Forecasting The Political Economy of The Inner Solar System: Astropolitics December 2012

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Forecasting the Political Economy of the Inner Solar System
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DOI: 10.1080/14777622.2012.734948
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Forecasting the Political Economy of the
Inner Solar System
MARILYN DUDLEY-FLORES and THOMAS GANGALE

OPS–Alaska, Sausalito, California and Tonga International Academy,
Downloaded by [Marilyn Dudley-Flores] at 09:39 27 November 2012
Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga
Social structural methods are applied to forecast the political

economy of the inner solar system to the 22nd century. One method
considers structural indicators, specifically, population, social
organization, environment, and technology. Another method
examines the Tongan diaspora as an analog of human expansion
into space. This future political economy could emerge as a conse-
quence of user strain on a global electrical power grid that develops
by 2050. Alternative energy needs could turn to space-based sources.
If on-orbit space-based energy infrastructure provides the rationale,
capability, and allure to see humans routinely living and working
in space, their presence on the Moon and among the near-Earth
asteroids can lead to a human diaspora to Mars and its moons.
These events will build the multi-planet economy, the multi-world
system of societies, and the transnational state. The development
of Mars will reach a maturity of settlement from 2130 onward. As
these potential events become history, capital would be transformed,
and higher-order space logistics in a multi-world system of societies
with its multi-planet economy would lay the foundation for a Solar
System Federation. This federation constitutes transnational states
among off-world human societies that could fill the vacuum of a
fading Westphalian nation-state system on Earth.
In the future, a more globally extensive advanced industrialized world

system of societies (WSS) populated by 2 to 3 more billion people than today
may require space-based energy sources and systems (SBES). This possibility
Address correspondence to Marilyn Dudley-Flores, 121 Cazneau Ave., Sausalito, CA

94965. E-mail: md-r@ops-alaska.com
183
184 M. Dudley-Flores and T. Gangale
is based on increasing numbers of industrializing societies leapfrogging to

advanced industrial status; rising global population, among whom are
increasing numbers of those who desire the fruits of advanced industrializa-
tion; decline in easily extractable petroleum resources; and known and
unforeseen challenges to an Earth becoming more extreme as climate change
and its effects play out.
Bringing SBES on-line will put an event cascade in motion, whence
following, we may expect the birth of a multi-planet economy and, then, a
multi-world system of societies (MSS). In the long run, this expanded human
ecology will end the Westphalian nation-state system. This expanded econ-
omy and system of societies will be founded upon disparity—disparity of
energy needs, disparity in population size, and disparity in depth of gravity
wells. The energy needs of a heavily populated Earth will be provisioned by

small populations in a variety of off-world environments. And, by virtue of
their low-gravity advantage (requiring less propellant for lift-offs and land-
ings) and their energy surplus, these societies will emerge as centers of
manufacturing and shipping in a multi-planet economy.
This article is a result of a ‘‘thought experiment’’ about the consequences
of seeking energy sustainment from space. Before we conclude our informed
speculations, we attempt to go beyond the sequencing of events in order to
apply an approximate time frame of human progress off the Earth.
In earlier iterations about humans in space, we considered globaliza-
tion. We discussed how outer space production revved up globalization,
which in turn impacted the space enterprise.1 Shaping is a globalized space
paradigm that differs from the old ‘‘Space Race’’ mode of endeavor. Almost
no nation-state, company, or collection of wealthy individuals is currently
doing any sustained endeavor in space without international partners. These
are necessarily transnational ventures that are goal driven and that can rely
on multiyear funding through multiple revenue streams that cross national
boundaries over the life of the project.2 The ‘‘globalization of space’’ and
its transnational paradigm has set the stage for the permanence of humans
off-world.
However, civil space projects addressing human concerns will continue
to compete for funding. Those concerns will proliferate as the Earth becomes
more extreme through climate change and the hunger for resources from a
growing planetary population under increasing amounts of stress. In 2008,
Dudley-Flores outlined the interplay of factors, like global warming,
declining oil reserves, and more societies leapfrogging to advanced
industrialization.3 We are not yet certain of the exact combination and the
precise timing of these events, but we do know that some, like climate
change, are well underway. In addition, other foreseeable events will follow,
such as the occurrence of tropical diseases in temperate zones. We may
expect latent phenomena to emerge, like novel weather patterns. Nonethe-
less, extremity breeds opportunity.
The Political Economy of the Inner Solar System 185
Among the technologies needed by a stressed terrestrial human ecology

