist, for if they don't, there is nowhere to go from here--no hope to inspire future generations. Someday . . . humankind must encounter a new universe to explore, or civilization can only slide further downhill."

This will be the true Singularity, the point past which we can make no predictions about how humanity will change. Both literally and figuratively we will enter territory that is now beyond our comprehension. It may be that no such future will come to pass, but we are better off believing that it will than supposing that we're indistinguishable from robots.

Some may wonder why, since I've never conformed to the usual conventions of the science fiction genre, I chose to write only novels about the future. It was partly that the idea of a universe filled with countless inhabited worlds has always fascinated me, but mainly because I believe that how people in our era think about the future is important. Above all, I want readers to look toward it with hope, in the belief that however difficult our problems, and however slowly our species evolves, humankind will continue to move forward. Our world is one small part of a vast, wonder-filled universe that we will sooner or later encounter. People need to think of it in that light.