When I was a child I read about the frontier in history books, and saw The Final Frontier unfold in 1966. And in science fiction, three words from Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast stuck with me forever: “Space is vast.” Three short words have spawned a gushing river of thought.

Components of modern outposts are crafted on Earth and then flung into Space, and we endlessly wonder what friends or foes or indifferent Others are out in that vastness.