Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History (2024-2025)
This team set out to answer a central question: What can centuries of terrestrial settlement teach us about building human communities beyond Earth? Drawing on historical examples of exploration, colonization and governance, from Norse settlements in Iceland to the Mayflower Compact, the project examined how lessons from Earth’s past can inform the design of sustainable, equitable and resilient space settlements. The interdisciplinary team, which included students and faculty from history, law, environmental science, engineering and public policy, focused on how governance models, company-led colonization and encounters with new environments might shape future off-Earth societies.
Over the course of the year, students worked in three sub-teams that studied technology and infrastructure, corporate-led settlements and legal systems. They built an open-source digital archive of primary and secondary sources, produced essays and visual materials, and developed future settlement designs, including a proposed space constitution, grounded in cautionary lessons from history. Team members also engaged experts in medicine, aerospace, public history and genetics, and participated in events such as the Rethinking Diplomacy Program’s “From the Antarctic to the Moon” and Astronomy Day at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
The team’s work culminated in the inaugural Duke Space Symposium, where students helped design the agenda, moderated panels and presented their research alongside leading space ethicists and practitioners. Their contributions also extended beyond Duke, with the Technology & Innovation sub-team selected to present at the NC Space Symposium. By combining archival research, interdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement, the project not only generated scholarly and educational resources but also positioned students to carry forward their insights into careers and future research on space governance, ethics and technology.
Timing
Summer 2024 – Spring 2025
Team Outputs
Envisioning the Network of Space Healthcare (Poster presented at the NC Space Symposium, Raleigh, NC, April 11, 2025)
Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History (Poster presentation at the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, April 16, 2025)
Organized and presented at the Duke Space Symposium, April 24 & 25, 2025
Open-source archive
Team website
Designed imagined future settlement
See earlier related team, DECIPHER: Going to Mars – Science, Society and Sustainability (2020-2021).