Looking Ahead to 2025
As 2024 winds down, and space advocates begin imagining what might happen in 2025, we can look ahead to a variety of missions, from more Starship launches by SpaceX to the first flight of New Glenn by Blue Origin. And I hope we can breathe a sigh of relief when Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore return home.
The Rise of the Cislunar Economy
The commercial space industry seems well on its way to long-term success, with significant capital being invested in it and governments worldwide entering cooperative ventures with private enterprise. SpaceX is likely to dominate the launch sector, while others focus on building successors to the International Space Station. The cislunar economy will become a dominant phrase in the space media, and concrete steps may be taken to create it, especially with the momentum of competition between the United States and China to establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface.
It is of particular interest to me, of course, that as space tourism becomes an established reality, more people will experience the Overview Effect®, the shift in awareness that accompanies seeing the Earth from space and in space.
Mars is a wild card, not because anything has changed on the Red Planet, but because of changes on Earth, i.e., Elon Musk’s ascendancy in the American government and the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator. Both men have a strong affinity for Mars missions, and they will now have the power to focus government resources on the goal they covet.
Shifting from Missions to Migration
These, and other space activities, are inspiring and engaging, of course, but one question remains: when do we shift our thinking from missions to migration? Or will we?
For some of us, the vision of millions, even billions, of humans living and working off-world is inspiring and something worthy achieving. It could be highly beneficial to the Earth for us to move a large portion of our civilization outward, giving the planet a chance to recover from the depredations of the past few centuries. For others, it is a bad idea; they fear that humans will simply make a mess of Mars, the Moon, and the rest of the solar ecosystem.
We can be certain of one thing: whether humanity becomes a spacefaring civilization or stays close to the home planet, it is a matter of choice, and we stand, at the end of 2024, at an inflection point. Our descendants will look back at the Earthlings of today, perhaps from a great distance, and evaluate whether we created a positive future for them or “missed the boat.” It’s up to us.
Happy New Year!
About the Author
Frank White is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a Rhodes Scholar. He earned an M.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University, where he was a member of New College. The fourth edition of Frank’s best-known book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, was published by Multiverse Publishing, a division of Multiverse Media LLC, in 2022. Frank is president of The Human Space Program, Inc., a nonprofit organization based on an idea initially proposed in The Overview Effect. The Overview Effect® is a registered trademark owned by William Frank White.
(c) Copyright Frank White, 2025, All Rights Reserved. Published with permission by Above Space
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