As the author Daniel Deudney explains in an extraordinary new book, “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity,” the world is hurtling into a new space age—and courting new, potentially existential risks in the process. The core assumption underlying today’s surging government and private sector activity is that the icy realms of outer space will somehow deliver to humanity the security, prosperity, freedom and long-term sustainability our home planet has failed to provide. Bezos, for his part, anticipates trillions of people living in millions of orbiting, interplanetary colonies.
