<h2>&#8220;Giant Space Colonies&#8221;</h2>
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks that in the future humanity will live in &#8220;giant space colonies,&#8221; rather than settling on the surface of planets, according to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-wings-club-presentation-transcript-2019-2">an interview</a> with Space News senior staff writer Jeff Foust last week.
The concept is pretty simple, according to Bezos: travel to other planets requires a lot of fuel and energy.
&#8220;The space colonies we&#8217;ll build will have many advantages,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The primary one is that they&#8217;ll be close to Earth.&#8221;
<h2>One Step at a Time</h2>
But what happens to our beloved planet once most of us have moved to these space colonies? Bezos thinks heavy industry — think mining and resource extraction — will move elsewhere in the Solar System.
&#8220;Ultimately what will happen, is this planet will be zoned residential and light industry,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is the gem of the Solar System. Why would we do heavy industry here? It&#8217;s nonsense.&#8221;
Bezos also referenced the work of physicist Gerard O&#8217;Neill, who came up with the idea of a cylinder-shaped space settlement design known as an &#8220;O&#8217;Neill cylinder, &#8221; in which two counter-rotating cylinders would provide gravity for human settlers while mitigating gyroscopic effects.
Similar space colonies have been depicted in popular sci-fi movies including &#8220;2001: A Space Odyssey&#8221; (1968).
<h2>To the Moon and Beyond</h2>
Bezos and his team at Blue Origin are hard at work providing humanity with a transportation option to get into space. And they have some ambitious plans: to land a robotic space cargo carrier on the Moon <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/blue-origin-targets-moon-landing-2023-early-step-toward-lunar-settlement/">by 2023</a>.
But it&#8217;s not a race. After all, Earth is a pretty great place.
&#8220;Very few people are going to want to leave this planet permanently — it&#8217;s just too amazing,&#8221; Bezos said.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-wings-club-presentation-transcript-2019-2">Jeff Bezos just gave a private talk in New York. From utopian space colonies to dissing Elon Musk&#8217;s Martian dream, here are the most notable things he said.</a> [Business Insider] 

More on Blue Origin: <a href="https://futurism.com/jeff-bezos-new-shepard-launch-this-year/">Jeff Bezos: New Shepard Will Launch First People Into Space &#8220;This Year&#8221;</a>

"[The Earth] is the gem of the solar system. Why would we do heavy industry here? It's nonsense."

Jeff Bezos: In the future, we'll live in "giant space colonies"

Giant Space Colonies

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks humanity will "live in giant O'Neal-style space colonies" rather than settling on planets, according to a recent interview .

Jeff Bezos: In the Future, We’ll Live In “Giant Space Colonies”

"Very few people are going to want to leave this planet permanently — it's just too amazing."

Humanity will one day make it to Mars. But can we make it livable?

Off World

Here's What It Will Take for Humans to Make Mars Into a Home

Here’s What It Will Take for Humans to Make Mars Into a Home

<h2>Outer Space Gas Station</h2>
Space travel is back on the United States&#8217; radar in a big way, with the Trump Administration declaring in October 2017 that it wants the U.S. to be a leader in the space industry. This includes <a href="https://futurism.com/the-u-s-officially-says-they-are-sending-humans-to-the-moon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">going to the Moon</a> and being <a href="https://futurism.com/vice-president-pence-to-lead-national-space-council-and-get-u-s-to-mars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the first country to send astronauts to Mars</a>.
Speaking to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/wilbur-ross-on-space-race-we-want-to-turn-the-moon-into-a-gas-station.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNBC&#8217;s Squawk Box</a> about the country&#8217;s future commercial space projects, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said our future successes largely depend on what we accomplish by going to the Moon, such as turning it into a refueling station by establishing a lunar colony.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/21908/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/01/The-Moon-Base_home_v2.jpg" alt="The Race for a Moon Base: Who Will Build the First Lunar Colony?" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/21908/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
&#8220;I think a lot depends upon how successful we are in turning the Moon into a kind of gas station for outer space,&#8221; Ross told CNBC. &#8220;The plan is to break down the ice [found on the Moon] into hydrogen and oxygen, [and] use those as the fuel propellant.&#8221;
Ross foresees a scenario in which rockets are launched from Earth with the intent of going to the Moon first, rather than traveling directly to, say, Mars or deep space. Once at the Moon, the rocket would refuel and take off once again for another planet or asteroid. This subsequent launch would require less thrust since the Moon&#8217;s gravitational force is much lower than the Earth&#8217;s.
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<h2>Privatizing the ISS</h2>
Beyond turning the Moon into a pit stop, the Trump Administration&#8217;s plans for space also include <a href="https://futurism.com/iss-private-companies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">turning the International Space Station over to private companies</a>. The ISS requires billions of dollars to maintain, but if it&#8217;s no longer the responsibility of the U.S. government, that money could potentially be used to fund future space projects.
That said, if private companies were to acquire the ISS and use it to launch their own rockets and satellites, Ross explains a set of &#8220;rules to the road&#8221; would need to be established.
&#8220;There need to be means for policing, if you will, the debris in space,&#8221; he said to CNBC. &#8220;That&#8217;s one of the big problems. And as more and more launches occur, more and more satellites reach the end of their life, that&#8217;s going to be a problem we have to deal with.&#8221;
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The newly revived National Space Council (NSC), of which Ross is a member, recently <a href="https://futurism.com/national-space-council-recommendations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">held it&#8217;s second public meeting in February</a> to discuss several reforms, including better licensing for spacecraft, consolidating offices, and developing recommendations to control export. Currently, commercial spacecraft that land in another country is considered an export, and the fees associated with this policy have quickly become a big complaint from space companies.
Guidance from the NSC is critical if the U.S. wants to ensure that <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-may-shift-focus-from-mars-moon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">organizations like NASA</a> and companies like SpaceX can <a href="https://futurism.com/falcon-heavy-asteroid-mining/?src=featured" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pave the way to the stars</a>. Through the council, new policies can be put in place to guarantee they have everything they need.

