Space Development Research Articles

The Settlement of Space: Economical and Logistical Drivers and Constraints

This work is part of the BIS SPACE technical project studying long term possibilities for an expansion of industrial civilisation on Earth and in space. This paper traces the potential development of space settlements through four ‘generations’, driven and constrained by various economic, physical, and cultural factors. To provide a context for later work, time scales and orders of magnitudes are estimated together with constraints and drivers for space settlement. Following papers will explore the technology of fast transits within the Solar System required to support the economic model and define a fleet of interplanetary craft, based on flow stabilized Z-pinch fusion engines. Keywords: SPACE Project, In-Situ Resource Utilization, Space Settlement, Fission and Fusion Powered Spaceships, Interplanetary Logistics, Dyson Swarm, Kardashev Type I and II

The Settlement of Space: Economical and Logistical Drivers and Constraints

This work is part of the BIS SPACE technical project studying long term possibilities for an expansion of industrial civilisation on Earth and in space. This paper traces the potential development of space settlements through four ‘generations’, driven and constrained by various economic, physical, and cultural factors. To provide a context for later work, time scales and orders of magnitudes are estimated together with constraints and drivers for space settlement. Following papers will explore the technology of fast transits within the Solar System required to support the economic model and define a fleet of interplanetary craft, based on flow stabilized Z-pinch fusion engines. Keywords: SPACE Project, In-Situ Resource Utilization, Space Settlement, Fission and Fusion Powered Spaceships, Interplanetary Logistics, Dyson Swarm, Kardashev Type I and II

On the settlement of space- and international telecommunications -related disputes

This paper aims to describe and assess the dispute settlement mechanisms available to States in the context of space and telecommunications activities. Disputes either between private actors or between private actors and States are beyond the scope of this research. The choice to examine mechanisms and procedures for the settlement of international disputes in these specific areas stems from an elective affinity between these sectors, given the existing interaction between them. At a first level, the paper highlights the importance of mechanisms to prevent the creation of international disputes, both in the field of space law (mainly through Art. IX of the Outer Space Treaty) and in the field of international telecommunications (Arts. 45 para. 3, 48 of the ITU Constitution). Further, the general scheme of peaceful settlement of international disputes, as enshrined in the UN Charter not only applies to the disputes in question but is further specified in the context of space and telecommunications law (Liability Convention, Art. 56 of the ITU Constitution), with a clear orientation towards the use of diplomatic rather than judicial means of resolution. Last but not least, if the settlement of disputes through diplomatic means fails, the preferred judicial mechanism is that of arbitration, as it is clearly demonstrated by the Claims Commission of Art. XIV LIAB, the PCA “Optional Rules for Arbitration” of space disputes, the mechanism of Art. 41 of the ITU Convention as well as the relevant “Optional Protocol”. The specific options for dispute settlement show that, in view of the common interest of States in “international goods” of a technical nature, the actors involved are mainly interested in the non-occurrence of disputes rather than in their resolution through judicial means. And when they do so, they choose to resort to flexible resolution mechanisms (arbitration) rather than to ordinary international courts.

Northern Settlements in the Communicative Space of the Yakut Arctic: the History of Siktyah Village Through the Ages

Northern Settlements in the Communicative Space of the Yakut Arctic: the History of Siktyah Village Through the Ages

Digital financialization and surveillance capitalism in the Global South: The new technologies of empire

This essay describes a hybrid form of contemporary colonization that involves the fusion of digital and financial realms to explore new frontiers in profit generation, governance, and control. While early research has explored this dual mode of financialization and surveillance capitalism, it primarily employs Western frameworks assuming a universalism that does not account for the coerced lived experiences of the digitally colonized across the Global South. Organization, with its commitment to providing critical epistemic space to non-Western subjectivities, should lead this quest by shining a light on the colonization of everyday spaces in the Global South, with the new technologies of empire.

Platform Rhetoric and Fan Labour as the Building Blocks of <em>LEGO Ideas</em>

Platform Rhetoric and Fan Labour as the Building Blocks of <em>LEGO Ideas</em>

Microgravity and Musculoskeletal Health: What Strategies Should Be Used for a Great Challenge?

