The Carolinian Star Compass

Rendering for the forthcoming book on the migration of humanity off the Earth's surface; in my effort to dismantle the common conception space colonization as a technocratic, machine-centered endeavor, I will present it as the completely natural continuation of the four-million year legacy of the genus Homo adapting to new environments. My question: why should our adaptation end at the curve of the Earth? To that end, I'll use examples of particularly complex, technologically-intensive adaptations that humanity has already made, here on Earth, even in prehistory. These examples will show that while technology was needed, people were not doing this for the machines, but for humanity itself; people were finding new places to live, from the Pacific to the Arctic. Below, a rending of one example in progress.



Tonight, exhausted by grading and some adminstrivia, I'll take a break and do some work either on illustrations for this or the evolution book, or sketching out some basic refutations of the usual arguments against space colonization, to wit:

* it's too expensive
* it's too difficult
* it's too dangerous
* it is a plaything of the rich
* we have to sort out humanity, first
* all we will do is transport humanity's problems off the Earth and into space
* we cannot just go and ruin the rest of the universe like we are ruining Earth

My coauthor and I will take these arguments apart, piece by piece.