"The plan is to break down the lunar ice into hydrogen and oxygen and use those as the fuel propellant."

Why are we going to the Moon, again? Oh right, to make it into a "gas station for outer space"

Going to the Moon could have a huge impact on all of the United States' other space missions, says Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Why Are We Going to the Moon, Again? Oh Right, to Make It Into a "Gas Station for Outer Space"

A lunar layover could cut down on the fuel required to travel from Earth to Mars.

Why Are We Going to the Moon, Again? Oh Right, to Make It a “Gas Station for Outer Space”

Nuclear war. Runaway climate change. A global pandemic. Today our world faces all manner of existential threats. But scary possibilities like these are nothing compared to what astronomers say lies in store for Earth. Our planet’s ultimate destiny is to be baked, blasted, and eventually disintegrated.
There’s nothing we can do to prevent this cataclysm. Yet according to scientists who study the far future, including University of California astronomer Gregory Laughlin, the prospect for life is, oddly, rather bright. Given technological advances and the continuing evolution of our species, humans should be able to survive — in some form — long after Earth has ceased to exist.
But our distant descendants are going to have to do some planet-hopping.
<h2>The Multiplanet Era</h2>
The first major cosmic crisis will strike in about 1.5 billion years. At that point, according to projections by environmental scientist Andrew J. Rushby at the University of East Anglia in England, the brightening sun will set off what might be termed “super-global” warming. Earth will be heated until the oceans boil.
By then, though, will we care? We already have the technology to establish bases on the moon and Mars. So a billion and a half years from now, we’ll likely have colonized the whole solar system — and perhaps other star systems in our Milky Way galaxy.
As the sun grows hotter, other planets will become more appealing. Just as Earth becomes too toasty to sustain life, Mars will reach a temperature that makes it habitable. Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger has run models showing that the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04924">Red Planet could then stay pleasant for another 5 billion years</a>.
About 7.5 billion years from now, the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and switch to helium. That will cause it to balloon into an enormous red giant. Mars as well as Earth will be fried. On the other hand, the once icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn will have become tropical water worlds — prime real estate for human colonies. We could live there for a few hundred million years.
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_50/2264046/171215-nasa-cf-1920-ac-1115p_1fc7adb1ee4ac5bf3d5dad70adff6eaf.focal-324x211.jpg" alt="Humans might outlive everything with the help of space colonization." width="600" height="391" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Jupiter&#8217;s moon Io is dotted with volcanoes heated by gravitational friction. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University Of Arizona</figcaption></figure>
About 8 billion years from now, the flaring sun will make conditions intolerably hot all the way out past Pluto. “The exact dates depend on how much mass you estimate the sun will lose and how much planets will move,” Kaltenegger says. But the message is clear: Life will be impossible in our solar system.
<h2>The Star-Hopping Era</h2>
Fortunately, Laughlin points out, there are 200 billion other stars in the Milky Way, most with planets of their own. Perhaps our descendants will have mastered near-light-speed travel. Even with current technology, however, interstellar travel is conceivable on the kind of timescales we’re talking about.
The fastest spacecraft built to date, <a href="https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/">Voyager 1</a>, is racing away from the sun at 38,027 miles per hour. At that speed, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star. But future humans might build interstellar arks, giant ships on which generations of travelers would live and die before delivering colonists to a new destination. Such star-hopping colonists could spread across our entire galaxy before Earth overheats, even assuming no advances in rocketry.
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="" src="https://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2014_28/555961/140709-voyager_e07200caa8899e246f1e1f66b6380b68.focal-324x211.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="391" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">An artist&#8217;s conception shows NASA&#8217;s Voyager 1 spacecraft entering interstellar space. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech</figcaption></figure>
At first, those voyagers might choose to set sail for planets around midsize, yellow stars similar to our own. That will take care of us for quite a while, since sunlike stars last 12 billion years before they fizzle. As one star ages and dies, we can move on to the next. We’ve got time.
Fifty billion to 100 billion years from now, though, all of the raw material for new stars will be used up. The last generation of sunlike stars will burn out, and humans will need a new kind of place to live.
It turns out that we have better options than yellow stars like our sun. The Milky Way is dotted with red dwarfs, cooler and dimmer than our sun but built to last. “For the next 10 trillion years, the red dwarfs are just coming into their own,” Laughlin says.
And so planets around red dwarf stars may be our homes until about 15 trillion years from now, when they too will expire.
<h2>The Gravitational Era</h2>
Red dwarfs will be the last generation of stars. Once they die, the universe will go dark — literally. Even so, Laughlin doesn’t see this as the end of the line for life. Instead, we will enter what he calls “the gravitational era.”
In this dark future, we might build enormous space power plants around black holes, lowering masses toward them to harvest their gravitational pull “like the weights pulling down in a grandfather’s clock,” says Princeton physicist J. Richard Gott. Or we might tap the internal heat of planets to generate energy: The gravitational interaction between celestial bodies creates friction, which can keep planets hot inside even without any starshine.
Don’t picture cave dwellers huddling around geothermal heaters. Trillions of years of evolution will have long since transformed us, Laughlin says. Perhaps we will have merged with our computers. Perhaps we won’t even have a physical form. The only thing our descendants will definitely have in common with us is the essential spark of life: not flesh and blood necessarily but information.
“That’s the most important lesson from thinking about the far future universe,” Laughlin says. “We’re being naïve when we think of life only in terms of Earthlike planets and carbon-based life.”
Information-based life can keep going almost forever. The gravitational era that begins around 15 trillion years from now could continue for quintillion years and beyond, Laughlin estimates. A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes. It is trillion times as long as the entire history of our hominid line on Earth.
<h2>Will the Universe Die Before We Do?</h2>
Still, even this near-eternity is not the same as eternity. At some point, life runs into the physical limits of matter itself.
Physics theories suggest that sometime between 10^34 (1 decillion) and 10^64 (1 vigintillion) years from now, the <a href="https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/do-protons-decay">protons found in the nuclei of all atoms will decay</a>. That means black holes will be the only organized form of matter in the universe. Future humanity can’t have any physical form at this point.
At 10^100 years — 10 duotrigintillion years A.D. — even black holes will evaporate. There will be no energy or structures of any kind — just a cold, eternal mist of farflung particles. This really is the end point for life.
Or maybe not. Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, one of the founders of modern cosmological theory, is exploring a model in which the <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-cosmic-controversy/">universe goes through endless cycles of creation</a>. His latest version, developed with Anna Ijjas of Columbia University, suggests that the universe could experience a new Big Bang well before the final black hole apocalypse.
If it does come, a new Big Bang would wipe away all traces of this universe — unless we can find a way to leapfrog into the next cosmic cycle. Current physics offers no guidance here.
Then again, we have quite a while to ponder the problem.
How Humans Might Outlive Earth, the Sun&#8230;and Even the Universe was originally published by NBC Universal Media, LLC on December 20, 2017 by Corey S. Powell. Copyright 2017 NBC Universal Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

