Maybe infinity and beyond should wait.

Prominent physicists and wealthy tycoons envision life scattered across the solar system. Elon Musk wants humans to become a multiplanetary species. Jeff Bezos pictures floating space colonies home to billions.

Simulated-gravity ecosystems powered by the sun. Giant corporations drilling into moons and Mars. Children born on spaceships. Earth turning into a tourist destination.

Ripped from the pages of sci-fi novels, the future of humanity could exist beyond Earth.

But first, Savannah Mandel would like a word.

“Before we embark on this new journey to outer space, before we build colonies and extract resources from another planet, we must be intentional about improving our relationship with Earth — and with one another.”

Mandel is an outer space anthropologist and a doctoral student in the Science and Technology Studies program at Virginia Tech. Her research centers on human space exploration.

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