I dream about space a lot. I was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I used to build model rockets and see how far I could shoot them into the sky. My obsession with the cosmos in high school is the reason I majored in physics in college. Han Solo was my spirit animal — all I ever wanted was to explore the stars with my beater of a starship and a few friends.

The closest I could get to this was living on sailboats and traveling between islands, fixing every broken thing and immersing myself in alien cultures. It was this obsession and these boat adventures that led to my first book series about Molly Fyde, a young astronaut who travels the galaxy while getting into hijinx with her motley crew.

So you’d think I’d be excited about moon bases, cities on Mars, the expansion of humanity into outer space. I am. But not now. Like so many times in human history, we are doing things out of sequence — because we are powered by urges rather than our wits.

Humans have an insatiable urge to expand into unconquered territory. I’ve traveled to some of the most remote islands in the world, and there are almost always humans living there. We’ve covered the planet. There’s almost no place we don’t visit or have an outpost. The only places we don’t live permanently are places inhospitable to life (high altitudes, beneath the ocean’s surface, places devoid of rainfall). But even here, we like to visit and we dream of conquering.

That urge to spread out has us gazing at the heavens. Any place with gravity, we imagine stomping our feet. Any place with water, we imagine building a city. Any distant twinkle, and we wonder if the air there might sustain us. We do this automatically, from a place deep in our bones. The same place that makes us want to take what isn’t ours, to kill anything that offends, to rape anything fertile. It’s a primitive reflex of ego and id. And we don’t question it. In fact, we romanticize it.

Sailing to the New World, pushing into the American West, the voyages of the Pacific, and now our spacefaring goals. All are mythologized and accepted without question as objectively good. I believe there is room here for some skepticism. Place for pause. Let’s imagine a scenario where the outcome is known and certain:

You, dear reader, are a time traveler. Imagine that you’ve found yourself in Europe back in the 11th Century AD. The people of this place and time believe that you are from the future. Zero doubts. Your bonafides are established. They look to you for guidance and wisdom. Someone named Leif mentions their plans to sail west to find more land. You know very well what happens when Leif arrives in Newfoundland. Within generations, the diseases he carries will wipe out most humans in the Americas, turning cities of hundreds of thousands into fractured nomadic villages who are at war with one another. This will later lead to their annihilation at the hands of other settlers, which will lead to the slave trade that destroys millions of lives and families and causes incalculable human suffering.

You explain how things will proceed if they sail west. The cost. There are good and decent people in the crowd. They are curious about these people on another continent. Not to go indoctrinate them with religion, or saddle them with European thoughts and technology, but to know them. “Is there no way we could ever coexist?” they ask. “Can’t we trade with them? Talk to them? Share our poetry and art? Tell each other our stories?”

“Talking to them will kill most of them,” you say. You explain germ theory, and unlike in reality, where you are ignored and shamed for trying to save lives, in our scenario these good people believe you. They fully grasp that even with the best intentions, merely shaking hands with these people will lead to the deaths of millions.

“Is there no hope?” they ask.

“There is,” you say. You explain to them that if they are patient, in a thousand years, they will possess the medical know-how to make contact in a non-destructive manner. In a thousand years, slavery will be out of fashion and outlawed. Besides, new technology and economic models will make the practice unprofitable. You tell them that in twelve hundred years, humans will value cultures that are not like their own, seeking to preserve and respect rather than to change and dominate. You explain that through economic and cultural trade, every human on planet Earth will benefit greatly from waiting rather than rushing. “Let that continent mature before making a move on it,” you say. But what you really know is that these Europeans also need to mature before they embark on that voyage.

Now … if you, dear reader, are thinking, “Fuck that, go take that land for yourself, kill millions of innocent men, women, and children, get that slavery machine up and running, and create a hegemonic empire that will run for about 200 years before collapsing under its immorality, then congratulations. You have the mindset of the primitive people you are visiting. What’s more: you aren’t alone. A good portion of humanity today is just as barbaric and thoughtless. Just as greedy and malformed. Open space is a resource to be dominated, virgin territory treated like virgin flesh. Base impulses that are never questioned.

What if a time traveler arrived here today and established their bonafides? They reveal the solution to every math problem currently stumping the greatest minds and machines in our time. They present a cure to every cancer and disease. They have a pill that stops aging and ends natural deaths. Every prediction they make for the first dozen years they are here comes true, a new sealed envelope opened once a month that recounts current events. We know they aren’t lying when they tell us:

“You aren’t ready yet. Space is for the wise. Trust me. You’ll cause more harm and destruction than you are ready for.”