What does the far future of humanity look like?

How humans might outlive Earth, the Sun, and even the Universe itself

Humans might outlive everything we know of through ingenuity and technology. However, the definition of humanity may change in the far future.

How Humans Might Outlive Earth, the Sun, and Even the Universe Itself

"We're being naïve when we think of life only in terms of Earthlike planets and carbon-based life."

The self-declared Space Kingdom of Asgardia, a nation founded by a Russian aerospace engineer and billionaire, just deployed its first satellite into orbit.
Asgardia is currently a non-profit non-governmental organization based out of Vienna, Austria. But its leaders want to eventually <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asgardia-space-nation-law-2016-10">build a kingdom in space</a> that mines asteroids and defends planet Earth from meteorites, space debris, and other threats.
&#8220;Asgardia will be a space nation that is a trans-ethnic, trans-national, trans-religious, ethical, peaceful entity trying to settle the humanity in space,&#8221; Ram Jakhu, the director of McGill University&#8217;s Institute of Air and Space Law and one of Asgardia&#8217;s founding members, said during a June press briefing.
<figure style="width: 1024px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5a299067a3b47440028b46be-1024/asgardia-1-nanosat-space-nation.jpg" alt="asgardia 1 nanosat space nation" width="1024" height="768" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Asgardia-1 nanosat. Asgardia; Lena De Winne/Twitter</figcaption></figure>
Its new satellite is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/asgardia-first-space-country-satellite-2017-6">called Asgardia-1</a>. The blocky object is technically called a nano satellite or &#8220;nanosat,&#8221; weighs about as much as a newborn baby, and is roughly the size of a loaf of bread.
<a href="http://asgardia.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Asgardia</a>&#8216;s tiny spacecraft contains a 512-gigabyte hard drive loaded with &#8220;the nation&#8217;s constitution, national symbols, and the personally selected data of the Asgardian citizenship,&#8221; according to a statement emailed to Business Insider.
&#8220;Asgardia-1 has now been deployed in a low earth orbit,&#8221; the statement said, &#8220;making Asgardia the first nation to have all of its territory in space.&#8221;
But at least one space law researcher says that, legally speaking, the feat may be &#8220;much ado about nothing.&#8221;
<h2>Asgardia&#8217;s first satellite</h2>
The plan to launch the satellite was announced during a press briefing and June 13, and the effort was funded by Asgardia co-founder <a href="https://ashurbeyli.eu.com/bio.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Igor Ashurbeyli</a>, a Russian aerospace engineer and billionaire.
Asgardia worked with several companies to make its mission possible. <a href="https://nearspacelaunch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NearSpace Launch</a> helped design and build Asgardia-1, and aerospace company Orbital ATK <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCZ28hyGvK0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> the nanosat inside a Cygnus spacecraft bound for the International Space Station.
The Cygnus left the space station on Wednesday, rocketed to a higher altitude, and shot Asgardia-1 and two other nanosats into space with a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2281.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spring-loaded cannon</a> built by NanoRacks.
<div></div>
Asgardia-1 won&#8217;t do much more than <a href="https://data3.nsldata.com/asgardia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">orbit Earth</a> from about 280 miles above the planet, though it does store data submitted by Asgardian citizens. There are currently <a href="https://asgardia.space/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">about 154,000 citizens of Asgardia</a>, and the first 100,000 to register were promised 500 kilobytes of space each for upload on the hard drive (500 kb is less than the data used by one frame of a typical DVD video).
&#8220;Maybe the photo of your little cat or of your neighbor, of your mother, or a child&#8230; whatever comes to your mind, this will be for as long as Asgardia exists. In other words, forever,&#8221; Ashurbeyli said in June.
All the files Asgardians uploaded are visible to fellow citizens, and the platform is accepting more for future spacecraft. So far, nearly 14,000 Asgardians have contributed files, including poems, personal letters, songs, and photos of weddings, cats, dogs, birds, aliens, and even President Donald Trump shaking the hand of India&#8217;s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Asgardia-1 will slowly fall toward Earth over the next five years and eventually burn up in the planet&#8217;s atmosphere. But Ashurbeyli said in June that the data uploaded will be copied to future Asgardian satellites, as well as spacecraft that go to &#8220;the moon and anywhere in the universe &#8230; Asgardia will be.&#8221;
<h2>&#8216;Much ado about nothing&#8217;?</h2>
With the satellite successfully deployed into space, the nation will now turn to its parliamentary elections that run through March 2018, according to Asgardia&#8217;s statement.
&#8220;Anyone who is 18 or older, and has accepted the Constitution of Asgardia, will automatically be assigned to an electoral district which represents their spoken language,&#8221; the statement said.
<figure style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/57fe2a644046dd9d078b533c-2000/asgardia-space-nation-website-logo.jpg" alt="asgardia space nation website logo" width="2000" height="1500" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">An illustration of Asgardia&#8217;s original emblem. Asgardia.space</figcaption></figure>
