Ariel Ekblaw

And one of the best things we could do with this infrastructure is harness it for the profound benefit of life on Earth.

Because fundamentally, space exploration isn't about escaping Earth.

In 1968, Bill Anders took this iconic photograph, now lovingly referred to as Earthrise, and he famously remarked, we came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is we discovered the Earth

Bill's comment reminds us that space exploration is about building an aspirational future for humanity wherever we are, on Earth, in orbit around Earth or beyond.

Access to space is cheap enough now and available enough, we need to update our conception of the possible.

If we invest now in space infrastructure, if we invest now in space architecture, new paradigms for how we can build infrastructure in space, we can profoundly expand humanity's horizons while still protecting the heritage of our priceless planet.

We don't have to pick one or the other.

Someday, we will live on Mars.

Someday, we will travel outside of the confines of our solar system.

But until then, let's put space to work for Earth.