are the energy systems needed to run the WSS. These are energy systems that
are needed to run it in a predominantly advanced industrialized mode, rather
than an overlapping aggregate of horticultural, agrarian, industrializing, and
advanced industrialized modes as the WSS exists now. Increasingly, this
aggregate mode is a casualty of globalization as people the world over
demand better lives.
What does this mean for the ecology of world societies that sees them
sorted out according to core, semiperiphery, and periphery with a distinct
North–South divide? We think that this analytical differentiation, addressed
by Immanuel Wallerstein, will still hold for several decades to come.4 But,
in time, the divisions and assortments will be among many more advanced
industrialized societies that will vary in their abilities to meet the challenges
of the ‘‘Anthropocene Epoch.’’5 In a climate-changing, increasingly advanced
industrialized world needing more energy, geopolitical realities will track
closely with environmental realities.6 The WSS will assort according to such
things as space launching capabilities, willingness to cooperate with other
nations in space, control of water, their roles in an increasingly intercon-
nected electrical grid system (the emerging hypergrid), and the degree of
regard that societies have for education, particularly tertiary education.
How well a society supports and cultivates its university educators and
students is ‘‘the prime determinate of ‘core-hood’ in the world system of
societies.’’7 That is because higher education is the feeder industry to inno-
vation, and innovation is key to societies’ abilities to meet the challenges
of the Anthropocene Earth.8
A linchpin challenge of Anthropocene Earth is an increasing global
population and its growing advanced industrial energy usage. Global popu-
lation will number as many as 10 billion by 2050. The energy demand of an
increasingly advanced industrial WSS with this many people will be enor-
mous. The need for electricity will increase from not only the sheer
numbers of users but the heavier reliance upon electrical systems for per-
sonal transportation.9 The emergent hypergrid, a global interlinkage of all
regional power grids connecting continents, will be strained. (The hypergrid
was a conceptualization of R. Buckminster Fuller, who in 1979 discussed
the possibilities of long-distance electrical transmission technology with
Dudley-Flores.) Due to declining petroleum stocks, alternative energy
sources are being brought to bear today to generate electricity to feed power
grids across the planet.
But, eventually, the output of a hypergrid fed by terrestrial sources may
not be enough, and SBES might then be developed and applied. Therefore,
the human ecology would expand off-world. We will not dwell on forecast-
ing what these systems will be because we and others have already discussed
some potential systems.10 In this article, we set the stage for the connections
among events, their sequence, and their time frame. We begin by assuming
that one or more SBES will be necessary to add to the output of the world-
wide hypergrid.
EXTRAGLOBALIZATION AND SHALLOW GRAVITY WELL

ENVIRONMENTS
SBES will require humans in space to transport the components of the

systems to off-world locations, assemble them there, bring them on-line,
maintain them, and upgrade them. Currently, Earth’s orbital infrastructure
is too primitive to implement the SBES that could be deployed nearest to
Earth: a solar-to-microwave electrical generation system. The Russian space
stations that culminated in Mir, the American Skylab, and finally, the
International Space Station (ISS), as well as the space launch systems that
have taken people to these stations, are rudimentary compared to what is
required to house a large human workforce on orbit. Without necessity
and money, these current systems will remain at that scale and may, in fact,
be stood down. Recent developments in American space goals (i.e., the
decommissioning of the Space Shuttle fleet, the cancellation of the Constel-
lation lunar exploration program, and pulling its participation in the ISS)
make the devolution of at least the non-military space technology of the
United States a credible threat.
The space-capable nations’ programs of human space endeavor have
been a mere prelude of small and intermittent steps, the giant leap to the
Moon in the 1960s yet to be repeated, and steps not made at all, such as lunar
bases and expeditions to Mars planned in the late 1960s for implementation
in the early 1980s. Earnest, sustained endeavor will only begin when there is
a great necessity for a large workforce to live in space. Alleviating user strain
on the worldwide hypergrid is just such a necessity. Together, the energy
needs of an Earth facing extremity and the deployment of SBES through
the globalized space approach have the potential to start an interaction
and cascade of events. More and more humans could find their jobs and
homes in shallow gravity well environments rather than deep well Earth
(Figure 1). These environments are the Moon, space stations at varying
distances from the Earth, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons, and the
vehicles responsible for shipping among all points in this expanded human
ecology.
Unlike visions of solar system exploration that take as their analog the
pioneering and then settling of the American Old West, these shallow gravity
well microsocieties will not spend much time in the pioneer phase. That is
because they must provide input to the terrestrial hypergrid at the soonest.
Pioneering the ‘‘High Frontier’’ of space will require huge capital investments
that can be commanded only on the basis of an acceptable return of profits to
Earth on a reasonable timetable. The brief pioneer phase of microsocieties in
FIGURE 1 Comparative gravity well environments.

space equates to the test bed phase of the SBES in each off-world location.
Pioneered locations will become settled locations quickly once their pro-
ductivity is established and maintained. They will be self-sustaining once
they come on-line and they will soon produce surplus for their contribution
to the terrestrial hypergrid. Space visionaries sometimes foresee off-world
settlements as company towns. However, many of these settlements will
not strictly be company towns. No one corporation, no one nation-state, or
no group of wealthy individuals can monopolize the founding of such
off-world environments. The transnational approach needed to loft SBES
ventures means that from the start these settlements, especially the more dis-
tant ones, could possess a semi-autonomy that will let them become even
more autonomous over time.
When pockets of people start living sustainably off the Earth, human-
kind will arrive at the extraglobalization phase of its existence. At that
FIGURE 2 Interacting diagnostic factors of the POET model. Source: http://www.eou.edu/

socenv/lecture/POET.htm (accessed September 2012). (color figure available online.)
moment, the combinations of events, processes, people, places, and technol-

ogies will act as a force multiplier to quantum jump the human condition to a
whole new level.
At this point, we will discuss the multilectic that could emerge among
those human extraterrestrial societies and the Earth over several interacting
diagnostic social structural factors. We use herein the POET factors first
described by Otis Dudley Duncan and Leo Schnore that are highlighted in
Figure 211: population (P), social organization (O), environment (E), and
technology (T). However, other sets of interacting structural codes could
be used to forecast an expanding human ecology.12 Whichever set of codes
is used, their interaction comprises an important method for us. We will
examine the human ecology of shallow gravity well environments according
to the interactive POET factors in more detail below.
ADVANTAGES OF SHALLOW GRAVITY WELLS AND

