About ten years ago, when I left the Houston Chronicle to write about space full-time for Ars Technica, I also started a local weather website. Our goal was clear: In an era of sensational storm coverage, Space City Weather will provide no-nonsense information about the weather that affects people’s lives in Houston. We stuck to it, and I often joke, “Boredom is our brand,” when we do public appearances.
But in a world full of clicks and screams, our quiet work with Space City Weather still resonated with people. When storms threaten society, it turns to us because it trusts us. Many Americans remain hungry for credible, evidence-based news and information. Of course, if you read Ars Technica, you already share that hunger. But you are not alone.
I spend most of my days writing about space, and in that industry I’ve met a lot of good people working to expand humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Brave and smart people build satellites to spy on Earth’s deforestation, harvest sunlight for energy instead of burning fossil fuels, connect people around the world, protect resources from asteroids and other worlds so we don’t have to mine our own planet. Not all of them will be successful, and of course not all of these actors are heroes. But if you want to find faith that humanity can still build toward a brighter future, you could do worse than spend some time in space.
In general, most of my life has been spent writing about science. I respect people who collect ideas about our universe and try to unlock new mysteries from nature. It’s been a dark time for science, with the White House attempting to cut science funding across federal agencies, undermining “woke” research, and imposing ridiculous health policies on vaccines. But even where the damage was done gleefully and aimlessly, the US Congress bipartisanly opposed these funding cuts. For most Americans, knowledge is not yet the enemy.