Now, like many in Europe in the 11th century, you might take offense. We have philosophy. We have the technology to do it. We understand the science. Of course we are ready. Heck, we are doing it to preserve the Earth. To preserve humanity. Some of the same reasons given by those who sailed the Atlantic and who pushed West through the Americas.

To which our time traveler points out that you still war with one another. You bomb schoolchildren. You rape and pillage. Millions die every year from violence. Drones and rockets bring destruction from the clouds. “Imagine a million of you living in space,” the time traveler says. “All any one of them needs to do is nudge an asteroid here, or de-orbit a space station there, and cities are flattened. Nukes are no longer a threat when anyone can drop a rock the size of Everest wherever they like. With altitude comes potential energy. That potential energy requires responsibility. You aren’t there yet, but you’ll get there in a thousand years.”

You balk at this. Even though you know the right thing to do in the 11th century is to urge caution and patience, and the people of that time thought they were ready when you knew they weren’t, now you are the one upset. You are the child being told you aren’t old enough. “What happens if I don’t listen to you?” you ask.

“Billions die. Most of you die. Civilization ends, because you went before you were ready. Yes, I know you think you are, but so does every generation. This is why space is so quiet: very few survive this moment. Almost no one evolves to this point because they moved slowly and respected the boundaries around them. Species get where you are today because they rush forward, always forward, never thinking, obeying every impulse. Just as you are now.”

“But how do billions die?” you ask. You still don’t believe them.

To this, the time traveler reveals a secret. “There are many technologies I haven’t given you, because you aren’t ready. The perfect battery, for instance. Charged once, and it provides energy forever. Unlimited energy. Like a magnet. Powered by the spontaneous creation of matter and antimatter in cosmic vacuum, destroying one another and creating pure power from nothing. The size of a pack of playing cards. Enough juice to propel a car.”

Marvelous, you say. You can think of so many applications. In fact, you’ve been working toward just such a dream device, but weren’t sure if it was even possible. This would save lives. It would generate incredible wealth. Why can’t you have it?

“Imagine being able to send drones from any location on earth to any other location with a bomb attached. Hundreds of thousands of miles if need-be. Swarms and swarms of grenades sent out to cause havoc and spread death. The number one killer of children in your greatest economy is guns, which require some kind of proximity. And you think you are ready for this?”

You are angry for being seen so clearly.

“Millions of humans in space, and all it takes is a few to kill more than your world wars. Before you go, there should be none amongst you who has such dark thoughts. You still have people in power who are actively killing innocents for monetary gain. You haven’t figured out how to house, feed, clothe, educate, keep all of your neighbors healthy. You haven’t learned to see an immigrant with all the humanity and potential with which you see a newborn, because the color of the skin is more important than the addition of a soul. You think economics is full of winners and losers, when true trade turns everyone into winners. You are superstitious and cruel. You are rash and ungrateful. You will not always be these things, but it will take a lot of time and effort to be worthy of the stars. And if you wait, it will be worth it.”

“How long will it take?” you ask.

“Here’s the thing,” the time traveler says. “You currently have enough wealth and all the technology you need to allow every human to prosper. You can automate the work that few want to do (and even allow those few to continue doing it). You can free up the hours for everyone to devote their lives to time spent with loved ones, education, art, science, tinkering. All of this is possible now, with the billions you waste on war, defense, fear, anger, jealousy, and greed. But you choose not to. You could be ready today, if you wanted. Or tomorrow. But the reality is that it will take you thousands of years at the rate you are going. Because you don’t even see the outcome of this journey as a possible destination. You just see virgin territory and you want to put your mark on it. So the answer is: it will take as long as it takes.”

“But we want to go now,” you say.

“Yes, because you are a child. Just as the children of the 11th and 15th centuries ignored the obvious and destroyed civilizations, demeaning their own legacies with genocide and slavery in the process, so will you ignore a lone adult who has proven to you that I am what I say I am and you are what I say you are. You’ll go anyway, before you are ready. Before you’ve taken care of the basics. Before you’ve taken care of yourselves and each other. You’ll go like a child squealing in delight, thinking yourself an intrepid explorer, as you kick over sand castles and crush life beneath your feet. It’s in your nature to go. Just as it’ll one day, many centuries from now, be in your nature to come back and warn others not to.”