Why This Gold Rush Is Different

Abstract

What will we do when Earth’s resources are used up by humanity?

“Ships and sails proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. Then there will also be people, who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space.”

—Johannes Kepler, Letter to Galileo Galilei, 1609

“In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall 1 day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!”

—Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, 1865

“The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe—or nothing… The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea.”

—Arthur C. Clarke, last words of his first book, Interplanetary Flight, 1950