My daughter was very excited when I told her that I’m interviewing for a space company. She asked me whether this would mean that I would stop pestering her to become an astronaut, work for Nasa and travel to Mars.
Space travel has been a life long dream for me. As a child, I remember growing up in a small town where I would look upto the sky to see the glistening stars and trying to differentiate between planets and stars. I was particularly excited when I could spot stars that would shine with different colors and when I could spot planets like venus with naked eye. I had the same excitement when I spotted Mars a few months ago and quickly snapped a couple of pictures since it had been evading me for a while now.
Over the years, the dream was somewhat kept alive with my love for travel and travelling to newer countries and remote remote places. So, when companies like Blue origin and Space X entered into foray to make space tourism and inter-planetary travel possible, I was excited. It’s now my dream to not only go beyond the atmosphere, but to actually land on Mars and have a coffee there. I’m rooting for that though I will happily settle if I can do the same on Moon.
My friend and I have argued at length on this topic. He thinks that space tourism is vainful and wasteful and resources can best be spent on fighting global warming and reducing poverty. I argue that he is missing the point and that it has been human nature to always explore the unknown and expand the awareness to beyond. Thankfully, learning history in high school helped. I point back to the fifteenth century and the countless explorers who moved beyond the known territories back then to discover the New world. Such discoveries led not only to economic prosperity but also to nutrional prosperity due to introduction of vegetables like potato and corn into our diets. And while there have been a lot of criticism on the impact of such earlier explorations on indigenous people, we could use the past to hold ourselves to higher standards in future.
I’m actually optimistic that human access to space will have positive impact on sustainability efforts. Space is a tough terrain and the things we take for granted like water and oxygen aren’t available and the distance makes it impossible to transport them from earth frequently. Since we are making this venture commercial, there will be tremendous efforts in reducing costs and making it economical. In the last decade of work, we have seen successful launches via reusable rockets (Space X’s Falcon and Blue origin’s New Shepard) and the more recent development of building solar panels using the Blue origin’s Alchemist technology are promising developments for reducing resource usage on earth as well.
From a professional perspective, I made a conscious choice to move to working for Mission oriented companies when I left Amazon. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as it helped me leverage my years of experience in working at big companies to do meaningful work for the teachers and students to enhance classroom learning. For my next role, I see space travel as an exciting adventure with huge potential for impacting the lives of more than eight billion people on this planet and even the entire life on this planet. I’m excited about the possibilities and if only I could get my daughter to get excited too! Or may be I need to set the example first.
