Blog Articles

Ignacio López Day in the City of Pomona

June 18, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Mural by Thundr One. Photograph courtesy of López Urban Farm

March 19 was Ignacio López Day in the city of Pomona by proclamation of the city council.

The date marked the 116th anniversary of the birth of the late journalist and civil rights champion Ignacio López ’31, who fought discrimination against Latinos in the region for decades, publishing his influential El Espectador newspaper in Pomona from 1933 to 1960.

His name lives on through both Pomona’s Ignacio López Elementary School and the López Urban Farm, a partnership between the local nonprofit Community Partners 4 Innovation and Pomona Unified School District. The farm provides people in the community with access to locally grown food and also educates youth on sustainable agriculture practices. Among the murals at the farm is one depicting López.

KSPC Radio Rocks On

June 18, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

DJ Comet and DJ Moon were a natural fit for KSPC 88.7 FM, the station of The Claremont Colleges, which celebrated 68 years on the FM airwaves in February. (KSPC was preceded at Pomona by the AM station KPCR.)

DJ Comet was supposed to be a placeholder name until Anaelle Roc ’24 found another. But the moniker—a play on her last name and love of space—fit perfectly at the station often known as The Space. Pomona classmate Emily Gibbons ’24 christened herself DJ Moon on the same theme.

Roc and Gibbons represent a senior class whose introduction to college came via Zoom during the early months of the pandemic. While remote in 2020, Gibbons worked as a music director at KSPC, reviewing albums and music. Roc became a production director, learning how to edit shows and write promotions and community messages. Once they were on campus as sophomores, KSPC’s secluded headquarters awed them both.

“The Space is a time capsule,” Roc says. “There are posters there from the ’80s, photos there from the ’50s when it became an FM station. I was instantly hooked.

“People ask, ‘Why do radio? Radio is dead,’” Roc says. “We have Spotify, the internet, AI DJs who can find you the perfect song. But people are really attracted to The Space. It’s a beautiful space with all this history. We want to be part of that legacy.”

Gibbons, a philosophy major and host of In the Clouds with DJ Moon, plans to attend law school, with dreams of becoming an attorney for a band or music label.

“I would love to get involved in the radio station of whatever law school I go to if they would have me,” she says.

Roc, a physics major, is so invested in mastering the craft she says she only applied to astrophysics graduate programs with established radio programs either on campus or in the community.

“Live music is something I can’t live without,” the host of cathartic destruction says. “I’m tied on a soul level to radio now.”

Letter Box

June 18, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

The Liberal Arts for Life

I was pleased to see your Pomona College Magazine article devoted to the value of liberal arts (Spring 2024). As one whose four years at Pomona included courses in over 20 departments, a semester in India, a history major, completion of pre-med requirements and evenings spent hanging around the music department, I loved the breadth of opportunities that Pomona provided. And, yes, some of those “non-career-prep” courses did help me in my work—for example, giving me tools to author successful textbooks and edit a scientific journal.

But the real value of my liberal arts education was that it made the non-work aspects of my life much fuller and more enjoyable. So I wish that your article had said more about this side of liberal arts.

I understand that our society these days tends to define return on investment in terms of dollars and cents, but the older I get the more I realize that it’s what makes you happy that matters, and Pomona’s contribution to that aspect of my life was squarely in the liberal arts opportunities it provided.

—Philip D. Sloane ’72
Professor of Family Medicine and Geriatrics
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

**Praise for PCM, Aid for Middle-Income Students**

Congrats on the “Value” issue (Spring 2024).

I think the cover is exceptional—eye catching, artistic, clever with math, musical and DNA symbols. The diamond representing “value” was quite creative.

The article about supporting the financially mid-level students is timely in my opinion.

Keep up the good work.

—Ron Smith ’63
Newport Beach, California

A ’60s Activist’s Take on Politicized Campuses

The subject of your piece is obviously of great interest, and I appreciate your effort to cover the waterfront in the limited space at hand. That said, I was disappointed that what strikes me as by far the most compelling issue driving the turn against liberal arts colleges—the politicization of the campus—is mentioned only briefly in your editor’s letter.

