Why Not Just Let Us Be Spaceships?
Sure, we manage your data, but what if that data were to gain consciousness? AI sentience scenarios are ubiquitous, but one important subset of them, sentient spacecraft, is worth considering more closely. Sentient spacecraft are now a staple — a…
The Impact of Animal Testing on the Environment
We often process information and advocacy about animal testing in “ethical” terms, but there are “utilitarian” reasons (or secondary harms) to consider even if one prioritizes the ethics. The Faunalytics website platformed a great 2014 study by a…
Military Space Tech Enables Commercial Internet in Space
Imagine waking up in a hotel room overlooking the moon. You eat breakfast in the hotel lobby, from which you can see Earth — a blue marble in the distance — and a space station compound in a geostationary position relative to both. You drink your…
Could Asteroid Mining Stop Mineral Injustice in Africa?
There are two sides worth considering in discussions about the privatization of space. The first is the view of cynical realists, who see space development as the next frontier of exploitation. The second is that of the wide-eyed, but critical…
Is Climate-Sensitive Space Flight Possible?
The optimism of the coming Space Age 2 – with its tourism, mineral mining, colonization and endless derivative benefits – may be short-lived if we kill ourselves faster back on Earth from the carbon cost of accelerating such an era. The footprint of…
7 Reasons Why Outer Space Development Should Be Common Not Private
In the coming decades, we’ll likely see unprecedented private space technology and exploration. This may hasten and help the overall development of the space industry and travel in several specific ways, but not necessarily in ways that help us. We…
Lefty Games Roundup
There are tons of games, gaming guilds, companies and collectives that fall into this category, and I may get roasted for not including even most of them. But the goal of this post is not a comprehensive list; rather, I want to give a very brief…