“Look again at that dot. That’s there. That’s Earth. On it lived all those you will never meet and have never heard of, the species that ravaged its own home from under its own feet. In crafted confusion, they served imaginary debts and very real greed, failed to expand their reach, and suffocated themselves to oblivion– on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Sarl Cagan
Alien Astronomer*
* This quote is by the author – a satirical warning inspired by Carl Sagan’s famous paragraph in Pale Blue Dot (Sagan, 1994): “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar’, every ‘supreme leader’, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Sagan, C. (1994). Pale Blue Dot. Random House.
I felt compelled to write this book. While some of the arguments I discuss have been shared in two previous publications, The Space Value of Money and Hardwiring Sustainability into Financial Mathematics, the main theme, propositions, and style of this work are different and unique. I have also updated some of the concepts and included new material to make the arguments clearer and more relatable. Unlike the first two, both written for professionals and academics in finance, this book is designed to share the key insights of my research with a much wider audience.
I must clearly state from the outset that this book is entirely based on my own work and writing. I have not used any AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool. This is important and relevant for two main reasons. The first one is to address broader intellectual property concerns and to ensure the reader is aware that the words in this book have not been chosen through a series of probabilistic decisions. I have selected them based entirely on their ability to express the insights that preceded them. When necessary, words have been replaced and refined, sentences have been improved, to embody the ideas in their most authentic form.
This brings me to the second more philosophical reason. In my view, the most critical challenge of Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPT) and the Large Language Models (LLMs) they rely on is the asymptotic and probabilistic nature of their intelligence. As such, however vast their data sets, however fast their processors, however extensive their training, however precise their memory, and however functionally and mechanically useful the machines may be, we are the ones who must invent the new equations upon which our improved future will be built. We must feed the machines, and indeed we do, directly and/or indirectly, consciously, or not.
I am not in a position to venture a guess regarding the timelines and capabilities of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but I can comfortably state that, for the foreseeable future, the purposeful, intentional, and creative application of human imagination will continue to be the driving force of human progress. This may change with the arrival of artificial intentional imagination (AIIM). But we are not there yet.
While AI is a defining element of our current and future progress, and relevant to the technological advances we will achieve on our way to the stars, it is not a core theme of this discussion. In other words, the above paragraphs are the extent of everything AI related in these pages.
This book lays down the monetary and financial foundations for a species actively pursuing outer space development, exploration, and settlement, and offers the keys to unlocking the massive investment programs needed to invent, manufacture, deploy, and maintain the new habitats of the future.
The reference to the ‘race to space’ in the main title aims to contextualise the subject for a wider audience. Personally, I believe humanity’s outer space expansion should be a coopetition, i.e., a form of cooperative competition, not a race. Interestingly, the title can also be read to mean ‘financing the human race to space,’ which is exactly what this book is about. Furthermore, although the title refers to space, this book is about achieving meaningful milestones in outer space. This is an important nuance given that I define space as our physical context of matter, irrespective of constitution, composition, density, dynamics, and temperature, stretching from subatomic to interstellar space and every layer in between and beyond, where outer space, however vast, is but a segment.
In a molecular field of matter (and energy), where our imagination is a primary force of motion and transformation, everything we do and create on planet Earth is a direct function and result of our interpretations of ourselves and the universe. Our bodies, our planet, our solar system, the Milky Way, and the entire observable universe are part of the space within and through which we act upon interpretation. Thus, what we do, invent, and achieve in this vast molecular context comes down to our own creative imagination, and our willingness to work and sacrifice for its realisation. This is true for all of us, individually and as a global collective. While I do not delve into philosophical discussions on the nature of reality, this is an important starting point as it determines the realm of what we consider possible.
Wherever one may be on planet Earth, or on the International Space Station (ISS), or Tiangong Space Station (TSS), at this very moment, and always, one is in between stars – above one’s head and underneath one’s feet. This is the true and authentic where of the human experience – a tangible given, more real than the entire taxonomy of our projected beliefs, whether economic, financial, monetary, or other. Indeed, however limiting our interpretations of our reality may be, whether on the level of the individual, a collective, or humanity as a whole, our context suggests otherwise.
Sandwiched between stars, to explore the universe our technological imagination must be matched with a commensurately bold and empowering financial imagination. We transcend our limiting interpretations in technology every day, and it is high time we find the new concepts through which we can address the debilitating assumptions of our financial and monetary economics.
At the edge of an ecological catastrophe, on Earth, in space, we must find a way to transform and remove the intellectual and structural impediments to our evolution and the survival of our children. Ultimately, our struggle is not with carbon in the air, with plastic in the oceans, with sewage in the rivers, or with the debris in orbit. It is also not with gravity. Our truest challenge is human mediocrity, in all its shapes and forms, in ourselves and around us, reducing our planet into a consumable of our own confusion, and the universe into a failed version of itself.
Indeed, it is entirely possible that there are other more enlightened civilisations in the universe who have no need for money and do not require monetary incentives to guide their own productive power. It is also entirely possible that they do not need to be persuaded to value the ecosystem they inhabit, and thus, they do not need to be stopped from destroying their own home. As such, from their perspective, the entire content of this book can be considered a worthless evolutionary compromise.
As individuals, nations, and humanity, we are in the grip of our own interpretations and misinterpretations, and we must rethink and reimagine ourselves to improve the world and extend our reach. This book aims to offer an alternative path that can empower us with the tools and concepts that can achieve both, our sustainability on Earth and expansion in outer space.
Armen V. Papazian July 2024, United Kingdom
Soon on Springer Link
Soon on Amazon