Space colonization represents the most insidious challenge for mankind, as numerous obstacles affect the success of space missions. Specifically, the absence of gravitational forces leads to systemic physiological alterations, with particular emphasis on the musculoskeletal system. Indeed, astronauts exposed to spaceflight are known to report a significant impairment of bone microarchitecture and muscle mass, conditions clinically defined as osteoporosis and sarcopenia. In this context, space medicine assumes a crucial position, as the development of strategies to prevent and/or counteract weightlessness-induced alterations appears to be necessary. Furthermore, the opportunity to study the biological effects induced by weightlessness could provide valuable information regarding adaptations to spaceflight and suggest potential treatments that can preserve musculoskeletal health under microgravity conditions. Noteworthy, improving knowledge about the latest scientific findings in this field of research is crucial, as is thoroughly investigating the mechanisms underlying biological adaptations to microgravity and searching for innovative solutions to counter spaceflight-induced damage. Therefore, this narrative study review, performed using the MEDLINE and Google Scholar databases, aims to summarize the most recent evidence regarding the effects of real and simulated microgravity on the musculoskeletal system and to discuss the effectiveness of the main defence strategies used in both real and experimental settings.

Advancing flame retardant prediction: A self-enforcing machine learning approach for small datasets

Improving the fireproof performance of polymers is crucial for ensuring human safety and enabling future space colonization. However, the complexity of the mechanisms for flame retardant and the need for customized material design pose significant challenges. To address these issues, we propose a machine learning (ML) framework based on substructure fingerprinting and self-enforcing deep neural networks (SDNN) to predict the fireproof performance of flame-retardant epoxy resins. Our model is based on a comprehensive understanding of the physical mechanisms of materials and can predict fireproof performance and eliminate the needs for properties descriptors, making it more convenient than previous ML models. With a dataset of only 163 samples, our SDNN models show an average prediction error of 3% for the limited oxygen index (LOI). They also provide satisfactory predictions for the peak of heat release rate PHR and total heat release (THR), with coefficient of determination (R2) values of 0.87 and 0.85, respectively, and average prediction errors less than 17%. Our model outperforms the support vector model SVM for all three indices, making it a state-of-the-art study in the field of flame retardancy. We believe that our framework will be a valuable tool for the design and virtual screening of flame retardants and will contribute to the development of safer and more efficient polymer materials.

Safely advancing a spacefaring humanity with artificial intelligence

A “Space Renaissance” is underway. As our efforts to understand, utilize and settle space rapidly take new form, three distinct human-space interfaces are emerging, defined here as the “Earth-for-space,” “space-for-Earth” and “space-for-space” economies. Each engenders unprecedented opportunities, and artificial intelligence (AI) will play an essential role in facilitating innovative, accurate and responsive endeavors given the hostile, expansive and uncertain nature of extraterrestrial environments. However, the proliferation of, and reliance on, AI in this context is poised to aggravate existing threats and give rise to new risks, which are largely underappreciated, especially given the potential for great power competition and arms-race-type dynamics. Here, we examine possible beneficial applications of AI through the systematic prism of the three economies, including advancing the astronomical sciences, resource efficiency, technological innovation, telecommunications, Earth observation, planetary defense, mission strategy, human life support systems and artificial astronauts. Then we consider unintended and malicious risks arising from AI in space, which could have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth, space stations and space settlements. As a response to mitigate these risks, we call for urgent expansion of existing “responsible use of AI in space” frameworks to address “ethical limits” in both civilian and non-civilian space economy ventures, alongside national, bilateral and international cooperation to enforce mechanisms for robust, explainable, secure, accountable, fair and societally beneficial AI in space.