THE FOURTH SPECTRE
The colonization of space is not the colonization of prior centuries. In the

past, industrialized societies established colonies among hunting and gather-
ing, horticultural, and agrarian societies for the purpose of extracting raw
materials and making use of the cheap, unskilled labor of indigenous popu-
lations. There was dubious added value for the nonindustrialized societies
that found themselves colonized and exploited. Residual trade relationships
between colonizers and colonized have persisted into the 21st century
and are the foundation of the ecology of capital of the WSS. Immanuel
Wallerstein has spent a great deal of his professional sociological and inter-
national relations career elaborating on the industrial core of the capitalist
world system; the semiperiphery of lesser, specialized industrialized states;
and the underdeveloped periphery.13
The colonization of shallow gravity well environments for the energy
needs of Earth turns the model of colonization of earlier centuries upside
down. First, there will be no cheap labor in off-world colonies. Workforces
off the Earth will comprise the most expensive labor in human history.
The closest analog today of the off-world worker is the highly skilled and
highly paid military contractor working overseas. Second, it will be the smart-
est and most innovative labor force in human history. There will likely be
exploitative economic relationships, but who will be the exploiter and
who the exploited is yet to be determined. To the investor in off-world
industries belong the profits, whereever the investor is located—on the Earth
or off the Earth. Though those investors will likely be located on the Earth in
the early years of space colonization, off-world colonists will be cognizant
of their value to the WSS back on Earth, engage in profitable activities,
and become investors, too. The North–South hemispheric economic
divide visible in today’s terrestrial ecology of capital could give way to

a divide between the deep gravity well of Earth and the shallow gravity wells
in space.
Much of the goods produced off-world will be competitive with terres-
trial products marketed throughout the solar system due to gravitational
advantage. Less powerful gravity fields take less propellant to land on and
launch from, which make them less expensive ports for moving goods.14
In addition, some goods produced in low gravity may be better than those
produced on Earth. Overall, this places Earth at a disadvantage in a maturing
multi-planet marketplace. Earth will already be dependent upon SBES for its
hypergrid, but the additional production of shallow well locations will be
another factor in the transformation of Earth as buyer and seller. As the
multi-planet economy matures, the division between deep well societies,

most specifically Earth, and shallow well societies will become the defining
feature of this new ecology of capital. As maturing off-world economies
become capable of producing an increasing variety of goods that no longer
need be imported from Earth while Earth’s dependence on off-world goods
increases, a trade imbalance may develop. Even so, Earth will likely remain
the core of this developing MSS. But, the shallow well advantage that put a
great deal of wealth and power in the hands of a few off-world locales and
that widen the horizons of the human ecology will create some interesting
dynamics. Capital always seeks the most lucrative investment opportunities,
and off-world capital will be no different. Off-world settlers will invest
throughout the solar system, including on Earth.
Immanuel Wallerstein has written about ‘‘three spectres’’ that have
haunted the WSS.15 The first spectre was the one that Karl Marx mentioned
when he commented, ‘‘A spectre is haunting Europe. . . . ’’16 As Europe indus-
trialized, urbanization increased, and factory workers were crowded into
slums and lived in dismal conditions. The first spectre was the potential for
an uprising between 1848 and 1917 in Europe, and perhaps elsewhere in
the world, of mostly uneducated persons who would be destructive and dis-
orderly but who would confiscate wealth and redistribute it fairly, put others
in power, and rid countries of traditions viewed as not in the best interest of
egalitarian social investment.17 Such a revolution of the masses did not suc-
ceed in Europe proper but in the Russian Empire, at the semiperiphery and
periphery, but close to the core, of the world economy.18 The first spectre
held out the promise of optimism, justice, and morality.19
The second spectre, according to Wallerstein, was Russian Communism.
It haunted between 1917 and 1991. It came to exude stagnation, betrayal, and
oppression.20 Wallerstein asserted that a third spectre may be afoot in the
world since then. It concerns the polarization between those who can access
material and technological advances and those who cannot, the ‘‘have not’’
desires for a fair share of social investments, and their yearning for democra-
tization.21 Wallerstein foresees much more violence in the world in the
future, more so than was experienced during the Cold War. He envisions an
underclass of people swelling in cities worldwide with no rights and with
strong grievances.22 We do not dispute him on this note. At the same time,
there is another phantom that is haunting the world that teams with that
third spectre, and that is Mother Nature herself and the issue of climate
change.
Climate change will put masses of refugees to rout, insurgencies will
propagate, and nation-states will not be able to make timely social invest-
ments to mitigate events and will be rightly viewed as ineffectual and weak.
In the long run, Mother Nature is a great leveler. And—in this—she is the
great lifter as well.
The demand for social investments will be so great, on such a global
scale, that this demand could lead to great leaps in innovation and collective
action in the face of overwhelming necessity. The worldwide power hyper-
grid will be one of those great innovations. Then, when terrestrial sources
feeding that hypergrid are not enough, another spectre will be loosed. It will
gather strength in frightening the people of the Earth—most specifically
those who control the hypergrid and other terrestrial elites. This fourth spec-
tre will be different from all those that have rattled their chains thus far and
that have exhorted the masses to throw off their own. This spectre will not be
comprised of downtrodden workers, party apparatchiks, or seething urban
masses. It will be made up of the sentiments, capabilities, and visions of
those people who go to live and work off the Earth and of all of those
who are the brains and the muscle of an event cascade that sees off-world
societies drawing wealth away from the core of Earth. This spectre will trans-
form the world economy and make way for the dynamics of a multi-planet
economy of a system of societies of which Earth is but one. The amount
of wealth that gets drawn away from Earth will not diminish it being at the
hub of the MSS, but the tension between deep well Earth and shallow well
societies in the generation of capital will be instrumental to a whole new kind
of political economy.
Gangale has written, ‘‘A spectre is haunting the Solar System.’’23 That
spectre is the fourth spectre in the evolutionary train of zeitgeister that left
the station when early industrialization emerged. Whether or not this spectre
will haunt remains an open question. Advanced industrialization of the
whole Earth may cause global population to drop below replacement; terres-
trial energy sources may be adequate for the hypergrid to support a falling
rate of global users, including fusion power that is not necessarily reliant
upon Helium-324; and low-cost launch systems with the ability to move
billions of kilograms of passengers and freight off-planet may not be
developed. If one or more of these conditions come to pass, our forecast
regarding the political economy of the inner solar system is but a just-so
story. However, if the fourth spectre does haunt, here is what its handiwork
will look like.
MULTILECTIC OF A NEW HUMAN ECOLOGY
The creation and exchange of goods and services of value to Earth will see
the accumulation of wealth in outer space. It is such productive activities that
will form the basis of a largely commercial, nongovernmental solar system
economy. An important sector of this production will likely remain devoted
to SBES to sustain the Earth as well as off-world settlements. However, sec-
ondary and tertiary industries serving SBES and resource extraction activities
will emerge and expand off the Earth. Analogs of such secondary and tertiary
industries are those that spin off from and=or support the petroleum extrac-
tion industry, like Halliburton, which began as an oil service company and
acquired Kellogg, Brown, and Root, and other construction and contracting
companies.25
Let us look at the give-and-take between deep gravity well Earth society
and shallow well extraterrestrial societies. For this forecast, we will use the
multilectic among the structural factors of population, social organization,
environment, and technology (POET).
Population
Among the many variables that social scientists examine, there are several
indicators of population that are of interest to those of us who think about
the political economy of human societies in space. Among them are size
and demographic composition, like gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age;
similarities and differentials in skill sets and other division of labor issues;
and fertility, mortality, and migration.
Odd Fellows on Mars and Off-World Snobbery

