“Going to space will not end war because war isn’t caused by anything that space travel is apt to change, even in the most optimistic scenarios,” they write. “Humanity going to space en masse probably won’t reduce the likelihood of war, but we should consider that it might increase the chance of war being horrific.”The pair imagine rival space nations exchanging asteroid fire or poisoning whole biospheres. It follows the same logic of extrapolating our human future in space from our behavior on Earth in the past. Mandel and Rubenstein both argue that any worthy human future in space must adopt a decolonizing approach that emphasizes caretaking and stewardship of this planet and its inhabitants before we set off for others. Mandel sees hope for this future in post-scarcity political theories.