Need some space?

We have come a long way since our one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

From billionaires' plans to turn the Moon into a space resort,¹ to schemes to build industrial warehouses on different planets, it seems that even the distant cosmos is not beyond the reaches of capitalismA form of economy characterised by private property and competition between companies..

Some are calling it a new "space race", referring to a campaign more than half a century old, when world powers competed to achieve ever-more ambitious ventures into space.

It is a proud sequence in our history, but it came from humble beginnings: a desire to take our place in the ranks of space. Our motivations now are quite different. In the midst of an unprecedented climate crisis, some are eager to stake their claim on other inhabitable planets - just in case our own falls through.

And it is no longer just a pipe dreamSomething that will never happen - that a smoker might dream about while puffing on a pipe.. After more than fifty years of little to no budget for interstellar exploration, 2023 promises a great leap forward into the stars.

In April, the European Space Agency will launch Europe's first robotic mission to Jupiter, which will tour its numerous icy moons in search of water supplies. The mission will stop by Europa, a Jupiter moon viewed as one of the most likely places to host potential life in our solar system.

But this brings new questions to the fore. If other planets and moons are able to sustain life, probability states that they probably already have, or maybe still do.

For the possible inhabitants of our new abodePlace where someone lives. , we could be the chilling alien race threatening to colonise land that is rightfully theirs.

Either way, searching for aliens is no longer dismissed as the reserve of cranksEccentric people with strange ideas. and conspiracists. In May last year, researchers transmitted a message into space for the possible extraterrestrial inhabitants of a different planetary system, asking them for technology to help deal with Earth's climate crisis.

Scientists are torn on whether it would be a good idea to make contact with alien life. Some think collaborating with more advanced civilisations will push Earth into the future, but others think that there would be a significant chance of war or human extinction.

Expanding into space, some say, will inevitably come with its risks. Finding out that we are not alone is just one of them.

Yes: We are expanding further and further, with budgets higher than ever before. If we are going to find extraterrestrial life, it will be now. And it would be a good thing too: proving that life can subsist on other planets would give us fallback options if Earth becomes uninhabitable.

No: There is no evidence that alien life exists, or even that inhabitable planets exist elsewhere. We should focus on our own species and on our own planet before it is too late.

Or... Even if we are getting closer to alien species, there would be such a distance between us that communication would be almost impossible, taking centuries to relay single messages. As such, "proof" of alien life is still many years away.