The Space Option is about humanity making the right choice at the right time.

Space visionaries and pioneers long ago quietly and consequently developed both the scientific rationale and the technological concepts to open the space frontier. Upon these works is the development of a concept called The Space Option and, because this option offers humanity the most “optimistic” pathway to sustainability and prosperity, it is a choice humanity will most likely make in order to maintain its well-being and insure its ultimate survival.

The Space Option concept has a dual origin. It follows from the search for humane solutions to the problems confronting the global community – problems which cannot be solved nor even properly addressed on a single planet. It also proceeds from an analysis for explaining the lack of progress in Astronautics, which concludes at an absence of ethical stimulus in the current design of this enterprise and which leads to the identification of the contributions that space development can give for triumphing over the impending crises. This duality of origin is an illustration of the “multi-dimensionality” of the concept: the Space Option is an imperative, but not a linear choice.

If one believes that other technological civilizations have appeared throughout the cosmos, then they, too, must have faced a similar choice that confronts humanity at this particular moment. Did they use their technology and knowledge to extend their civilization beyond their home planet in order to perpetuate their species, or did they misuse it and let their civilization and their future be destroyed?

Here on Earth, human civilization has reached such a point in its development where it has evolved the means to leave its home planet and to begin operating in the environment beyond its atmosphere. This development will enable humanity to utilize this technological capability to harness the infinite resources located off Earth in order to improve the well-being of the population as well as improving the chances that its current civilization can continue to prosper in the decades and centuries ahead – both on Earth and eventually in other places in the solar system.

Our Cosmic Choice is about choosing between a stone age or a space age.