It is a joy to read Bruce Sterling’s “Ten Technologies that Deserve to Die” (October 2003). It is good to bury some of our old tools—with panache, too. Manned spaceflight—item six on his list—is another matter, though. Granted, going to the moon, planting a flag, and departing for good is inane for true, but there is more to manned spaceflight than that. Colonization of space is a matter of long-term survival of the species, rather than a matter of petty super-power competition.

Let me put all this in context. While I taught at the Architecture Department at MIT, from 1986 to 1989 I coordinated the Space Habitat Design Workshop. It attracted both students and faculty from a wide variety of departments. In its four years, the workshop traced the development of human settlements in the inner solar system: low-earth orbit space station (1986), lunar base (1987), Mars colony (1988), and asteroid belt colony (1989). Each step assumed the previous step had already been taken. Believe me, the workshop was tremendous fun.

Returning to my point, in the long run, the solar system as a whole is doomed, let alone this wonderful planet. We need to find other systems we can colonize. This goes way beyond romance of science fiction, as Sterling implies. Space programs have many aims, but one of them must be the provision of the infrastructure required for space colonization. The first step in this direction is lifting humans safely and cheaply to low-earth orbit, but that is only the very first step.