FYI, I was a political activist at Pomona in the 1960s, and having in the course of my career as a journalist moved to the right, I look back on the changes wrought by radicals like me at places like Pomona with regret and shame. It was a truly diverse intellectual campus when I arrived in 1966, far less so when I left in 1970; and on the basis of everything I see, a frighteningly narrow place today. And it’s a good guess a fair number of my fellow elderly grads feel the same. This is hardly unique to Pomona, of course, or even to colleges. My kids went to Fieldston in New York, and while it’s always defined itself as a progressive place, I’d be horrified if my grandkids were there today. And, alas, reading of the evident near-uniformity of thought in Claremont on issues of race, gender and now the Middle East, I feel very nearly the same way about Pomona.

Yours is an alumni magazine, and I understand you are not in the business of stirring the pot. Still, it’s unfortunate that as an interested alum I have to go to The Claremont Independent to find [other news coverage of campus].

—Harry Stein ’70
New York

Closer Look at Classroom Photo

Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies Aimee Bahng, right of the podium, leads a discussion in her Race, Gender and the Environment class.

It was with great anticipation that I turned to your cover story on “The Value of the Liberal Arts.” Over a lifetime, Pomona’s liberal arts education has served me well both personally and professionally.

I was briefly thrown off by reference early in the story to “the gender and women’s studies class” since it is one of the newest and least established parts of the liberal arts curriculum. This mention felt a bit like the tyranny of political correctness (pc). But I continued to read until I took a close look at the photo of a class on gender studies, which covers the top of the right-hand page in this feature article’s two-page spread. Of the 19 people seated around the table, 17 or 18 are women and only one or two are men.

Those who seek to demonize gender studies charge them with being militant feminism, a.k.a. reverse sexism in disguise. Yet they have the potential to be of great value at a time when surveys show a larger divergence in life attitudes among young women and men than in the past. The big question is whether gender studies bridge this gap or widen it. The class photo is not encouraging in this regard. It suggests Pomona is not marketing gender studies to students in a way that is equally inviting to men and women, and thus is not inclusive.

That Pomona’s magazine could overlook the glaring implication of this photo suggests it is in the grip of an ideology regarding the need to promote gender studies as the new flagship of liberal arts. In this case, PC has fallen into the trap of being pc. Please take a closer look at such messaging.

—Glenn Pascall ’64
Dana Point, California

Arrest of Protesters on Campus

First, my bona fides. My great-grandfather, Edwin C. Norton, was Pomona’s first dean. My grandfather, Ralph Lyman, put Pomona on the map by introducing European classical music to Southern California and mentoring Robert Shaw, later mentored by Arturo Toscanini. Shaw was the greatest choral conductor of his time in America.

Now the war has come to us. No surprise that. The question faced all over our country is how do those in power deal with student unrest.

I am beyond appalled by how President G. Gabrielle Starr chose to militarize her response.

—David Lyman, ’66
South Pasadena, California

Editor’s note: Read more on the April 5 arrests of 20 people, including seven Pomona students, during a masked protest in Alexander Hall.

Correction

The article “A New Community Space in the City of Pomona” on page 8 of the Spring 2024 issue incorrectly referred to David Armstrong ’62 as deceased. Armstrong, founder of the American Museum of Ceramic Art on Garey Avenue in Pomona, still visits the museum almost daily as it undergoes a major remodel. At 51,000 square feet, it is the largest such ceramics museum in the United States. Pomona College Magazine regrets the error.

Write to Us at PCM

Pomona College Magazine welcomes brief letters to the editor about the magazine and issues related to the College from the extended Pomona community—alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, donors and others with a strong connection to the College. Write to us at PCM or mail a letter to Pomona College Magazine, 550 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters should include the writer’s name, city and state of residence, class year for alumni and contact information. With rare exceptions, letters should be no more than 400 words in length. Letters are selected for publication based on relevance and available space and are subject to being edited for brevity and clarity.

Stray Thoughts: Leaving Campus

June 18, 2024 by Robyn Norwood Comments Off

Working on a college campus lends itself to looking back on your own college years.

With this issue of the magazine, I think again about how I never considered studying in another country while I was in school.

For one thing, I assumed it was too expensive because the only students I knew who did seemed to be alumni of New England boarding schools and I was from a public high school, one of four children in my family headed to college and already paying out-of-state tuition.