We might expect special interest Earth groups to interface with off-world
groups (e.g., ‘‘Friends of Mars’’). Similarly, off-world groups might form to
interface with Earthbound ones. Some groups might have their roots in pre-
migration voluntary associations, like the Masons, Odd Fellows, Rotary, etc.
Examining the tombstones of miners who died in various occupational acci-
dents in the 1800s in Gold Hill, Nevada, the authors were struck by the
Masonic and Odd Fellows relationships among men who came to work
the gold and silver mines in and around Virginia City. They hailed from all
over the world but were bound by the brotherhood of their international
voluntary associations in a much less globalized era.
Some groups on either side of the gravity divide will likely emerge from
the aggregate of organizations and individuals whose vision, interest, and
resources established low gravity colonies. Peter Blau, in Inequality and
Heterogeneity: A Primitive Theory of Social Structure,26 enunciated several
propositions about the interactions of human groups that can be used for
different levels of analysis (i.e., nation, state, community, and organization)

and different types of sociological phenomena (i.e., division of labor, social
mobility, and intergroup associations). Among Blau’s conceptualizations is
that members of a minority population will have more associates from
among the majority population than they will from among their own minority
population. This will likely be true in the establishment phase of energy sys-
tems off-world, because the minority off-world population will be initially of
the majority population from Earth. However, later, that will change as the
colony grows, with people living there over decades and children being born
there. People will stay in touch with friends and relatives back on Earth and
elsewhere and make new friends at a distance over electronic media. How-
ever, their daily operational associations will be from among the minority
off-world colonists.
Because shallow well settlements will be small and distant, they will
bear some resemblance to terrestrial frontier societies. Even when they
expand as they mature, their populations will still remain small in relation
to Earth’s billions, but there will be a lot packed into those small pockets
of humanity. As with frontier societies, there will be a wide array of skill sets
within each individual—particularly in these unique societies where each
person may be trained in multiple disciplines and high-technology trades.
This array of abilities could lead to a type of snobbery on the part of shallow
well residents, who will look down on Earth dwellers who, today, are typi-
cally not wide-ranging in their interests and talents. Having multiple sets of
know-how may be the foundation of a deep cognitive and perceptual divide
between Earthbound and off-world populations. Such a divide will be similar
to that of the self-reliant settler of the American Old West and the ‘‘city
slicker’’ from Back East, the latter who, without urban amenities, could not
feed, clothe, and shelter himself.
Fuzzy Concepts of Carrying Capacity and Limits to Growth

Earth and its shallow well colonies are bound by principles of limits to
growth and carrying capacity. We say this guardedly because quantifying
limits of growth and carrying capacity is a fuzzy process. If technology is part
of a limits-to-growth or carrying capacity equation, the type of technology
plugged into it can change the other variables. Embedding assumptions
about resource overexploitation and environmental degradation can also
make quantitative statements about limits to growth and carrying capacity
ambiguous.27 The issue is a little like determining how many extraterrestrial
civilizations are in the Milky Way with the Drake equation—only with a lot
more data at hand.28 The fact is, we do not yet know the carrying capacity
of the Earth. If every person in the world lived at a standard commensurate
with average Americans, then terrestrial carrying capacity would be about
2 billion. If every person worldwide depended on basic food, water, and
shelter, then carrying capacity would run about 40 billion people.29 If we

