Space provides new opportunity for economic endeavors
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This is a marked change from previous space endeavors. "What's really interesting about what's happening in space is the fundamental transformation of how it's being organized," Matthew Weinzierl, the senior associate dean of Harvard Business School, said in an interview. "For a long time, when most people thought about what we do in space as humans, they thought of it as primarily a government-led activity." Now, businesses outside the government sphere are putting just as much research and investment into space endeavors.
What can we expect?
"If you think about data as being the backbone of the modern economy, and the transmission of information increasingly defining what so many industries are, space is very much at the center of that over the next five to 10 years," said Weinzierl. This could lead to an era of intense innovation. "How might [leaders] use space? How might they creatively think about ways to use the data and connectivity, or eventually the manufacturing, the tourism, and the resources of space, to revolutionize what they do?" The technology could both boost the lives of people here on Earth and expand humanity further into space over time, given proper investment and regulation.
On the flip side, "a growing number of thinkers and activists are concerned that this new wave of space activity is motivated by our worst impulses on the Earth's surface, and could reproduce some of our biggest mistakes," said Politico. "Anti-war activists have protested the perceived militarization of space," while "academics worry that its limitless expanse could worsen the excesses of billionaire capitalism." Others "warn that we're in danger of ignoring decades of evidence about what we've already done to our own planet." Previously, space has had very few regulations and was not easily accessible — in letting many different parties try to profit off the cosmos, exploitation is a risk.
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