Space is huge and will require enormous efforts to develop and settle.

If humanity must stand together to survive, we might already be doomed, because disagreement is our oldest tradition.

But history suggests we often do our best work when we are arguing. Do we need to be unified to survive and settle space?

We often imagine humanity spreading to the stars as one great family, but families don't always get a lot.

When we picture the future, it's easy to assume we need to set aside our differences, pull our resources, and march forward

under a single banner if we want to survive and expand beyond Earth. After all, colonizing space is

hard. It takes cooperation, coordination, and a willingness to work together on projects that

can last generations. Developing space will be a task like no other. It took

thousands of years to settle every corner of Earth, and even Mars alone would dwarf every prior

human endeavor. Yet history suggests a more complicated picture. Humanity's greatest accomplishments

have often emerged not from unity, but from rivalry, from the desire to outdo, to prove,

to compete. The Cold War space race, which gave us Apollo, satellites, and the foundations

of the modern space age, was driven less by brotherhood than by fear and pride. And even today,

most of our advances come from countless independent actors following their own interests, not from global consensus. And for today, most of our advances come from countless independent actors following their

own interests, not from global consensus.

And for many, Unity simply means my way or the highway.

Still, many argue that the challenge is ahead.

Artificial intelligence, climate control, resource scarcity, or defending against asteroids,

demands a level of unity humanity has never

achieved.

It is an appealing idea.

One species, one purpose, one destiny.

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