Astronautical Evolution is my term for a focus on human society based on the following statements:
(1) Most of the material and energy resources of the Universe which could support life do not in fact do so.
(2) The evolution of life from non-living chemistry depends upon a particular combination of sunlight, air, water, rocks and carbon compounds which is relatively rare, existing only on Earth in our own Solar System.
(3) The resources of the other planets and asteroids, and the full power of the Sun and stars, can in principle be used to create extraterrestrial living-space, but only thru the use of technology.
(4) If a technological species were to evolve, it would have to go thru an intermediate semi-technological phase closely resembling present-day human society.
(5) I conclude, therefore, that the colonisation of space is one possible outcome of the present-day rapid growth of human society, providing that the technical and economic problems of adapting to space can be overcome.
(6) This is an evolutionary process resembling the emergence of our ancestors onto the land during the Devonian period some 400 million years ago. We today are amphibians in the sense that the solutions we are finding to immediate problems of life on Earth are fortuitously at the same time equipping us for occupation of a new ecological niche away from Earth. Being an evolutionary process, it is not controlled by any goal-oriented entity (such as a government, a deity or a mystical force), and therefore its outcome is not predictable in advance.
Read more on the Astronautical Evolution blog.
