Savannah Mandel, 23, is at the vanguard of researchers looking at the human relations side of leaving Earth. In the sci-fi novel 2312, set on Mercury, citizens called sunwalkers risk being blinded or killed by the scorching sun, yet they follow it anyway, trudging west. They stay slightly ahead of the dawn, carefully glimpsing the sun they worship when they can, for seeing it is like “seeing the face of God.” Outer space anthropologist Savannah Mandel found resonance between author Kim Stanley Robinson’s sunwalkers and the scientists, civilians and military who work at Spaceport America, the United States’ new “airport” for commercial spacecraft, located in the New Mexico desert. She spent 10 weeks there doing fieldwork for her dissertation and found its workers “willing to risk everything” to participate in outer space ventures. |