were dependent upon raw food production (crops, ocean fish stocks,
domestic meat and poultry production), we would soon be stressed at 7 to
10 billion folk. Indications of this stress, with world population now at about
7 billion, are discussed in the literature.30
However, technology continually offers a revolution in food production.
One of the latest examples is the creation of foods in vitro, like meats grown
from a few cells from a donor animal that does not need to be slaughtered.31
Limits to growth and carrying capacity can also be affected by politics and
violence. Today, no one on Earth need go to bed on an empty stomach.
Hunger and starvation on Earth in the early 21st century is often a logistical
or similar problem (i.e., local warlords gatekeeping food stocks, groups of
people cut off from supplies by ethnic violence, different strains of seed
stocks of a vegetable or grain with different cultivation and seasonal require-
ments being carelessly packaged together by donor societies, as is the case
today among Afghan farmers with donated seeds). And, of course, unequal
distribution of wealth and the capitalist mode of production also play a part.
There is no profit for farmers shipping food to starving populations who do
not have the money to pay for it.
The horizon of the carrying capacity of the Earth grows larger with
advances in technology and thoughtful policies. The same might be expected
of off-world locales, where habitats will resemble ships, whence the term
carrying capacity originates. Some unique conditions do apply in terms of
carrying capacity for shallow well environments that do not typically mani-
fest on Earth. Even if food, water, and breathing gas stocks were not a prob-
lem, increasing population could outstrip life support enclosures of human
habitats off-world, especially if they were not expandable or if something
happened to diminish the livability of the habitat. In high-technology socie-
ties, unplanned pregnancies would probably not be an issue, but another
sort of ‘‘accident’’ could breach the containment of one or more modules
of an off-world habitat that would result in overcrowding and rationing of
consumables before repairs could be made or replacement spaces could be
constructed. After the 1906 earthquake and fire that ravaged San Francisco,
nearly the entire city pitched tents in Golden Gate Park or found lodging and
sustenance in Oakland. A disaster on Mars would not offer such a fallback
position in the aftermath.
Becoming Other-Cultural—At the Interface of Population

and Environment
Off-world cultural forms will follow environment. Carried in the heads of
off-world populations and coded in their material culture (their technology
and materiel) is their nonmaterial culture. This is their literature, art, music,
folklore, and philosophy. Local poets will be inspired by their habitats’
interior and exterior views. Local musicians will compose music for con-
sumption of local audiences motivated by sounds, rhythms, and moods in
the life of the colony. Visual art may reflect local landforms or the utilitarian
lines of interiors and exteriors of habitats. Philosophies could reflect a con-
servatism of consumables and the ironic juxtaposition of small spaces of
habitats against cosmic panoramas that feed the human psyche.
Distant from Earth, extraterrestrial populations could rapidly become
other-cultural. It may be a subtle other culture, like Americans who find
Canadian society similar but slightly different and vice versa. It could be like
familiar songs played to a different beat, or it may be a more profound and
not readily apparent other-cultural difference as might be the case over time
for humans on Mars.
Social Organization
Forecasting events set in motion by satisfying the energy needs of the Earth
off the Earth is a social change exercise, among other things. What social
forms might be changed by the colonization of space? The following dis-
cussion is not a full litany, but it demonstrates the spectrum of social forms
that could be affected.
Families
Initially, a predominant worldwide advanced industrial subsistence modality
will likely mean a trend toward smaller families on Earth. Likewise, off-world
families will be small too, also because of the additional reason to preserve
the livability of contained habitats. Settlements might provide incentives to
encourage one-child-only families or childlessness altogether. Fewer chil-
dren per family typically means greater investment in each child. Off-world
residents will likely develop a strong sense of self-worth and ‘‘can do’’ atti-
tudes that could mark their outlook as un-Earthly to the greater part of their
terrestrial cousins.
Peer Groups
Peer groups typically develop among students from primary grade years
onward. Among adults, peer groups can form from among coworker groups
and among those who have face-to-face interaction in residential communi-
ties and voluntary associations. A challenge for off-world dwellers is that if
one falls out of favor with one’s peer group or if one comes to dislike one’s
peer group, it would be harder to ‘‘change the faces’’ in the usual ways than it
is on Earth. Peer association is hard to vary without a multitude of others to
choose from. Conflict resolution, mediation, and negotiation may become
essential and ordinary skills in space, a skill set that could lend to the
other-worldliness of off-world inhabitants compared to Earth’s residents.
Professional and Voluntary Societies and Networks

The value of professional societies and networks cannot be overstated. These
social forms validate expertise and improve professional standards. For the
individual, they expand the basic credentials garnered through academe.
For example, Dudley-Flores’ Ph.D. almost solely allows her to work as a soci-
ologist in academe. However, her professional society memberships have
helped give her eminence in human factors engineering, which enhances
her ability to move among certain nonacademic labor communities. In the
high-technology and multidisciplinary and multitrade milieu of off-world
societies, engagement in professional societies will be highly prized, just as