Asgardia has enough people who&#8217;ve applied for citizenship to qualify for consideration as a state by the United Nations, since the minimum is 100,000. But it&#8217;s unlikely the world will acknowledge Asgardia as a sovereign nation, even now that it has claimed territory in space.
&#8220;Legally speaking this is much ado about nothing,&#8221; <a href="https://law.unl.edu/frans-von-der-dunk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Frans von der Dunk</a>, a professor of space law at Nebraska College of Law, told Business Insider in an email. &#8220;The concept of territory has been pretty well defined in international law, and it does not include &#8216;artificial&#8217; territory such as satellites anymore than it does include ships, aircraft or oil platforms.&#8221;
Asgardia, he added, is &#8220;nowhere near a state in the classic sense of the word — even if you accept that the satellite has quasi-territory.&#8221;
But the biggest problem for Asgardian sovereignty, von der Dunk said, is the lack of a permanent population in space. Even then it&#8217;s a stretch, he said, citing several examples of nations, including Palestine and Taiwan, which have territory and a large permanent population, yet lack a functional government — and thus aren&#8217;t recognized as states. (Legal experts also <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3zveg/asgardia-nation-space-data-storage-off-planet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">see other issues</a> beyond Asgardia&#8217;s territorial claims and statehood, as Motherboard previously reported.)
Business Insider previously contacted the <a href="http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/index.html">United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs</a>(UNOOSA) for clarification on whether <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-laws-that-keep-space-from-spiraling-out-of-control-into-a-political-war-zone-2016-9">current space law</a> would permit the existence of a nation and territory in space, but UNOOSA representatives did not answer our query.
Instead, UNOOSA directed us to the text of <a href="http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.html">five UN treaties</a> that govern activities in outer space. Article II of the first and most important part of that legal framework, called the <a href="http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html">Outer Space Treaty</a>, prohibits &#8220;national appropriation&#8221; of anything in outer space &#8220;by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.&#8221;
But von der Dunk doesn&#8217;t think Asgardia, or something like it in the future, couldn&#8217;t eventually form a recognized nation or state in space.
&#8220;This may be the germ that 50 years from now will create a true nation in outer space,&#8221; von der Dunk <a href="http://popsci.com/dont-count-on-asgardia-becoming-legit-space-state" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Popular Science</a> last year.
<h2>How to build a space kingdom</h2>
<figure style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/594009c7bf76bb47028b591e-2000/asgardia-space-nation-colony-inside-illustration.jpg" alt="asgardia space nation colony inside illustration" width="2000" height="1904" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">An illustration of a space colony. Asgardia/James Vaughan</figcaption></figure>
For now, Asgardia&#8217;s proclaimed territory — i.e. Asgardia-1 — is actually bound by US law, since American companies launched it from US soil aboard a primarily NASA-funded mission.
But Asgardia&#8217;s founders eventually want to launch a space station and have people live there permanently.
&#8220;We&#8217;ll start small and eventually people will be going there, and working, and having their own rules and regulations &#8230; This facility will become an independent nation,&#8221; Jakhu previously told Business Insider.
No public details exist yet as to what an early colony might look like, how big it will be, or what expense it&#8217;d incur. However, building space stations of any size or kind and putting people on them is a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by-weight-2016-6">very, very expensive</a> proposition. The football-field-sized ISS, for example, took 18 nations and more than <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-cargo-price-by-weight-2016-6">$100 billion to build</a>. Meanwhile, the cheapest ride to orbit today is SpaceX&#8217;s Falcon 9 rocket, which costs between about <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/reusable-rockets-musk-bezos-space-colonies-2017-3">$43 million</a> and <a href="http://spacenews.com/spacexs-new-price-chart-illustrates-performance-cost-of-reusability/">$65 million</a> per launch.
An Asgardia spokesperson declined to disclose the organization&#8217;s funding when Business Insider asked in October 2016, but claimed billionaire backer Ashurbeyli had put forth a substantial amount of money (via his company, Aerospace International Research Center) to keep the Asgardia project going.
Asgardia&#8217;s organizers have drawn plenty of criticism, but Jakhu brushes it off.
&#8220;Anyone who tries out-of-the-box things is initially ridiculed,&#8221; Jakhu previously said. &#8220;Everything that&#8217;s amazing starts with a crazy idea. After a while, science fiction becomes science fact, and this is an idea which is just being initiated.&#8221;
This story was updated with new information after its original publication on December 7, 2017.
Disclosure: The author of this post registered as a citizen of Asgardia as part of his reporting.

