Stories from Space

Fifty years after the last Apollo mission sent astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA will be sending the "first woman and firs person of color" to the Moon. But this time around, and with international partners, they intend to develop the infrastructure needed to create a "sustianed program of lunar exploration." If there is a message that summarizes these bold endevours, it is this: "We're going back to the Moon. And this time, we intend to stay!"

In this century, humanity will be faced with two concurrent anthropogenic forces - climate change and technological change. Between now and mid-century (when they are expected to culminate), these two forces will pull us in opposite directions and compete for ownership of our future. Depending on our actions, we could be looking at the collapse of civilization as we know it, or a future of endless possibility and abundance.

In 1964, Soviet-Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a system for classifying extraterrestrial intelligence based on the amount of energy they could harness. The system had three "Types," which included Planetary, Stellar, and Galactic Civilizations. This came to be known as the Kardashev Scale, which remains one of the most important concepts in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

In 1996, Prof. Robin Hanson of the Future of Humanity Insititute (FHI) at the University Oxford proposed the "Great Filter" argument, something that is still central to the Fermi Paradox and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). According to Hanson's theory, our failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies that either life is not common, or that there is a "Great Filter" that prevents life from evolving and reaching an advanced, spacefaring stage.