A spacefaring people needs more than rockets and stations. No civilization has ever been built on technical capability alone. It needs people who choose to remain and pursue life beyond Earth’s orbit. It is culture — rooted in beauty, repetition and meaning — that turns infrastructure into home. Without it, space will remain a sterile domain — often visited but never inhabited.

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Zachary Botkin is a cybersecurity analyst at Cambridge International Systems, a NASA subcontractor.