Unfortunately for Asgardia, legal experts are singing a different tune.

"Space Kingdom" Asgardia says it's the first nation with all of its territory in orbit

Future Society

The self-titled "Space Kingdom" plans to mine asteroids for resources and defend the planet from celestial objects, such as meteorites and space junk.

"Space Kingdom" Asgardia Says It's the First Nation with All of Its Territory in Orbit

The "nation" wants to defend Earth from celestial threats.

“Space Kingdom” Asgardia Says It’s the First Nation with All of Its Territory in Orbit

<h2>Moon Cave Colonization</h2>
In October 2017, Japan&#8217;s Selenological and Engineering Explorer probe <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-want-us-to-live-in-lava-tubes-on-the-moon/">discovered a massive underground cave on the Moon</a>. The space, which is 100 meters (328 feet) wide and 50 kilometers (31 miles) long, is being touted as a potential location for a lunar station. In fact, some experts are asserting that the best way to live on the Moon is in caves just like the one recently discovered.
Radio waves were used to investigate the cave, after an opening measuring 50 meters by 50 meters (164 feet) was found by the probe. It&#8217;s thought to be structurally sound, and could contain deposits of ice and water inside rocks that might be used to produce fuel.
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The cave is thought to be a lava tube spawned by volcanic activity dating back 3.5 billion years. It&#8217;s situated just meters underneath volcanic domes called the Marius Hills.
Junichi Haruyama, a senior researcher with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), stated that lava tubes &#8220;might be the best candidate sites for future lunar bases, because of their stable thermal conditions and potential to protect people and instruments from micrometeorites and cosmic ray radiation,&#8221; according to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/19/lunar-cave-discovery-raises-hopes-for-human-colonisation-of-moon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report from The Guardian</a>.
This cave raises hopes that a lunar station could come to fruition in the near future, using the natural landscape of the moon to solve some practical problems. However, it&#8217;s not the only indication that such a project might be a reality sooner rather than later.
<h2>Establishing a Moon Base</h2>
There was a time when the prospect of establishing a permanent human presence on the moon was pure science fiction. Even more recently, the general consensus has agreed that such a project would be prohibitively expensive for an organization to pursue. Recent technological developments might suggest that this is no longer the case.
Everything from self-driving cars to toilets capable of recycling waste efficiently could help drive down the costs of a lunar station, which <a href="https://www.popsci.com/we-could-be-living-on-moon-in-10-years-or-less" target="_blank" rel="noopener">papers released last year</a> suggested could be in place as soon as 2022. This kind of penny pinching is essential if such an endeavor is going to be a success.
NASA simply doesn&#8217;t have the funding that it once had access to. The Apollo program that put humans on the lunar surface in 1969 cost $150 billion (adjusting for today&#8217;s standards). The agency will only receive $19.65 billion over the course of 2017, up from $19.3 billion in 2016.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/21908/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/01/The-Moon-Base_home_v2.jpg" alt="The Race for a Moon Base: Who Will Build the First Lunar Colony?" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/21908/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
However, the prospective moon base might not be completely reliant on NASA. Private companies like SpaceX and other organizations like the ESA could <a href="https://futurism.com/esas-plan-for-a-moon-village-is-slowly-starting-to-come-together/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pursue their own initiatives</a> — and that might end up spurring on American efforts. In fact, some experts assert that humanity will only be able to establish a viable Moon colony through an effort that unites private companies with national space agencies.
&#8220;The US is unlikely to have a large activity on the moon or Mars if it is the only actor involved,&#8221; senior NASA scientist Chris McKay told Futurism. &#8220;Why play &#8216;king of the mountain&#8217; if you’re the only one on the mountain[?] However if private groups or other nations are [planning] to go to the moon and/or Mars then the US will want to be involved and in fact to be in the lead.&#8221;
According to McKay, the ISS has already demonstrated that our life support systems are advanced enough to support a lunar station; we just need to get the tech deployed on the Moon. Fortunately, it seems that partnerships are already forming to do this. In May 2017, there were signs that NASA was <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-appears-to-be-looking-for-partners-to-help-them-mine-the-moon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pursuing a lunar mining initiative</a>, which would likely be facilitated by the commercial opportunities afforded by a partnership with a private company.
To McKay, the moon is little more than a stepping stone — albeit an important one. &#8220;If we ever have a human base on another world I would bet it would be the Moon first,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;Being so close, and constantly so close, is really a killer advantage over Mars, or asteroids, or anywhere else. Like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/da_gama_vasco.shtml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vasco de Gama</a> we will stay in sight of shore as we venture out.&#8221;

Natural features on the Moon could make colonization easier.

New discovery raises hope for human colonization of the Moon

An underground cave on the Moon could serve as a good location for a lunar base, a project that several different groups are trying to get off the ground.

New Discovery Raises Hope for Human Colonization of the Moon

Your children may never see a moonrise...because they will live on the Moon.

