Kellie Gerardi an aerospace, defense, and technology professional and a popular science communicator. She conducts bioastronautics research in microgravity with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) and in 2021 was announced as a commercial astronaut and payload specialist contracted to fly on a dedicated research flight with Virgin Galactic. Kellie is the world's first industry-sponsored researcher contracted to fly on a commercial spacecraft. Kellie serves on the Defense Council for the Truman National Security Project and on the Board of Directors for The Explorers Club, whose esteemed flag she carried during a crew rotation at the Mars Desert Research Station. Kellie also holds a leadership role in global Mission Operations at Palantir Technologies. She is the author of Not Necessarily Rocket Science and the children’s picture book series Luna Muna. Kellie lives in Jupiter, Florida with her husband Steven and their daughter Delta V.

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew." - Marshall McLuhan

Introduction

When I was young, I often wondered how people in the Renaissance regarded their own era. Did the general public clock the rise of polymaths like da Vinci or Michelangelo as historic humans? Could they feel the tug of Modernity as the medieval world melted into the past? It's doubtful that anyone extrapolated a global cultural awakening from the freshly painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It’s even more unlikely that anyone in the Stone Age paused pummeling their dinner with a club to think about the profound impact of that percussion on the trajectory of the entire human species. Denizens of the Enlightenment were not explicitly told that they were entering an Age of Reason and folks in the Industrial Revolution buzzed about their days unaware that their highly productive lives coincided with one of the major innovational turning points in all of human history.

Of course, each of these eras was named after the fact, labels of approximation rather than precision, a set of belated bookends for more modern humans to organize history and figure out how we surpassed our humble roots to become the mightiest species on Earth. But might the velocity have been different if everyone, not only the history book celebrities, had considered their own individual role in that journey and the opportunity in front of them? What might societies have done differently if individuals were privy to the trajectory of the entire species, or better yet, equipped from birth with a handbook about their generation’s unique stop on the human journey? Welcome to the world, tiny human, and listen up…!

What a time to be alive then, to recognize our own era within history. If no one has shared the good news yet, please let me be the first to welcome you to a full-blown Space Age! The human species is on an astronomical trajectory and it would be an honor to take you on a brief tour of our very own moment in history as its happening. This is our chance to find out how much momentum might be gained if everyone–not only the rocket scientists―operates with the same level of awareness around this incredible window of opportunity. Consider this a beginner’s guide to life in the Space Age.

Art was only one manifestation of a new way of thinking in the Renaissance. Cultural innovation was equally apparent across the vastly different disciplines of medicine, technology, religion, politics, philosophy, science, and even warfare. Similarly, engineering feats represent one small slice of the Space Age. Future historians will widen the lens on a broader cultural movement that saw 21st century humans contemplating our next giant leap as a species, marking the beginning of our transition from the Earth to the stars.

It should be obvious then that the future of our species doesn't rest solely on the shoulders of rocket scientists; like any turning point in history, humanity's next giant leap will require the contributions of artists, engineers, and everyone in between. For the first time in more than 4.5 billion years, life on Earth has the ability to venture beyond this planet―the potential to become interplanetary and secure a long-term survival in the cosmos. Thanks to the rise of the commercial spaceflight industry, routine space travel has become a dream within anyone’s reach. My own career is a testament to that democratized access: as a non-engineer I went from dreaming about the promise of space exploration to contributing to it, and eventually to training for it myself.

I'm sharing my own experiences and reflections in the hopes that they might spark your own passion for exploration and discovery. At the very least, I hope you find yourself in the conversation and recognize your rightful place in the Space Age. Human spaceflight is about more than simply satisfying curiosity and inspiring dreams; it's also about ensuring the survival of a species whose home planet has an expiration date. At the more generous estimates, we're looking at a few billion years, when our Sun ceases to provide its nurturing energy for life on Earth. Or perhaps it’s a few million years, when another rock along the size of dinosaur-level extinction makes impact. Or maybe it's a whole lot sooner, a Russian Roulette of global pandemic, massive ecological collapse, or nuclear obliteration with just the push of a button.

But the human species is nothing if not resilient. For 200,000 years we’ve moved forward together, a species both mission-driven and coordinated. From the moment we stood upright we’ve been forced into a fighting stance against nature, disease, predators, and perhaps most viciously, ourselves. For millennia we’ve harnessed our collective force to defy the odds and propel ourselves into the future. Our scrappiness and grit saved us from mass extinctions and an Ice Age that nearly extinguished our journey before it began. Our cleverness earned us millennia of cultural and scientific advancement, and most recently, a very promising start to this Space Age. Together we’ve made glory worth pursuing, new frontiers worth exploring, and survival worth fighting for. We’ve put up one hell of a fight.

And now, through luck of birth, you and I find ourselves at the starting line of the final frontier. We’re holding the baton of survival that has passed through the hands of 10,000 generations of humans before us. Too many times throughout history has that baton almost dropped and the spark of life extinguished. But at each baton fumble, another hand swooped in to secure it. Sometimes that hand belonged to an engineer, inventing tools to advance us or medical breakthroughs to heal us; other times the hand belonged to an artist, creating the language to connect us or the culture to civilize us. Encore! The survival of our species has always depended on a diversity of talent and contributions, and damned if we’re going to let the baton drop on our watch.

Each one of us has a role to play in humanity’s next chapter. You don’t need to be an astronaut to feel goosebumps during the countdown of a rocket launch or a surge of adrenaline watching humans take flight; all of us are wired to appreciate the profundity in the sights and the sounds of the final frontier. Our subconscious recognizes that to launch something off of this planet is a uniquely human act of resilience, a primal survival instinct that has carried the species all the way to the 21st century.