the community service voluntary associations were in the 19th century—
prized so much that they were touted on the tombstones of the deceased.32
As for those, we may expect to see a variety of voluntary associations prolif-
erating in off-world environments.
Religious Groups
People have more freedom of choice in advanced industrial societies. How-
ever, many religions still coincide with one’s ethnic and national heritages. In
off-world environments, among multidisciplinary individuals, there will be a
strong tendency toward independence of thought, and people will likely
embrace what religion, if any, they please. That being said, off-world popula-
tions will be small and pressures could arise toward a particular religion were
it to attain the level of missionary fervor. Messianic movements might sweep
an entire off-world location, and Earth might receive off-world ‘‘higher
power’’ along with its imported energy from such a society. A local Peter
on 3753 Cruithne, a near-Earth asteroid, might broadcast his message of
cosmic spirituality from his rock and stir the faithful in the MSS.
Communities of Homes
One’s fellow residents in one’s community of homes are those who are close
neighbors or are living in similar circumstances (i.e., same building, same
urban neighborhood, same suburban housing development). Increasingly
uncommon on Earth are those homes set off by themselves among acres of
vacant land. People living in very close proximity to each other will be the case
in off-world settlements. The small, contained nature of such habitations poses
great challenges, and the psychosocial implications are staggering. We wrote
in 2003: ‘‘ . . . people in such a highly autonomous situation at such a distance,
more reliant upon each other than any humans have ever been, may find that
they are not strangers to each other in this strange land, but strangers within.’’33
Further, Gangale wrote in 2005:
The science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein wrote: ‘‘The Moon is a harsh
mistress.’’ All of the new worlds will be harsh. We will live close to the
edge of extinction out there, and learning to survive on those other
worlds will bring us closer to immortality. We will learn to depend on
each other for our very lives as never before—Africans, Americans,
Asians, Australians, Europeans, all of us. The New Frontier will be punc-
tuated by tiny habitat modules. . . . We will live in enclosed spaces, in
each other’s faces. All the pretentious barriers that we erect here on Earth
will melt away in space. We will come to know each other—and our-
selves—as we have never done before. We will push the outside of the
envelope of what it means to be human. Living together so closely, so
intimately, so inescapably, will tear down social and psychological walls

we need not and dare not consider here on our comfortable, capacious,
suburbanized, subdivided Earth. There will be new challenges to human
dignity, privacy, individuality, intimacy, and polity.34
Ethnic=Racial Groups
Another way people socially organize themselves is according to race and
ethnicity. These are the sort of distinctions that the man in the street takes
as being immutable. This is not so. Ethnicity is a relatively new term.35 Some-
times ethnicity meshes with state citizenship, sometimes not. The individuals
of an ethnic group do not even have to share the same genetic similarities to
share the same cultural heritage. One’s ethnicity is learned.
Race is more of a social construction than it is a biological one. There
has been a long history of scientific effort to categorize people into races that
have run the gamut from the idea that there are many races to the idea that
there are just a few. Increasingly, single racial (and ethnic) identities are
becoming uncommon as individuals become more diverse through inter-
marriage. Many Americans are apt to be some admixture, like Celt, French,
German, American Indian, and African. This trend will be seen among the
populations living over the long term on the Moon, among the near-Earth
asteroids, on Mars and its moons, and on space stations and spaceships. In
time, the genetic markers and cultures blending in these off-world locales
may give rise to ethnic appearances to their populations that will make them
stand apart from even the diversity seen among Earth dwellers.
Nation-States
The nation-state system has been facing increasing challenges here on Earth,
as we have discussed elsewhere.36 The emergence of a multi-planet econ-
omy and MSS will extinguish it. Some form of governance will prevail for
humans in space, but it will not be the nation-state system. The current body
of international law makes it doubtful that the nation-state system can ever
gain a toehold off-world. Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty prohibits
‘‘national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,’’ so it seems that there can
be no national sovereignty over territorial claims, although pursuant to Arti-
cle 8, nation-states retain jurisdiction and control over their spacecraft and
facilities and their personnel. These are not the only considerations that
could shape governance in space. Sovereignty will be localized out there
in space, and the shape that sovereignty will takes will be influenced by
the social organization of space settlements.37
The World System of Societies

The current WSS is more or less connected through the global capitalist econ-
omy, and societies assort according to their ranking in that economy. Due to
the severity of global problems—some relatively new, like the more extreme
and impending effects of climate change, and some simply persistent, like
war and poverty—it is becoming evident that something like a world feder-
ation could help solve these problems. As world federalists view it, such a
federation is not a planetary government but something more like an orga-
nizing principle built upon the existing United Nations that allows for mod-
ifications to effectively address global issues.38 The WSS, as it currently exists,
is the largest social organization that humans possess. However, once the
world hypergrid comes on-line, and then must be provisioned by SBES to
meet the WSS’s power demands, the road will be paved for a higher order
of human social organization—the MSS.
Newbies and Longtimers

Regardless of the social form, from the family to the MSS, there will be a dis-
parity between those who have been part of the group for a long time and
those who are new to it. The ‘‘newbie’’ in a family can be a newborn, an
adopted child, or a new spouse with his or her train of relatives. A newbie
in the world system of societies could be a group of people occupying terri-
tory that has managed to gain independence from another political unit and
has been recognized as a new nation-state. In speculating about political,
social, economic, and technological events stepping to sustainable Mars
settlement over time, the authors and Adam Aaron Wapniak thought
that the third wave of mission newbies to the red planet would bring
an influx of new ideas and, in turn, be a captive market of buyers for the
Martian longtimers’ goods and services as they establish themselves
on-planet.39 We will elaborate on the three potential generations of Mars
missions below.
The Dynamics of the Multi-Planet Economy

