About a decade ago, when I left the Houston Chronicle newspaper to write about space full time for Ars Technica, I also started a website focused on local weather. Our purpose was clear: In an era of sensational storm coverage, Space City Weather would provide sensible information about the weather’s impact on the lives of people in Houston. We stuck to that, and when I give public talks, I often joke, “Boredom is our trademark.”
But in a world inundated with clicks and shouts, the quiet work we’ve done with Space City Weather still resonated with people. When storms threaten the community, it turns to us, because it trusts us. For many Americans, there remains a hunger for credible, evidence-backed news and information. Of course, if you’re reading Ars Technica, you already share that hunger. But you are not alone.
I spend most of my days writing about space and have met many good people in this industry working to extend humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and worlds beyond. Brave and resourceful people build satellites to spy on deforestation on Earth, harvest sunlight for energy instead of burning fossil fuels, connect people around the world, and secure resources from asteroids and other worlds so we don’t have to exploit our own planet. Not all of this will be successful, and of course not all of these actors are heroes. But if you want to have faith that humanity can still build a better future, the worst thing you could do is spend a little time in space.
More generally, I have spent much of my life writing about science. I love people who collect knowledge about our universe and try to discover new secrets of nature. It has been a dark time for science, with the White House attempting to cut science funding across federal agencies, undermining “woke” research, and setting ridiculous health policies on vaccines. But even here, where the damage is being done gleefully and senselessly, the United States Congress has confronted these funding cuts in a bipartisan manner. For most Americans, knowledge is not yet the enemy.