Mars is not exactly a friendly place for life as we know it. While temperatures at the equator can reach as high as a balmy 35 °C (95 °F) in the summer at midday, the average temperature on the surface is -63 °C (-82 °F), and can reach as low as -143 °C (-226 °F) during winter in the polar regions. Its atmospheric pressure is about one-half of one percent of Earth’s, and the surface is exposed to a considerable amount of radiation.
Until now, no one was certain if microorganisms could survive in this extreme environment. But thanks to a <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-11-biologists-microorganisms-mars.html">new study</a> by a team of researchers from the <a href="https://www.msu.ru/en/">Lomonosov Moscow State University</a> (LMSU), we may now be able to place constraints on what kinds of conditions microorganisms can withstand. This study could therefore have significant implications in the hunt for life elsewhere in the Solar System, and maybe even beyond!
The study, titled “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00792-017-0966-7">100 kGy gamma-affected microbial communities within the ancient Arctic permafrost under simulated Martian conditions</a>“, recently appeared in the scientific journal Extremophiles. The research team, which was led by Vladimir S. Cheptsov of LMSU, included members from the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, the Kurchatov Institute and Ural Federal University.
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<figure id="attachment_131992" style="width: 580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/Mars_atmosphere-1.jpg"><img class="wp-image-131992 size-medium" src="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/Mars_atmosphere-1-580x462.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="462" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976, showing Mars thin atmosphere and dusty, red surface. Credits: NASA/Viking 1</figcaption></figure>
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For the sake of their study, the research team hypothesized that temperature and pressure conditions would not be the mitigating factors, but rather radiation. As such, they conducted tests where microbial communities contained within simulated Martian regolith were then irradiated. The simulated regolith consisted of sedimentary rocks that contained permafrost, which were then subjected to low temperature and low pressure conditions.
As Vladimir S. Cheptsov, a post-graduate student at the Lomonosov MSU Department of Soil Biology and a co-author on the paper, explained in a LMSU <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-11-biologists-microorganisms-mars.html">press statement</a>:
<blockquote>“We have studied the joint impact of a number of physical factors (gamma radiation, low pressure, low temperature) on the microbial communities within ancient Arctic permafrost. We also studied a unique nature-made object—the ancient permafrost that has not melted for about 2 million years. In a nutshell, we have conducted a simulation experiment that covered the conditions of cryo-conservation in Martian regolith. It is also important that in this paper, we studied the effect of high doses (100 kGy) of gamma radiation on prokaryotes’ vitality, while in previous studies no living prokaryotes were ever found after doses higher than 80 kGy.”</blockquote>
To simulate Martian conditions, the team used an original constant climate chamber, which maintained the low temperature and atmospheric pressure. They then exposed the microorganisms to varying levels of gamma radiation. What they found was that the microbial communities showed high resistance to the temperature and pressure conditions in the simulated Martian environment.
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<figure id="attachment_62932" style="width: 580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Spirit-Embedded-in-Soft-Soil-on-Mars-as-Engineers-Devise-Methods-to-Free-Spirit.jpg"><img class="wp-image-62932 size-medium" src="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Spirit-Embedded-in-Soft-Soil-on-Mars-as-Engineers-Devise-Methods-to-Free-Spirit-580x435.jpg" alt="Spirit Embedded in Soft Soil on Mars" width="580" height="435" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image of Martian soils, where the Spirit mission embedded itself. Credit: NASA/JPL</figcaption></figure>
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However, after they began irradiating the microbes, they noticed several differences between the irradiated sample and the control sample. Whereas the total count of prokaryotic cells and the number of metabolically active bacterial cells remained consistent with control levels, the number of irradiated bacteria decreased by two orders of magnitude while the number of metabolically active cells of archaea also decreased threefold.
The team also noticed that within the exposed sample of permafrost, there was a high biodiversity of bacteria, and this bacteria underwent a significant structural change after it was irradiated. For instance, populations of actinobacteria like Arthrobacter – a common genus found in soil – were not present in the control samples, but became predominant in the bacterial communities that were exposed.
In short, these results indicated that microorganisms on Mars are more survivable than previously thought. In addition to being able to survive the cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressure, they are also capable of surviving the kinds of radiation conditions that are common on the surface. As Cheptsov <a href="https://phys.org/news/2017-11-biologists-microorganisms-mars.html">explained</a>:
<blockquote>“The results of the study indicate the possibility of prolonged cryo-conservation of viable microorganisms in the Martian regolith. The intensity of ionizing radiation on the surface of Mars is 0.05-0.076 Gy/year and decreases with depth. Taking into account the intensity of radiation in the Mars regolith, the data obtained makes it possible to assume that hypothetical Mars ecosystems could be conserved in an anabiotic state in the surface layer of regolith (protected from UV rays) for at least 1.3 million years, at a depth of two meters for no less than 3.3 million years, and at a depth of five meters for at least 20 million years. The data obtained can also be applied to assess the possibility of detecting viable microorganisms on other objects of the solar system and within small bodies in outer space.”</blockquote>
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<figure id="attachment_137298" style="width: 580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/mars-rover-rendering-800.jpg"><img class="wp-image-137298 size-medium" src="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/mars-rover-rendering-800-580x326.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="326" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Future missions could determine the presence of past life on Mars by looking for signs of extreme bacteria. Credit: NASA.</figcaption></figure>
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This study was significant for multiple reasons. On the one hand, the authors were able to prove for the first time that prokaryote bacteria can survive radiation does in excess of 80 kGy – something which was previously thought to be impossible. They also demonstrated that despite its tough conditions, microorganisms could still be alive on Mars today, preserved in its permafrost and soil.
The study also demonstrates the importance of considering both extraterrestrial and cosmic factors when considering where and under what conditions living organisms can survive. Last, but not least, this study has done something no previous study has, which is define the limits of radiation resistance for microorganisms on Mars – specifically within regolith and at various depths.
This information will be invaluable for future missions to Mars and other locations in the Solar System, and perhaps even with the study of exoplanets. Knowing the kind of conditions in which life will thrive will help us to determine where to look for signs of it. And when preparing missions to other words, it will also let scientists know what locations to avoid so that contamination of indigenous ecosystems can be prevented.

