Yes, yes, yes: My “output” is declining. But then, so am I, and not slowly. Please bear with me. These days it takes a lot more effort for me to produce something worth my Gentle Readers’ time and attention.
Nevertheless, if you’ll keep reading, I’ll keep trying.
Just this morning, I encountered this on X:
When training for a mission in space, people are judged on their psychological ability to work as a team. They can hardly afford someone who is not part of the team and wants to do it their way only. That could spell disaster for a mission in space. Yet here we are on spaceship…
— SpiritsofIdaho (@SpiritsofIdaho) April 22, 2026
The “spaceship Earth” motif isn’t new, of course. The conception of Earth as a vessel rather than a static environment goes back several decades. While it can be used tendentiously, as it is above, there’s also some value in it for directing one’s attention.
One of Earth’s features that spaceships lack is room. The land area of Terra is about 50 million square miles. Every one of those square miles enjoys a breathable atmosphere. While some of those square miles are less hospitable than others, there are at least 25 million square miles of land surface that are habitable, or can be made so with time and effort.
If we approximate Earth’s current population as 8 billion souls, the average human density of our world is no greater than 320 persons per square mile. 320 persons per square mile does sound ominous. It becomes less so when we figure human density per acre.
There are 640 acres in a square mile. Thus, that 320 persons per square mile figure equates to two acres of land per person.
Have you ever had to mow a two-acre plot? I have – and with a push-mower, at that. You don’t want that experience; trust me on that.
Humans prefer to cluster at far greater densities than one every two acres. Consider Manhattan: an island of 22 square miles with a population of about 2.2 million persons. That’s 100,000 persons per square mile, If we figure Manhattan’s human density per acre instead of per mile, we get approximately 160 persons per acre. Roomy? No, yet the great majority of Manhattan residents live there by choice.
The most densely populated major nation, India, has approximately 1.4 billion residents on approximately 1.2 million square miles of land. That’s still only about 1200 persons per square mile: less than two persons per acre. The great majority of Indians live in population centers much denser than that.
Consider SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which usually carries a four-person complement. I don’t have exact figures, but I’d be shocked to learn that there’s 100 square feet of floor space in that capsule. I doubt the crew holds any cha-cha contests in there. That 100 square feet figure would give the Crew Dragon, as it’s normally manned, a human density of 1600 persons per acre. In all probability, it’s higher than that.
Therefore the Crew Dragon, when manned, is at least ten times as dense as Manhattan Island. The astronauts are all there by choice. There’s no “astronaut draft,” at least for the moment.
In nearly every case of social, economic, or political importance, we choose to cluster with others.
There will probably never be a “vessel” as roomy as “spaceship Earth.” Yet people do complain about crowding. Rush-hour traffic congestion, retail stores during major holidays, even the construction of new housing in relatively sparse districts draw muttered forebodings about “running out of room.” But the complainers seldom seem inclined to move to more spacious environments. The reasons are many, but nestled among them is this one: We like one another’s company, as long as we can take it or leave it at our personal whim.
Granted, some of us prefer to be alone. There are also some people no one wants to be around. Still, they’re not the products of intolerable crowding. As long as each of us has a place of our own to which he can retreat at need, undesired and undesirable company isn’t an “issue” that demands a “solution.”
The need to cooperate with others – colloquially speaking, to get along – arises from the need to be with others. When there is no such need, the imperative of cooperation vanishes. This has two implications above others.
First, the preservation of privacy depends on the preservation of private property as Americans understand it. For the principal feature of private property is that its owner has the legal and moral right to exclude others. That has always been the basis every kind of property, real or movable.
Second, individual mobility must be preserved at all costs. He who can “get away” has the power to seek refuge from others, at least for a time. That idea is of course violently opposed by the promoters of “15 minute cities” and similar chimeras. For individual mobility means that you can get away from them. No would-be dictator, determined to decree every last aspect of others’ existence, can abide that.
Watch for the doom-shouters of “overpopulation.” Their arguments don’t matter. Their enemy is privacy itself. They are uniformly hostile to private property and to the ability to “get away” at will via individual mobility. Only when privacy has been effectively eliminated can they rule us absolutely, with no escape possible.
Orwell knew it:
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
[…]
WAR IS PEACE He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Be vigilant.
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