Once the worldwide hypergrid is connected to SBES, the human economic
landscape will expand. One of Kenneth E. Boulding’s more famous quotes
was, ‘‘Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite
world is either a madman or an economist.’’40 The connection to SBES makes
the world a little less finite and makes less onerous the economist’s dilemma
of working inside a closed envelope of resources and markets. The ecology
of capital will have gained a further horizon.
Increasingly, Earth may find itself disadvantaged in the relationships
with its shallow gravity well energy producers. Off-world societies will not
want to buy goods at high prices lofted at great expense from the mother pla-
net, and they need not if they have the surplus to meet a high standard of
living and if they invest that surplus into developing goods that substitute
for those previously imported from Earth. Off-world societies will buy from
and sell to each other. In addition to energy, Earth may increasingly come
to rely on other resources from its off-world colonies. Hard cash, or its
equivalent, will flow outward from Earth to its off-world colonies. To the
multitrillion-dollar economy of Earth, that flow will seem like a trickle. To
those who will have settled off-world, that cash movement from Earth will
seem a deluge as many of them become rich.
At every opportunity, those from deep gravity well Earth will seek to
lower the costs to move their goods to shallow well markets. Manufacturers
and merchants Earthside will want off-world settlers as customers. There will
be some avenues by which they can satisfy that desire. They may cater to
off-world settlers who have gotten tired of the status quo in goods and ser-
vices available from among shallow well societies. Wealthy off-world buyers
will be a market for exotic, immanently portable goods that are easier to
launch out of Earth’s deep gravity well than bulkier products.
Earth manufacturers, warehousers, and other industry elites will try to
get in on the shallow well advantage. They will woo off-world societies in
order to establish manufacturing nodes there. There are many advantages
for manufacturing materiel in low-gravity environments, the subject of much
space commerce discussions.41 The search for off-world opportunity by
Earth businesses will be a temptation to those members of shallow well
societies who have off-world connections and prospects but little else to earn
additional wealth locally. Expect to see business and other alliances between
Earth industries’ elites and shallow well elites.
Terrestrial investors will be involved in space from the very beginning,
using the profits they choose not to repatriate but rather to reinvest in other
sectors of the off-world economy (amassing diversified investment port-
folios). To keep what benefits shallow well environments offer on the
multi-planet market, off-world societies must keep all of their members
invested in guarding their advantages. However, they also must know when
to let up on the reins. Enterprising Earth elites, unhappy with shallow well
deals, may pool their resources and establish additional shallow world facili-
ties on asteroids or construct more space stations—in effect, starting a new
round of off-world expansion that prior Earth elites launched in the first
place when they connected the hypergrid to SBES.
Environment
Shallow gravity well locations for space-based energy and other industries are
near-Earth space stations, the Moon, and near-Earth asteroids. Mars is too far
from Earth to provide microwave-transmitted solar energy, and any Helium-3
there would be scattered by the wind. Mars could, however, become a
low-gravity manufacturing site. Its moons, Deimos and Phobos, may have
Helium-3, which could fuel fusion reactors on Mars. The spaceships that
would ply the routes between Earth’s orbit and shallow well locations can also
house movable manufacturing nodes for certain industries besides the trans-
port of cargo and passengers. Edwin Aldrin wrote about a similar concept in
terms of Earth–Mars cycler orbits that could be useful for mobile manufactur-
ing platforms, which would make goods while in transit to markets.42
Near-Earth Space Stations

Near-Earth space stations could eventually provide solar-to-microwave energy
to the terrestrial hypergrid. This type of SBES production is the most compelling
reason to establish industrial-sized space stations in Earth’s orbit. Other indus-
tries that await a large enough infrastructure in microgravity will be attracted to
lease excess capacity or to fund their own modules. One such industry is phar-
maceuticals, specifically ‘‘miracle drugs,’’ the molecular structures of which
form differently in microgravity than at the bottom of a gravity well and there-
fore may be more efficient in healing human maladies. The same principle
applies to industrial and luxury crystals and metals. These remain latent indus-
tries today because launch costs have been too high to put them in production.
The energy neediness of the terrestrial hypergrid will not be the only motivator
for industrial-grade space stations. Making near-Earth asteroids pay off will
likely be part of the picture, which we will discuss more below.
Large industrial-grade space stations pose a unique set of problems.
Extrapolating from the space station architectural record to date, stations will
continue to be constructed from modular units and, on the face of it, will
have few limits to expansion. One limitation would be the lack of architec-
tural savvy that could build in design flaws militating against expansion.
The type of orbit might impose a limit to expansion. For example, there is
still some atmosphere present in lower Earth orbits, and this introduces drag.
Another issue is that joints among modular units are not exactly rigid. The
vibration from docking vehicles and boost motors is a challenge, running

