Will I live and work in space before I die? Where the odds stand, and what could change them

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT

I'm 40 years old, and I want to leave the planet before I die, to live and work out there for months at a time. The name of this site comes from the Belters of the TV series The Expanse: the people who live and work in the asteroid belt, far from Earth, at home where nobody thought people could be. I want to see a solar system like that unfold, and to be part of it. Wanting it is easy. I would rather know my real odds than keep the wish vague.

So I built this site to work them out in public. It asks one question: what is the probability that, before I die, I live and work in a solar system where human industry reaches beyond Earth and Mars? Two things have to come true for that: industry has to get out there, and I have to be one of the people working in it.

To answer the question, I wrote down everything that would have to happen first, gave each step a plain test of what would count and a chance of it happening, and linked the steps by which ones depend on which. The math then works out the answer from all of them together, and the whole set of steps is drawn as one picture. A number built that way can be argued with one step at a time. Every January, the steps whose outcome became known during the year are checked against what actually happened, so the site finds out whether its guesses were any good.

This is the start of the site's news. When something moves my odds, or big news should have moved them and did not, I will write it up here. A quiet week gets no post. The longer story of why I started is in the essay that introduced the project. And if you have ever wondered whether you will see people living off Earth in your own lifetime, the same calculation runs for your birth year.

Where the Odds Stand

As of the last calculation, on October 11th, 2026, my odds are half a percent: a 0.5 percent chance that by 2071 I am living and working at a site off Earth, months at a time. 2071 is the year I reach my life expectancy, at about 85.

The two parts of the question come out very differently. The chance that human industry reaches beyond Earth and Mars at all, with or without me, is only 0.8 percent. The chance that I work months at a time at a space station or a base on the Moon, whether or not industry ever goes further, is much higher, at 9.3 percent.

A longer life would raise my odds, and a dial on the home page shows by how much: from half a percent to 1.2 percent if medicine adds about a decade, and to 14.8 percent if ageing is solved outright and the calendar stops mattering.

Why the Number Is So Small

Seven things all have to go right: getting to orbit has to get cheap, there has to be a power supply out there, ships have to be fast enough to make the trip routine, bodies have to hold up, people need a reason to go, governments must not wreck it, and there has to be a seat for me. Each is a maybe. The likeliest, the power supply, stands at 75 percent by 2071; the weakest, a reason for people to go, stands at 5.9 percent. Put seven maybes together and the chance of all of them coming true is small, even when no single one looks hopeless.

What the number gives me is a map. It shows which steps are likely to move in the next few years, so I know where to watch, and which ones would move my odds the most.

How the Number Moves

Every Sunday evening, Pacific time, an automated search checks the week's news against the test of each step that could be settled within about five years, and the first search of each month checks every step. What it finds is written down whether or not anything moved. It may change a chance by a small amount on the strength of a public source, or mark a step as done when two independent sources confirm it; anything bigger waits for me. Every weekly reading is kept on the site's Radar page, and the Method page explains how the numbers are worked out and who does what.

What Has Happened So Far

The site's first calculation, on September 19th, 2026, said zero: no chance at all by 2071. That was plainly wrong, and the fault was in the method. It treated every step as if it had nothing to do with the others, when in fact the steps lean on each other. Fixing that was one of four changes I made that day, and the second calculation came out at 0.9 percent.

The same day, I sent every step out for outside review, with the same instructions for each reviewer: name a missing step, challenge a test, argue a number up or down. I decided each of the 105 points they raised, and on September 20th, 2026, with those decisions in, my odds fell from 0.9 percent to 0.4 percent. Most of the fall came from seven new steps that now also have to go right.

The first big news from outside came on September 28th, 2026, when SpaceX's giant rocket Starship reached orbit for the first time. Neither part of the rocket was recovered, and recovery is what the launch steps test for, so nothing moved. That is the site working as it should: famous news that does not pass a step's test changes nothing.

Since September 20th my odds have stayed near half a percent, and in six weekly readings nothing has moved.

What to Watch

The nearest event is Starship's next flight, Flight 15, which is expected to make the first attempt to recover the rocket's upper part. SpaceX has announced no date, and the latest planning date I can find is no earlier than November 8th, 2026. The step it bears on counts only when both parts of one rocket come back intact from one flight to orbit and the company that flew it confirms they can fly again. Even then it would move my odds only a little, because the calculation already expects it to happen.

The steps that would matter most are slower and have no date. At the top of the list of steps that would move my odds most is a space traffic authority among the major powers, able to enforce rules on how spacecraft move and when rockets launch. No other step that could happen next would move my odds as far. After it come shielding that halves the radiation a crew takes in deep space, and a tonne of rocket fuel made from material found off Earth and burned in a rocket engine.

I am also following two plans with dates on them: Vast's Haven-1, a small commercial space station, now due no earlier than the first quarter of 2027, and NASA's Space Reactor-1 Freedom, a spacecraft powered by a nuclear reactor, proposed for December 2028. A plan is not an event, so neither moves my odds until it flies.

The next monthly search, the one that checks every step, is on November 1st, 2026, and the first yearly review, when every number is estimated afresh, is on January 3rd, 2027.