🖖 Space traveller's cheques

Writing to you exhausted today.

We were babysitting. Both kids 3 and under. And the littlest one, not even a year old, was just not up for sleeping last night.

And, you know, that happens.

But today I had a trial for my first job in Paris. So yeah…exhausted.

I’m jumping back in the kitchen while I get this writing career up and running.

And where there’s writing, there’s research.

The commute

I came across this article from WIRED that asked a question I hadn’t thought of before.

How will we transact in space?

Crews will have their supplies provided by the companies and governments that send them up.

But what about the space tourists?

I mean they’ll need to visit the gift shop before they leave the Moon.

Space tourism today consists of flying up to altitude, cutting the engines and engaging weightlessness for a few minutes with a view of our beautiful planet.

Some of those trips last about 11 minutes from takeoff to landing. You figure at US$18,000 per minute those companies have an easy time getting paid down on Earth.

But what about those off-world transactions?

What currency will we have?

The ISS has an internet connection. So an orbiting bank will be able to record transactions.

“Welcome to The Greater Bank of Earth. How may I help you today?”

An alternative

As Star Trek sees the distant future, we are able to provide for every human’s needs.

No currency.

We’d have to get over the ‘my politics versus yours’ and ‘my religion versus yours’ concepts.

When we can all see ourselves as neighbours we’ll succeed on Mars.

Now in Star Trek they achieve this with a technology that can recreate anything you ask for.

You and I are a few centuries too early to see that happen.

But with such a system we wouldn’t need currency. I don’t need to pay you for new shirts. I can recycle old ones and tell the machine exactly what I want.

Same with food and supplies.

Until that becomes reality, we still gotta work for our money.

And the currency we use in space can’t be owned by one country. There would need to be a new and separate entity.

Ooh, maybe it will be digital only. Remember every gram matters when travelling to space.

Why bring it up?

I only bring up currency because food and beverage remains a business. Not a hobby.

To continue to eat and drink and be entertained on our extraterrestrial outposts will cost something.

The chances of you or I opening a cafe on the Moon are pretty much zero. But we’re also responsible for the next generation of F&B crews.

Can you help them with the changes that are coming out way?

Can you prepare them for a better future?

Where will they work?

A space chef needs to get paid, right?

At least until we get rid of currency altogether.

P.S. I wrote this on the commute to and from the job trial. If I get the job, I’ll probably make a habit of doing that. Might change the length of these emails. But leave a comment to let me know if you want them longer or shorter than they’ve been. Cheers.