Biologists just proved how long life can survive on Mars, and it's longer than we thought

A team of researchers simulated the harsh conditions of Mars on a group of microorganisms. These organisms showed a high resistance to the conditions.

Life Can Survive on Mars Far, Far Longer Than We Thought

It’s millions and millions of years.

<h2>Human Martians</h2>
Humans are gearing up to make the next journey into the relative unknown with the first <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-has-a-new-timeline-for-humans-living-on-mars/">manned missions to Mars</a>, which could come as early as 2022. The long-term goal of these missions will be to colonize the Red Planet. Experts believe that space colonization and becoming a <a href="https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-humanity-only-has-100-years-left-on-earth-before-doomsday/">multi-planetary species</a> is the only way to ensure humanity&#8217;s survival.
There are plenty of obstacles beyond traveling to Mars that we will need to overcome before long-term colonization becomes a possibility, such as terraforming the planet to make it more livable for us Earthlings. Further, once a colony is established, the goal would then be to flourish, ensuring the colony&#8217;s survival in perpetuity. At this point, we are stepping into an interesting new branch of human biology, reproduction, and human development outside of Earth.
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<a href="https://www.space.com/37168-sex-in-space-mars-colonization.html">According to Kris Lehnhardt</a>, an assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, &#8220;This is something that we, frankly, have never studied dramatically, because it&#8217;s not been relevant to date. But if we want to become a spacefaring species and we want to live in space permanently, this is a crucial issue that we have to address that just has not been fully studied yet.&#8221; Lehnhardt&#8217;s full remarks can be viewed in the video above.
<h2>Growing in Space</h2>
One study brought freeze-dried mouse sperm into space for nine months to see if space travel would affect the health of any offspring created by it. The mouse pups were <a href="https://www.space.com/36946-baby-mice-from-freeze-dried-space-sperm.html">born healthy</a>, but they were born on Earth. This experiment showed that the radiation and other physical differences of space did not hinder normal reproduction. Even so, this does not mean that these findings would translate to embryos developing in space or on another planet, nor does it mean that the results would have been the same with human sperm.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/living-off-the-land-a-practical-guide-to-settling-mars-red-planet/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/07/Living-Off-the-Land_home_v1.jpg" alt="Living Off The Land: A Guide To Settling Mars [Infographic]" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/living-off-the-land-a-practical-guide-to-settling-mars-red-planet/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
The effects of lower gravity on fetal development have yet to be studied. A lack of Earth strength gravity could hamper normal human development. And even if the child was healthy for the environment in which it developed, the question then becomes: would that child ever be able to come to Earth?
The future of space colonization is unclear. Even if all of the technology comes together to <a href="https://futurism.com/watch-spacexs-remarkable-vision-of-humanitys-colonization-of-mars/">allow for colonies to be established</a>, biological factors may play a part in hindering the full potential of sustained colonies. At the very least, this would usher in a new era of human evolution.

Many experts assert that humanity must branch out to other parts of the solar system to ensure our survival.

More Study Is Needed on Reproduction in Space If We Want to Colonize Mars

Long-term survival of space colonies will depend on the ability to make new generations.

As humanity gears up to venture further into space than ever before, many people are looking to create colonies on the moon and on Mars, and we&#8217;re beginning to look at ways to make those theoretical colonies permanent settlements. The process of reproduction in space is something that scientists have only just begun to study. Right now, it is unknown how fetal development would be impacted by less or no gravity. However, the potential of one new machine could help to solve this should we discover that interplanetary reproduction is impossible.
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<figure id="attachment_87467" style="width: 898px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-87467 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/06/1497464096896-Screen-Shot-2017-06-14-at-21429-PM.jpg" alt="The DBC. Image: Nature Biotechnology/Venter et. al." width="898" height="564" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The DBC. Image Credit: Nature Biotechnology/Venter et. al. New Biology</figcaption></figure></figure>
<figure class="wp-caption">Craig Venter is a biotechnologist, biochemist, and geneticist who is developing a machine that would allow us to print life as easily as we would send an email. Venter founded <a href="https://www.syntheticgenomics.com/">Synthetic Genomics</a> to create this device. It is called a Digital-to-Biological Converter (DBC) and it can take digital representations of DNA and reconstruct them using the chemicals that make up DNA—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. In an <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/craig-venters-digital-to-biological-converter-is-real?utm_campaign=crowdfire&amp;utm_content=crowdfire&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter#74529629-tw%231497580095237">interview with </a><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/craig-venters-digital-to-biological-converter-is-real?utm_campaign=crowdfire&amp;utm_content=crowdfire&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter#74529629-tw%231497580095237">Motherboard</a>, Venter said, &#8220;Just like a printer, it needs cassettes, but instead of colours, it&#8217;s bottles of chemicals. It&#8217;s packaging complex biology that each of our tiny cells do remarkably well at a much, much smaller scale.&#8221;</figure>
Venter wants to bring about a revolution in medicine. Instead of creating vaccines in a centralized location and having to ship them to medical offices around the world, this device would allow those offices to create their own supplies. In the case of a burgeoning pandemic, this technology could stop it in its tracks by allowing for hyperlocalized deployment of treatment before the illness even has time to spread.
<h2>Life in Space</h2>
The antimicrobials and vaccines needed here on Earth will also be needed in any future space colonies. The logistics of getting medicine where it is most needed is difficult enough on Earth, now imagine having to add exponentially longer distances and rocket ships to the equation. Venter&#8217;s machine would be an invaluable addition to any colony. You can see Venter&#8217;s peer-reviewed paper in this month&#8217;s issue of <a href="https://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.3859.html">Nature Biology</a>.
The process is not foolproof at this time as printing more complex organisms gives more opportunity for mutations to manifest. &#8220;All it takes is one DNA base to be incorrect for a protein not to work, or a therapeutic to not do what it&#8217;s supposed to, or for a cell to not be functional,&#8221; says Daniel Gibson, a scientist at Synthetic Genomics.
The expense of space travel limits what we can bring with us on missions. It&#8217;s not like we can pack up a small city, strap it to a rocket and put it back together on Mars. The best course of action may be to ship equipment, like <a href="https://futurism.com/ready-for-edit-2-these-space-taxis-will-have-600-3d-printed-parts/">3D printers</a>, into space and construct what we need out of the resources of whatever celestial body we are colonizing.

