The Next 500 Years. How to Prepare Humanity for Life on Other Planets

A 500-year large-scale project to restructure human genetics for life on other planets.
Author – a geneticist and computational biologist, researcher, and co-investor in many NASA missions and projects.
From genome editing and building intergenerational spaceships to searching for and colonizing Earth-like... planets.

This book is a scientist's and futurist's perspective on the fate of humanity in the next five centuries, based on the analysis of historical trends, scientific discoveries, and technological breakthroughs. Biologist and geneticist Christopher Mason invites readers to ponder what the next 500 years have in store for us. There is a high probability that due to climate change, life on Earth will become impossible, so humanity will have to look for a new home beyond our planet, and we need to start thinking about this now. You will learn about the colonization of Mars, interplanetary travel, and the exploration of deep space, about transhumanism, gene engineering, and the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.


Life on Earth will inevitably come to an end - as a result of climate catastrophe, war, or the demise of the Sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new planet, possibly even a new solar system. The author proposes a ten-step plan that spans 500 years. He describes how long space travel affects astronauts and how to change the human genome so that it can withstand the extreme conditions of outer space - with the ultimate goal of human colonization of new solar systems. He offers a roadmap that can determine which solar systems should be visited first and combines biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to propose an unprecedented vision of the forthcoming Universe.

Book features: Colorful graphs and charts.