For another, this was the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Michael Jordan and Kenny Smith were my contemporaries. I didn’t want to miss any basketball games.

Only when I went to Europe the winter break before my final semester with a friend who was already working and generous with his frequent flyer miles did I see how much more actually using the language I had studied, seeing the art and architecture I had written about and standing in the places where history happened made me want to learn more.

After that—and once I was earning my own frequent flyer miles—I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s traveling to Latin America, various countries in Europe and later to Australia, each time coming back more interested in the literature, languages, history and current-day politics of those places than when I’d left.

Studying internationally already is much more part of the culture at Pomona than it was at UNC then, with about half of Pomona students studying away from campus, either internationally or in a domestic program.

One of the goals of the Global Pomona Project that inspired this issue is that every Pomona student will meaningfully engage with global learning, whether from abroad or here in the U.S.

What’s more, global education on campus is going to get a huge boost in coming years with the announcement of planning for the Pomona College Center for Global Engagement.

As for study away from campus: To ensure equal access for all students, financial aid transfers 100% for students participating in study away through Pomona College during the academic year. In addition, national and program-specific scholarships are available for fall, spring, academic year and summer study away from campus.

Think of that: A student reliant almost entirely on financial aid has as much chance to study internationally as one whose family goes to Europe on vacations.

Simply the awareness that it’s possible for any student to study in another country or another part of the U.S. means so much. I hope scanning the list of countries and cities on the list at the Office of International and Domestic Programs and its website will become as common as looking at the catalog to pick classes for upcoming semesters.

Thinking about all the opportunities Pomona students have starts to make me want to travel again after years of being worn out from traveling for work. Which brings me to personal news: My six-plus years at Pomona are coming to an end as I take early retirement to spend some vital years with people I love—and maybe do a little freelance study abroad, too.

I’m thankful for my time at the College and the privilege of working on these pages and getting to know so many alumni, students, professors and colleagues who have given me enjoyment, taught me things I didn’t know and kept me feeling younger than I am.

With gratitude,

—Robyn Norwood

In Memoriam: Jerome J. Rinkus

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Jerome J. Rinkus

Emeritus Professor of Russian
1938-2023Emeritus Professor Jerry Rinkus, who taught Russian language and literature at Pomona for three decades, died on February 24, 2023. He was 84.

Rinkus arrived at Pomona in 1973 and remained at the College until his retirement in 2003, serving for a time as chair of the Department of German and Russian.

A specialist in 19th-century Russian literature—the era of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Chekhov—Rinkus came of age during the Cold War, studying Russian at a time of critical interest to the U.S. government.

“In a sense, politics has influenced the overall pattern of my life,” he told Pomona College Magazine in 2003. “But it is the love of literature that has kept me going.”

Rinkus was an undergraduate at Middlebury College when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Earth’s first artificial satellite, igniting the space race between the U.S. and the USSR that led to the first moon landing in 1969.

After graduating cum laude from Middlebury in 1960, Rinkus was awarded a National Defense Education Fellowship to continue his study of Russian from 1960 to 1964, earning a master’s degree in Slavic languages and literatures from Brown University in 1962. His doctoral studies at Brown were interrupted when he was drafted during the Vietnam War, serving from 1966 to 1968, after which he returned to Brown and earned his Ph.D. in 1971. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the work of Sergey Aksakov after writing his master’s thesis on Maxim Gorky. Rinkus taught at Bucknell University from 1968 to 1973 before arriving at Pomona.

“If not for Jerry Rinkus, I would not have embarked on the career I’ve enjoyed for the past three decades,” said former student Thomas P. Hodge ’84, now a professor of Russian at Wellesley College. “He made a huge difference in my intellectual life and in the lives of the many other Russianists who passed through the department he lovingly nurtured at Pomona.”

Hodge also noted that in the early 1980s, before word-processing software, it was also difficult to find Russian typewriters. “I vividly recall the way he painstakingly handwrote and glossed entire stories and long poems, then handed out the photocopies to us. He was indefatigable,” Hodge said.

Rinkus also had a policy for students in his beginning Russian class who struggled to find the words in their limited vocabularies to accurately describe aspects of their personal lives in Russian.

