When I think about the future of humanity and what life will look like, it is quite clear to me that space is a big part of it. This is by no means influenced by those science fiction movies that I love so much, but by what I feel is the natural progression of things.

Our journey started from a single place and slowly over thousands of years, we spread over the entire planet and have fully colonised it. There is even a permanent presence of humans in Antarctica, in sub-zero temperatures!

So it is only sensible to think that the next step for expansion would be beyond Earth i.e. to other planets and their moons. I think we will start with our own Moon and then Mars at first and then look for other suitable habitats. This is a multi-century project, in case you were wondering.

Anyways, when we talk about extra-terrestrial colonies, we often ignore something that might be integral to how some portion of humanity might live in the more distant future, and that is, space colonies.

Adrift In Space

The idea of a space colony, permanently adrift in space may sound bizarre at first. I mean why would you want to give up the awesomeness of Earth and go settle in a giant metallic space ship all your life!

But the thing is, we don't know what the future is going to be for our planet. Maybe it will become too hostile to live in? Maybe there will be just too many human beings that we might have to look for solutions like these? Or maybe hundreds of years from now we decide to send a portion of the population to distant stars so they'd have to live their whole lives in such space stations.

Maybe they can even serve the purpose of being space hotels for would be Earth tourists. Whatever the reasons may be, I think space colonies will definitely be a part of the daily life in the future, with multiple space stations scattered throughout the solar system.

Even prominent figures like Jeff Bezos (the richest man on Earth) seem to think so. Though he also believes that most people would choose to live on Earth. Interestingly, he also believes that we would choose space colonies over settling on other planets. I personally don't quite agree with that. I think we would colonise other planets too.