The risks of privatising space

Half a century after humans left footprints on the Moon space exploration, and exploitation, have entered a new era. Private space companies are developing new launch vehicles and spacecrafts, there is a sixth branch of the US military called “Space Force”, and international cooperation in space – whose greatest symbol...

Space republics: how to democratise space exploration and accelerate colonisation

I have vivid memories from the hot July night of 1969 when the Eagle landed on the Moon. I was nearly five then. I was woken up[1] and hurried by my parents, still dressed in my pyjamas, to our next-door neighbour who owned one of the very few, black-and-white, television...

Abandoning the metropolis: space colonisation as the new imperative

The year 2019 began with news of the most distant object ever visited by a spaceship and the landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon. On New Year's Day[1] New Horizons, a robotic spaceship launched in 2006, was transmitting photographs of a bizarre, snowman-shaped object called...