Exploring the Development of Astrobiology Scientific Research through Bibliometric Network Analysis: A Focus on Biomining and Bioleaching

Our understanding of the diversity of life on our planet and the possibility of finding or sustaining life elsewhere in the universe plays a central role in supporting human space settlement and exploration. Astrobiology and its outcomes require a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach, in which the microbial, geological, chemical, astronomical, and physical domains of research are interlinked. An example of the applications of astrobiology and space microbiology is the use of extremophiles for in situ resource utilization through biomining and bioleaching. To better understand the multidisciplinary research landscape in this area, we quantitatively reviewed the global scientific literature on astrobiology, with a focus on biomining and bioleaching through bibliometric network analysis, investigating patterns and trends in its development over time. The network analysis of keyword co-occurrence highlights different connecting and overlapping clusters, illustrating the multidisciplinary character of astrobiology. Temporal analyses show a recent focus on topics related to microbiology and geomicrobiology, emphasizing the role that these fields will play in future astrobiology research. In conclusion, astrobiology, biomining, and bioleaching research are currently addressing the recognition of these techniques as valuable tools for biotechnological applications, expected to play a crucial role in long-term human space exploration.

Gamete Space Colonization: Why Space Colonization Based on Gametes Is Morally Preferable to Colonization Based on Embryos

Abstract Embryo space colonization is one of the solutions that have been proposed to minimize the existential risk that, in the coming centuries, the human species will undergo irreversible extinction. This type of solution involves sending cryopreserved human embryos into space on board a spaceship entirely guided by intelligent machines tasked with identifying and finding the most suitable planet for human colonization within the solar system or another stellar system. The goal is not to assess the feasibility of this project, but rather to consider whether the use of human gametes would constitute a more ethical solution. It will be argued that, all else being equal, sending gametes instead of embryos into space presents at least three advantages. First, it makes it possible to have a more genetically diverse range of human embryos available, facilitating the selection of genetically better embryos for colonizing the new planet. In addition, producing embryos ad hoc from gametes allows improving the genetic characteristics of embryos without resorting to genome editing, which could present safety issues. Finally, gamete space colonization does not eliminate but reduces the possibility that the designers’ biases influence the selection of embryos.

Moon-Earth: Prospects for a lunar-centric scenario for space development after 2030

Gerard K. O’Neill idea of large habitats built from outer space resources in his 1974 Physics Today article “The Colonization of Space” resulted in a flurry of speculation and research and development work aimed at use of lunar resources to build large-scale solar-power satellite (SPS) to generate revenue to pay for space colonization. As the enormity of the technical and financial challenges to achieve space colonization research interest began to wane particularly with realization that the U.S. having reached the Moon before the USSR, was no longer driven to achieve more as the Nation faced the Oil Embargo and growing domestic concerns. Currently, the state of technology development and knowledge of lunar resources has created conditions where a lunar centric model of space development appears increasingly feasible offering the possibility of not only more rapid development in outer space, but also to impact long term sustainable development on Earth by reducing the need for terrestrial resources for industrial development in Earth orbits, cislunar space and the Moon. In effect, lunar industrial development can contribute increasingly to achieve sustainable development on Earth. This, however will raise challenges to address governance of space traffic and resource access and use on the Moon as unlike 1974 many countries are developing the capacity to reach and operate in cislunar space and on the Moon.

Bioprinting in Microgravity.

Bioprinting as an extension of 3D printing offers capabilities for printing tissues and organs for application in biomedical engineering. Conducting bioprinting in space, where the gravity is zero, can enable new frontiers in tissue engineering. Fabrication of soft tissues, which usually collapse under their own weight, can be accelerated in microgravity conditions as the external forces are eliminated. Furthermore, human colonization in space can be supported by providing critical needs of life and ecosystems by 3D bioprinting without relying on cargos from Earth, e.g., by development and long-term employment of living engineered filters (such as sea sponges-known as critical for initiating and maintaining an ecosystem). This review covers bioprinting methods in microgravity along with providing an analysis on the process of shipping bioprinters to space and presenting a perspective on the prospects of zero-gravity bioprinting.

