Undergraduate Student, Duke University
Donald Pepka
More likely than not, the future of humanity will be in space. I think the single-most important goal we need to have, when imagining Mars settlements, is to make sure that we carry as few of our terrestrial problems into the cosmos as possible. I'd like to imagine a future in which we can expand into space, without the strife and inequality that pervades societies all over the world today. Figuring out how to do that is an immense challenge, but it's a challenge that we need to start facing now, not later.