This episode of In Our Time is about the Sistine Chapel. It's an excellent dissection of the politics, the art, and the legacy of the construction. It's well worth an hour of your time. However what sticks out to me is that the grand buildings of the Renaissance were massive generational projects that morphed and changed as they went but the cooperation still produced wonders that still have massive cultural impacts centuries later.

Even in our current moment that our species makes its gestures at life amongst the stars, it's become a race amongst billionaires as governments begin backsliding from the post-Space Race cooperative era of space exploration. No doubt that there may be something if Space X or Blue Origin that actually do establish human outposts, in those cases those companies take their seat at the central point of humanity's self-expression. Much like the church and the state before them, I doubt this stewardship will come with magnanimous benefit for all mankind except in the abstract.

Generations from now there could be humans standing amongst the first outposts of Mars and citing that as a turning point, and interpreting our place in the cosmos based on the culmination of human endeavor.

Photo Credit: Richard Mortel