The Next 500 Years: How to Prepare Humans for Life on Other Planets

• A 500-year large-scale project aimed at restructuring human genetics for life on other planets.
• The author is 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 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 encourages readers to ponder what the next 500 years may hold for us. There is a high probability that climate change will make life on Earth impossible, so humanity will have to seek 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 deep space exploration, about transhumanism, genetic engineering, and the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.


Life on Earth will inevitably come to an end - as a result of a climate catastrophe, war, or the death 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. In it, he describes how long space journeys affect astronauts and how to change the human genome so that it can withstand the extreme conditions of outer space - with the ultimate goal of populating new solar systems with humans. He offers a roadmap to determine which solar systems should be visited first and combines biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to provide an unprecedented vision of the coming Universe.

Book features: Full-color graphs and diagrams.