Multiple colonizations and hybridization of a freshwater fish group on a satellite island of Sulawesi

Repeated colonizations and resultant hybridization may increase lineage diversity on an island if introgression occurs only in a portion of the indigenous island lineage. Therefore, to precisely understand how island biodiversity was shaped, it is essential to reconstruct the history of secondary colonization and resultant hybridization both in time and space. In this study, we reconstructed the history of multiple colonizations of the Oryzias woworae species group, a freshwater fish group of the family Adrianichthyidae, from Sulawesi Island to its southeast satellite island, Muna Island. Phylogenetic and species tree analyses using genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms revealed that all local populations on Muna Island were monophyletic, but that there were several genetically distinct lineages within the island. Population structure and phylogenetic network analyses demonstrated that colonization of this island occurred more than once, and that secondary colonization and resultant introgressive hybridization occurred only in one local population on the island. The spatially heterogeneous introgression induced by the multiple colonizations were also supported by differential admixture analyses. In addition, the differential admixture analyses detected reverse colonization from Muna Island to the Sulawesi mainland. Coalescence-based demographic inference estimated that these mutual colonizations occurred during the middle to late Quaternary period, during which sea level repeatedly declined; this indicates that the colonizations occurred via land bridges. We conclude that these mutual colonizations between Muna Island and the Sulawesi mainland, and the resultant spatially heterogeneous introgression shaped the current biodiversity of this species group in this area.

A Mighty Cooperative

A Mighty Cooperative

The Sublime and the Pale Blue Dot: Reclaiming the Cosmos for Earthly Nature

Amidst a worsening climate crisis, there is growing public discourse theorising the possible colonisation of outer space to secure a sustainable future for humanity. In the face of these escapist fantasies, political discussion on humanity's relation to the universe is notably limited and primarily frames space exploration as a dangerous Promethean endeavour. While I do not contest this claim, I argue that humanity's technological capabilities and acquired knowledge of the universe can alternatively facilitate an Earth-centred engagement with the Cosmos as a sublime aesthetic experience. I frame the sublime Cosmos and its infinite expanse of dynamic material forces, as a site of resistance against Promethean visions of human mastery and colonisation. I then theorise how the sublime Cosmos can be productively engaged as a source of political imagination and spiritual elevation. Recovering a spiritual attachment to Earth is necessary, for we are irrevocably tied to this rapidly destabilising planet.

Pancosmorio (world limit) theory of the sustainability of human migration and settlement in space

It seems to be an accepted assumption that human migration into space is inevitable. However, almost 60 years of scientific studies of the effects of space on Earth life suggest this is not a given. Life on Earth evolved in the context of conditions that are unique to Earth and are not duplicated anywhere else in our solar system. The science indicates that life-sustaining conditions on Earth could be the very things that inhibit our ability to live off-Earth. This paper combines 100 years of scientific development of a theory of ecological thermodynamics with classical mechanics theory and analytical models of self-restoring heat engines to explain how the Sun and Earth have evolved into islands of order in the entropy of space. An explanation is provided regarding how naturally occurring conservative force fields engage a diversity of natural resources in semi-reversible cycles that build a high-exergy ecosphere. The science infers that the ability to establish a human settlement in space without Earth-like self-restoring order, capacity, and organization will result in settlement sustainment challenges. Historical evidence of Earth settlements with disrupted ecosystems point to the following possibilities. Supply chains would disappear, market resources would be depleted, advancement in human pursuits would be disrupted, social and governance systems would falter or collapse, human population numbers would decline, genetic diversity in the human genome would be lost, average human individual biomass would decrease, and human knowledge and understanding would be forgotten. What does it mean to have a location in space outside of Earth be “like Earth?” The results of research are presented as a pancosmorio theory ofhuman sustainability that is developed using the scientific philosophy methodology of abductive reasoning. Four analytical models of space ecosphere sustainability and five hypotheses with proposed tests for falsifiability are provided, including a theorem that suggests a limit to human expansion into space. A new quantitative method of human sustainability is developed from theories of network ecology, providing orthogonal properties of an ecosystem network stability function based upon an ecosystem network production function. Conclusions are made regarding the potential for sustainable development in space using balanced sustainability. Insights are provided regarding human endeavors on the Moon and Mars, as well as the Fermi paradox.