Printing what we need to build and establish a colony could be easier than lugging civilization up from Earth. A new device could allow for that same convenience with medication, vaccines, and possibly even life itself.

A New Machine Could Allow Us to Print Life in Space

Even on Earth, this machine could ignite a revolution in medicine.

<h2>Alien Plants</h2>
The idea of discovering and studying alien life has tantalized scientists for centuries. Astronomers have been studying planets in the &#8220;Goldilocks Zone&#8221; — a distance from a sun in which water on a given planet is not constantly boiled off or frozen — for any sign of life, whether that be microbial or intelligent. But what would alien plant life look like given their planets&#8217; different<a href="http://www.space.com/36957-curious-kids-plants-goldilocks-zone.html"> sizes, atmospheres, and associated stars</a>?
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/other-earths-the-best-exoplanet-candidates-for-life-infographic/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/08/HomeThumb-900x600.jpg" alt="Other Earths: The Best Exoplanet Candidates for Life [INFOGRAPHIC]" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/other-earths-the-best-exoplanet-candidates-for-life-infographic/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
If these planets happen to be smaller than Earth, any plants on them would be far taller and thinner. The plants would also probably have large leaves than Earth plants because the lower gravity would permit the stems to support more mass. If the planet was more massive than Earth, this might cause the plants to be shorter and broader with smaller leaves, as everything on the planet would be heavier.
A thin atmosphere would cause any breeze on the planet to be exceptionally weak — this would mean that, evolutionarily, the plants would not grow to be particularly robust and would be tall and thin. A thick atmosphere would produce plants that would have to be much thicker and closer to the ground in order to withstand the powerful winds.
Our plants are green in order to capture the blue and red light our Sun emits while reflecting the green light, which is minimal. Not all stars operate in this color spectrum, though. A star that emits a more green and blue light would likely produce plants that were bright red.
<h2>TRAPPIST-1</h2>
Given the potentially huge changes different environments could have on plants, a key aspect of planning for space exploration concerns accommodating for these changes. Interplanetary colonists will need to predict both what type of life we could find on these planets and how we would adapt to those environments.
Three potentially habitable planets are housed in the <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-has-released-new-images-of-trappist-1s-earth-sized-planets/">TRAPPIST-1 planetary system</a>, which about 39 light years away from Earth and is home to seven Earth-sized planets in total. The TRAPPIST-1 star is called an &#8216;ultracool dwarf star&#8217; — it is  around the same size as Jupiter, and is much cooler and dimmer than our sun.
<img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/06/Trappist-Goldilocks-zone.png" alt="[Taken] Plants in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’" />
This means all seven planets circle their sun at a closer proximity than Mercury circles ours, making orbits and therefore years extremely short — <a href="http://www.space.com/35811-life-on-trappist-1-earth-like-exoplanets.html">One year would be about two </a><a href="http://www.space.com/35811-life-on-trappist-1-earth-like-exoplanets.html">Earth</a> <a href="http://www.space.com/35811-life-on-trappist-1-earth-like-exoplanets.html">weeks</a>. This also means planets get hit by<a href="https://futurism.com/new-evidence-has-emerged-on-the-potential-for-life-in-the-trappist-system/"> solar flares frequently</a>, which is something that may hinder life.
The nature of the TRAPPIST-1 star means that it emits mostly infrared heat, capable of warming the air on the surface of the planet, but causing it to be much dimmer than we are used to. Plants that evolved in this system would have bigger leaves to capture as much of the light possible and may have developed a method to convert infrared radiation into energy.
This alien plant life would most likely grow on only one side of their host planets because the <a href="https://futurism.com/4-is-there-alien-life-on-trappist-1-exoplanets/">planets in the system are &#8216;tidally locked&#8217;</a> — which means only one side ever faces the sun. But wherever we find alien plant life, and whatever it looks like, the discovery will cause major advances in our understanding of botany, and of life itself.

Hard Science

As we explore our galaxy for planets that may host alien life, scientists imagine how different features of a planet would impact the plant life there.

/Space Colonization

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Life Can Survive on Mars Far, Far Longer Than We Thought

Off World

More Study Is Needed on Reproduction in Space If We Want to Colonize Mars

Off World

A New Machine Could Allow Us to Print Life in Space

Hard Science

Scientists Imagine What Plants Would Look Like on Alien Worlds

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