Overview

Mark Twain wrote, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” InterPlanetary seeks to restore focus at a planetary scale. 

What terrestrial challenge could provide greater focus than nourishing and uniting the peoples of the Earth to explore the extrasolar planets? And what great solutions might we find by searching beyond the confines of our earthly troubles? 

To search through outer space we shall need to rise above our inner spaces, the gravest challenges of our time — from reducing disease and economic inequality, to managing finite resources and surviving war — and to take all necessary steps towards a larger, shared goal: an understanding of life’s place in the universe. Because confronting the challenges of space requires braving and solving the complexities of life.

The InterPlanetary Project is equal parts ideas festival, open-source citizen science platform, and research program. The first project of its kind to combine celebration with experimentation, and conversation with analysis, InterPlanetary seeks nothing less than a whole-planet project — beyond borders, beyond politics, beyond economics — to activate the collective intelligence of this, our first planet. 

The InterPlanetary Project is part of The Miller Omega Program at the Santa Fe Institute.