“I don’t care if you tell the truth, as long as it’s grammatically correct,” Rinkus told his students. “Every student in the room broke out laughing,” Hodge recalled. “I announce an identical policy for my own students every time I teach Elementary Russian.”

During the early parts of his career, Rinkus told Pomona College Magazine, many of his students learned Russian in preparation for government jobs as translators, diplomats or to work for the CIA.

“If you studied Russian in the old days, you could either work for the government or teach,” he said in 2003. “When the Soviet Union collapsed, interest in Russian dropped 40 to 50 percent. It was almost as if they were studying it to understand our enemy.”

During his long career, Rinkus earned grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, among other organizations. He traveled to the Soviet Union numerous times during the Cold War when it was uncommon for Americans to do so, participating in teaching exchanges, leading tours and conducting research.

He led a Pomona College alumni tour group to Russia, Siberia and Central Asia in 1978. In 1990, during the era of glasnost under the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Rinkus led a Pomona alumni tour group that visited Tallinn, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Moscow and cruised the Volga River the year before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Rinkus was the grandson of emigrants from Vilnius, Lithuania. In addition to John Tarin, his partner of more than 40 years and husband since 2015, Rinkus is survived by a niece, nephew and cousin.

In Memoriam: Robert E. Tranquada ’51

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Robert E. Tranquada ’51

Public Health Advocate and Trustee
1930—2022

Bob Tranquada ’51, former chair of the Pomona College Board of Trustees and former dean of the medical school at USC, died on December 4, 2022, in Pomona. He was 92.

A diabetes researcher turned public health advocate, Tranquada was instrumental in increasing access to health care for underserved communities across Los Angeles County. He was a founding board member and chair of L.A. Care, today the country’s largest publicly operated health plan.

The son of two Pomona alumni and father and grandfather of others, Tranquada was a constant friend of the College. As a Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate in 2007, he said, “I have been couched in the arms of Pomona College for a long time. It would be impossible to return more than a fraction of that I have received.” Awarded an Alumni Scholarship as a student, he returned much, both in service and financial support. The student health facility that serves The Claremont Colleges bears his name as the Robert E. Tranquada Student Services Center.

Tranquada’s path to medicine began early. Hospitalized with a broken leg at age 5, he was so impressed with the doctors who treated him he decided to become a physician. After graduating from Pomona College, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he attended the Stanford University School of Medicine and joined the faculty of the USC medical school in 1959.

Tranquada’s career took a dramatic turn in 1965, when the California Army National Guard medical battalion he commanded was activated during the Watts Uprising to treat casualties of the violent confrontations between L.A. police and residents. Afterward, he was asked by then-USC Medical School Dean Roger Egeberg to head the new Department of Community and Preventative Medicine and to organize a public health clinic in Watts. Tranquada was one of the founders and the first director of the South Central Multipurpose Health Services Center in 1965 (now Watts Healthcare Corp.), one of the country’s first community health centers.

His experience in working to launch the health clinic, which opened its doors in 1967, led to a 40-year career in public health. Two years later, as associate dean of the medical school, Tranquada was appointed medical director of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. After five years as medical director, he became director of the Central Health Services Region of the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

Following other leadership positions, in 1986 Tranquada was recruited to become dean of what is now the Keck School of Medicine at USC with a mandate to develop a new private teaching hospital, today’s Keck Hospital of USC. It was while serving as dean that he was appointed to the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, better known as the Christopher Commission, formed in the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating. He also headed the Los Angeles County Task Force on Access to Health Care following the 1992 civil unrest, which led to the creation of Community Health Councils, a nonprofit that works to promote health and wellness in under-resourced communities.

After stepping down as USC medical school dean in 1991, Tranquada held an endowed chair in health policy before becoming professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1997. During his long and distinguished career, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to his service on the Pomona College Board of Trustees beginning in 1969, Tranquada was chair of the Claremont University Consortium board from 2000 to 2006. He served on numerous boards and was a particularly effective advocate for increasing the number of women and people of color in medicine, serving as a longtime board member of New York-based National Medical Fellowships, a member of the founding board of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and a board member of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital.

