From Cold War triumphalism to wanting to secure the future of humanity, people have given many reasons for wanting to go into space. Christopher Harding is joined by an historian, a science fiction writer, a scientist and a visionary to unpick some of those reasons, and ask what they tell us about technology, society and utopia.

With Dr Ghina M. Halabi, Timothy Peacock, Una McCormack and Avi Loeb.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can hear more from Timothy Peacock, who teaches at the University of Glagow, in an episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk
Una McCormack has contributed to Free Thinking episodes discussing Time, Star Trek, Quatermass, Dystopian Thinking, Asimov.
Avi Loeb has written Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth
Dr Ghina M. Halabi spent 13 years working on astrophysics research before becoming a consultant