Sleep in a tin can in low orbit for a day job mining asteroids so that people can power their smartphones? That’s a space-age oddity I’d skip.
But what if it were possible to go to space to experience something transcendent, something that helps us better understand ourselves as humans and earthlings? And what if living in, or at least traveling to, space could yield incomparable beauty in the form of art and music?
It got me daydreaming about what it might be like to one day watch a live musical performance in space. Not in the void, where sound waves cannot travel, but within built habitats in near-Earth orbit — such as the International Space Station (ISS). Forget U2 in the Las Vegas Sphere. Take me to a real concert in the round, where I can float 360 degrees around the stage, watching a guitarist shred from the perspective of a fly and inventing dance moves that Earth’s gravity would forbid.
Before you dismiss this as a hallucination, consider that we’re on the cusp of a new era of space travel. Engineer and space architect Ariel Ekblaw, founder of MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative, says that within a decade, a trip off the planet could become as accessible as a first-class airline ticket — and that, in 15 or 20 years, we can expect space hotels in near-Earth orbit.