Extinction Panic: C. S. Lewis and Planetary Nihilism

AbstractToday figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have become high-profile evangelists for private space exploration, arguing that interplanetary colonization is necessary to save humanity from extinction. Although they may have the sheen of innovation, however, these ideas are not new. A century ago a coterie of British novelists, scientists, and social theorists writing during the interwar period became preoccupied with the possibility of human extinction and believed that such a fate might be avoided by taking human civilization to the stars. Watching these intellectual developments with a wary eye, a young C. S. Lewis was increasingly skeptical of both the “extinction panic” that gripped his contemporaries and the utilitarian and environmentally exploitative imagination of planetary conquest they championed. In response Lewis penned Out of the Silent Planet (1938), a novel that imagines three sentient species that have the means to prevent their own extinction but choose not to do so. Reading Lewis’s novel as a critique of the rapacious ideologies that defined this strain of interwar speculation, this article suggests that the novel models how the humanities might effectively respond to the extinction panic and cosmic adventurism that grip our own imperiled twenty-first century.

Astroenvironmentalism as SF

AbstractThe New Space Age is awash with discourses about space colonization and resource exploitation, and these happily coexist with the age-old and curiosity-driven question, “Are we alone in the universe?” Astrobiology addresses this question and, at the same time, codifies knowledge useful for protecting our planet and other celestial bodies from harmful contamination. This article critically examines astroenvironmentalism as discussed within astrobiology and attempts to rescue it from becoming a principle of border creation in otherworldly ecologies. To do so, it merges astrobiology with visions and images from feminist postcolonial and decolonial theory, STS, and science fiction, and reflects on the enduring colonial tropes that provide the building blocks of current knowledge on outer space. The same colonial cartographic imagination at play in the much-debated frontier narrative animates the concept of planetary parks. These have gained increased popularity as a mechanism of environmental protection in space, but it is important to note how they entertain a settler future in outer space and legitimize claims to territorial property and extraction. In a dialogue that is contrapuntal to the codification of this form of transplanetary environmentalism, this article traces how Lynn Margulis’s cosmic symbiosis, Donna Haraway’s sympoiesis, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1976) intersect with concerns of astrobiological knowledge. Crucially, they enable the blurring of three types of borders: between science and fiction; planetary inside and outside; life and matter. This border-crossing can be generative of a process of creating more-than-human relationalities beyond Earth-centric geographies.

Effect of macronutrient levels on Chlorella vulgaris cultivation for long duration spaceflights and space settlements

To expand space explorations into space settlements, there is a need for the establishment of a sustainable, closed-loop life support system. Systems involving microalgae are promising, as they could simultaneously revitalize air (i.e., CO2 to O2 conversion), reclaim water (i.e., nutrient biofixation/recycling), and provide food supplement (i.e., biomass). This would entail microalgal cultivation in human-derived wastes (both gas and liquid), which could provide challenges on system tolerance, particularly on the levels of nutrients in these wastes. In this work, the effect of macronutrient [Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N), and Phosphorus (P)] levels on the phototrophic growth of Chlorella vulgaris UTEX 2714 was investigated using synthetic wastewater. This was done to determine the range of macronutrient levels that are suitable for sustained microalgal growth. The highest biomass concentration was achieved when the microalga was axenically cultivated in 71 mg C/L, 64 mg N/L, and 13 mg P/L. With an equivalent C:N:P mass ratio of 5.5:5:1, this cultivation condition was significantly different from the ideal C:N:P of 41:7:1, suggesting a C-limited growth environment. This was also supported by 99.9% C consumption, while only consuming 56% and 72% of N and P, respectively. These results indicate that during space cultivation, incremental amount of C must be added to the microalgal system to improve the overall C:N:P of the process and to enhance N and P consumption, while ensuring that the C level is below the inhibitory threshold limit. Based on these results, together with human-derived wastes data from the International Space Station, a microalgal photobioreactor configuration was proposed.