Born in Los Angeles, Tranquada was the son of Ernest Tranquada ’27 and Katharine Jacobus Tranquada ’29. He married Janet Martin Tranquada ’51 after meeting at Pomona. In addition to his wife of 71 years, he is survived by children John ’77 (Lisa Sackett Tranquada ’77), Jim (Kristin) and Kate Tranquada; grandchildren Matt ’08, Jessica and Alex Tranquada; and his sister, Carolyn Prestwich ’54.

Civil Rights Press Photos at Benton Museum

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Cecil Stoughton, President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes as his wife and Mrs. John F. Kennedy flank him in the cabin of Air Force One, November 22, 1963 (printed 1964). Vintage wire photograph on paper. 6 9/16 x 8 in. (16.67 x 20.32 cm). Gift of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg in honor of Myrlie Evers-Williams. P2021.9.70 Inspired by Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 and the gift of her archives to the College, Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg have donated their collection of more than 1,600 press photographs documenting the civil rights movement to the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in her honor. The Mattis-Hochberg photos include scenes of resistance, acts of civil disobedience and images of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, James H. Meredith as well as photos of Evers-Williams.

Coming to a Theatre Near You

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Rose Portillo ’75, a longtime theatre lecturer at Pomona, has been cast in the upcoming Disney+ film adaptation of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The latest screen version of the popular children’s book has a twist on the original: Alexander’s last name is Garcia, and the film will star Eva Longoria and Jesse Garcia with 9-year-old Thom Nemer as Alexander. Portillo plays Alexander’s grandmother, Lidia Garcia. In another recent Hollywood role, Portillo voiced the part of Señora Guzmán in Encanto, the 2022 Academy Award winner for best animated feature.

Please Don’t Kiss the Art

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, the very Instagrammable installation of 202 historic streetlamps created by the late artist Chris Burden ’69 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gets a lot of love. Maybe a little too much love.

The 2008 sculpture needs a paint job and is one of 23 works selected by the Bank of America Art Conservation Project for grants “for the preservation and conservation of the world’s cultural treasures” in 2023.

“Conservators will apply protective paint layers that have been extensively tested on all the streetlamps, ensuring that substances such as lipstick, permanent marker and dye can be easily cleaned from their surfaces,” the bank announced. Other works selected for preservation grants included 15th-century Armenian manuscripts, Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series and two paintings by Paul Cézanne.

Book Talk: Space for Sale

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Ashlee Vance ’00, author of the bestseller Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, turns his attention to the business of space in his latest book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. Vance follows four startup companies—Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab—as they race to launch rockets and satellites into orbit. PCM’s Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 spoke to Vance about the book, the corresponding HBO show he is producing and, of course, Elon Musk. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PCM: What made you want to write this book?

Vance: I was not a space junkie (although I seem to be becoming one). Out of the Elon book, my favorite thing to report on was the early days of SpaceX. Those were some of the best stories and the most interesting characters. Right as I finished that book, I could see that there was this new world bubbling up around commercial space. And there were these entrepreneurs appearing all over the planet who were trying to make rockets and satellites. I could see that this was my chance to witness what may be like the early days of SpaceX firsthand. Then, as time went on, it became clear to me that there was this revolution taking place and that space was changing forever. And I had this unique “in” with all kinds of access that you don’t normally get, and I just started chasing it.

PCM: What was it like for you to do research for this book?

Vance: Normally, almost all this stuff is usually top secret. It’s almost impossible to get into, but because I had this track record, people were very willing to let me in, and then reporting it was just a proper adventure. I probably went to about 12 countries across four continents and followed this for five years. That’s one of the things I love about the book: It is about rockets and space, but it’s also this travelogue where you’re going with me on this journey and meeting all these interesting characters. Some of them are in the U.S., but it’s very much a global story and full of drama in all these places.

PCM: You say in the “Dear Reader” section, “I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed living it.” What did you enjoy about living it?

