2045: Saudi Arabia's Space Colony (Strategic Futures Scenarios)

2045: Saudi Arabia's Space Colony (Strategic Futures Scenarios)

February, 2045. It was late in the afternoon and the King of Saudi Arabia had completed his scheduled media interviews. As expected, the first king in space was a big story. Now, he enjoyed a moment of solitude as he floated alone in the zero gravity viewing room of Najma Space Station looking down on planet Earth. It was an unimaginably beautiful view. Critics had spent the early years calling most of his Vision 2030 agenda a boondoggle. Yet, here he was floating in space in a station that was home to 100 people and provided artificial gravity. This ‘boondoggle’ had filled a void in western budgets and resulted in tens of billions of investments for space manufacturing and development, creating jobs and economic growth. He even had commitments to fund a future 500-person station. This had been one of the best bets on the future ever made. The scenario above is a fictional premise set 20 years in the future. However, 2045: Saudi Arabia’s Space Colony is a nonfiction roadmap to why that future might be possible. It speaks to a stunning decrease in the cost of launching rockets into space in the last decade. That trend is set to accelerate as rockets get bigger and more reusable. Visions of building large projects in space, hitherto an impossible dream, are now on the verge of becoming practical. New opportunities are emerging. The paradox is that even as this is happening, most Western policymakers and mainstream media channels cannot envision anything beyond astronauts on the Moon or Mars, calling even those efforts too expensive or a waste of public funds. The provocative thesis of this book is that countries other than America, China, or Russia may soon be building projects in space on their own. Saudi Arabia is one such country, but it is not the only one. A bold future in space is opening up over the next 10 years and understanding how even smaller countries could achieve major opportunities in space is a key to seeing the larger possibilities of humanity’s future on the space frontier.