Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

Many millennia from now, we may have journeyed out to colonize billions and billions of planets

in our galaxy, but every journey has to start somewhere.

Today, we will look at how near-term space colonization and development is shaping up and what

the current hurdles to it are.

I think that to have a realistic view, we need to see those hurdles for what they are and also

see space for what it is. Those of us in the Pro-Space camp are sometimes prone to seeing

space in the near term with rose-colored glasses, because we know how awesome space in the long term can be,

worlds without end.

And we'll cover many of those worlds later, after we cover some of the current hurdles to space,

as we look at colonization orbit, on the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, Venus, and Jupiter. Some topics are too big for the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Venus, and Jupiter.

Some topics are too big for the episode, so next week we'll look at living in space,

to ask both what the hoarders are to living in space and what it might be like.

Also, we'll be doing a poll at the end of today's episode on our YouTube community page,

to see which topic from today

we'd most before to see get expanded into its own episode. The one undeniable thing about

space is that it is big, and there's always more to discuss. But in order to see a realistic

path forward, we need to acknowledge something space is not, or at least isn't for many generations.

For instance, we often say we shouldn't keep all of our eggs in one basket, and need to put

...