Vance: A lot of these launches take place in pretty exotic locations, and they’re both beautiful but also off the beaten path. The characters were very diverse in their personalities; there are a lot of different archetypes. You got to meet this quite eccentric group of people and spend a lot of time with them. It was this feeling of having a front-row seat to the birth of an industry and really getting to see how it operates. I do lots of very long magazine stories where you might interview dozens of people over a decent period of time. But this was the first time I felt like I was right there getting to witness everything firsthand, and you got a sense of the joy but also the difficulties and travails these people go through. It was the first time in my reporting where I really felt like I knew for sure what ground truth was, through my own eyes, as opposed to trying to stitch it together from other people’s opinions after the fact. I was living it in real time.

PCM: So this was pretty different from all your previous work.

Vance: With Elon, there was a lot of historical stuff where you had to go back all the way to his childhood and recreate things, and the same with some of his earlier companies. But I spent literally thousands of hours with these subjects and so, in that sense, very different in terms of the depth of the reporting. I’d wanted to be a fly on the wall of a journey for a long time.

PCM: Tell me about the show you’re producing and how it overlaps with the book.

Vance: I filmed with all the characters in my book for these five years and I’ve partnered with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries on this project. It’s a more concentrated version of the book that is going to focus on a couple of characters from the book and tell the story about the rise of commercial space. As long as the stars align, it will be on HBO next year.

PCM: Your book about Elon Musk came out eight years ago, and a lot has happened since then. What is your assessment of Musk’s ownership of Twitter?

Vance: Since I’ve done the book, Elon’s only gotten bigger, bolder and crazier over time. I’m still a huge fan of Tesla and SpaceX and find them fascinating. Twitter is not really my cup of tea, and I think it’s a huge waste of time for Elon to be dealing with that. He’s not doing probably the best job of taking it over so far. It’s kind of sad, if I’m honest, because so much of my interest in him was this figure who was not doing consumer technology, was doing stuff that felt a bit more meaningful to me in the world of manufacturing and human ambition and climate change. Even though I use Twitter a lot, I find it to be sort of a large distraction and it falls more in the entertainment category to me. It’s a little depressing that this guy who symbolizes so many other things is getting down in the muck.

PCM: How do you think the recent FTX bankruptcy and Twitter meltdown have changed the idea that tech entrepreneurs can supplant traditional government?

Vance: We’re at a very interesting time where there’s a handful of technology companies that have resources on par with governments and are taking on projects that governments traditionally would have done. If you look at Tesla’s self-driving car network, if you look at all the rockets that I’m writing about, if you look at these giant computers fueling AI—outside of China, you don’t really see countries tackling these issues; it’s being driven by the companies. We’re at this precarious position where I think a lot of the innovation and control has shifted so far from governments and academia toward companies. I’m not sure that most people fully realize the extent of this shift to where if you are a college like Pomona or a university like Stanford, and you want to do breakthrough research on the human brain or something like that, you probably do not have the requisite resources to do that yourself. You’re knocking on the door of somebody like Google to borrow their computers. Overall, I’m not sure this is a good thing.

PCM: Why don’t you think it’s good?

Vance: There are pieces of this that are not good. There are pieces of this that are very liberating. I think it’s bad that five countries controlled space for 60 years. I think it’s a much more equitable future where almost any country that wants to be a spacefaring nation can be that. All the satellite imagery, all these pictures taken of Earth are not just in the hands of spy agencies and militaries. That the public can access all this stuff to see the sum total of human activity, what’s happening with the environment, it’s a much more open scenario with information. So I don’t know. There are a lot of pros and cons.

PCM: Would you say the pros outweigh the cons of commercial space?

Vance: I think it’s to be determined. I don’t think the average person on the street realizes what’s coming, which is that 100 percent, the capitalists have taken over space and the governments will very shortly be also-ran participants in this. People get fixated on space tourism or going to the moon, but in actual fact most of the money and action is taking place in low-Earth orbit where there’s this giant economic expansion taking place. This is very much a capitalist exercise that, on the pro side, is going to bring high-speed internet connectivity to half the world’s population so they can fully participate in the modern economy. We’re going to have all this data that was unimaginable about the health of our planet, monitoring trees, methane. You will be able to calculate and tax every piece of this, but it is companies that are doing this. This is new territory that’s being seized.

PCM: So, to be determined.

Vance: Hopefully, given that this is the last place we can expand, with a bit of luck we will be better stewards of it than we have been of the land and the oceans and the air.

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