throughout space stations. Therefore, space station architects and engineers
must counterdesign against sympathetic frequencies. The great cautionary
tale is the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in 1940.43 As
space stations get larger, architects and engineers will need to look at the
dynamic behavior of those structures.
More important than any psychological or situational awareness factor
for workers aboard near-Earth space stations is the effects of microgravity
on physical health. If the station cannot be spun to simulate gravity in some
of its parts, among health effects related to long-term exposure to micrograv-
ity are bone loss and muscular and cardiovascular deconditioning. It is the
consideration for the human inhabitants of space stations that calls for a qual-
ity of life in their surroundings so that they may effectively perform work
aloft.
The proximity to the Earth will ensure that populations aboard such sta-
tions will be the least independent of all shallow well societies. Those who
rarely, if ever, leave the stations will be uncommon. Those living and work-
ing aboard will resemble the transient workers on big construction projects
or military contractors who rotate home after fulfilling their tours of duty
but who may return under renegotiated or new contracts. The most power
near-Earth space station workers could hope to assert as a group would be
collective bargaining where common decency and public opinion would
demand that these workers have quality of life and work on their duty sta-
tions and that they are remunerated with good salaries and benefits. On
the other hand, their specialized skill sets might be such to command all
of these things in their contracts by virtue of market forces. Yet, they would
not be irreplaceable. Their proximity to Earth (with its large population of
trainable workers) guarantees that space station workers dare not be too
pushy as a means of winning concessions. The workers on near-Earth space
stations will be the easiest to control and have the least autonomy regarding
their means of production than any other off-world workers. If this truly will
be the case, may we expect to see the reverse relationship? Could it be that
the more distance between an off-world location and Earth, the more control
over the SBES located there that its workers have over it? In mulling this over,
the Moon poses an interesting situation, as we will discuss in the next sec-
tion. At first blush, we might expect the proximity of the Moon to Earth to
militate against lunar workers gaining a controlling hand over Moon-based
energy systems, but the type of energy system and related issues could make
a difference in the matters of autonomy and control.
The Moon
SBES workers on the Moon will likely have a great deal of autonomy and
control in relation to their means of production. If there are large deposits
of Helium-3 on the Moon and if it is worth mining,44 it will not be such as

easy an enterprise as converting solar energy into microwaves. The com-
plexity of Helium-3 mining may make those who mine it even less replace-
able than those who tend solar-to-microwave space stations. Hypergrid elites
may find themselves being ‘‘held up’’ by lunar Helium-3 miners if those
workers are not happy, despite the fact that space industries in the time
frames under discussion herein will be powerful transnational enterprises.
History shows that workers in transnational industries have little autonomy.45
A major factor driving our notion that Helium-3 mine workers will attain
a level of autonomy that Earth orbital space station energy workers will not is
this: high-impulse rocketry. If fusion energy were to find portable application
in spaceships, just as fission energy powers nuclear submarines and aircraft
carriers, then Helium-3 miners on the Moon may rather quickly develop sup-
portive alliances among the elites of an array of industries dependent upon
high-impulse rocketry—including elites within the spaceship operations
community. These industries’ elites would likely be powerful friends in the
event that Helium-3 miners met any resistance from their hypergrid bosses.
Because of what they mine, Helium-3 miners might wind up being more like
partners with industries’ elites, including their own bosses.
An additional reason why lunar Helium-3 workers will likely be rela-
tively autonomous and in control of their means of production has to do with
where they live and work. The Moon will be more livable than industrial-
grade space stations. Lunar geography allows for habitat and facility design
advantages, as may be the case with large asteroids and Mars. Where there
are craters, there are possibilities of integrating the contours of the terrain
into habitat design.46 That livability may imbue the lunar Helium-3 worker
with a sense of empowerment that orbital SBES workers may lack. What
we are talking about can be illustrated with the contrast between military
contract workers and oilfield workers. No military contract worker expects
to live in his or her hooch forever. But, quite often, transient oilfield workers
will settle in the villages and towns near their worksites. They permanently
relocate their families and everything they own to those places. The Moon
has far more permanent residential potential than an industrial-grade space
station. It may seem counterintuitive, but many people will be willing to
behave in riskier ways (like being defiant to authority) when they invest their
lives and their families in a place. If this were not true, there would have
been no American Revolution. We expect Helium-3 miners on the Moon
to risk much to gain and maintain more autonomy over their means of
production, if for no other reason than that the Moon is their home.
The cratered nature of the Moon, the likely success of crater-based
architecture, the proximity of the Earth with its population of many eager
jobseekers, its shallow gravity well, combined with the independence and
spin-off effects of Helium-3 mining, could make the Moon a human ecologi-
cal success story. Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the Moon is an
apt rehearsal site for more distant shallow well locations like Mars. Yet, due
to recent events, humankind is fated to gain more experience in living and
working in extraterrestrial environments on another stage.
If the Moon were to be settled first, asteroid mining settlements would
enjoy the combined technologies of space station and lunar habitation and
production. However, due to recent technological realities and political deci-
sions, the United States has abandoned the Constellation lunar landing pro-
gram. Exploration of near-Earth asteroids has become one of the primary
rationales for continuing development of the Orion Crew Exploration
Vehicle. In the lapse of everything that made it possible for Americans to
walk on the Moon so many years ago—the national interest, a body of
people with the can-do and the know-how, the funding, etc.—the shallower
gravity wells of the asteroids are more accessible for us decades hence. So,
now, it seems likely that asteroid mining will precede lunar mining. If aster-
oid exploration comes first, lunar settlements could develop as a conse-
quence of those missions. Counterintuitively, lunar settlement may be
jump-started due to a present-day focus off the Moon.
Near-Earth Asteroids
We envision at least two stages of humanity’s encounter with the asteroids
that more or less segue one into the other. The first stage will be a period
of excitement, which will comprise a few human encounters with near-Earth
asteroids. We will gain a good deal of experience landing safely on asteroids
of differing masses, and a lot of good science and engineering will be done.
But, the complications of making asteroids pay off soon will lead to the ques-
tion being asked: ‘‘Are we really getting anywhere with this?’’ Suppose that
we rendezvous with an incredibly strategic mineral-rich asteroid with, essen-
tially, the technology we have at present. At a billion or more dollars per
launch, it would not be worth chipping away at this rock a little at a time.
Near-Earth asteroid missions will begin to resemble one ‘‘flags and foot-
prints’’ mission after another on similar landscapes that bring back to Earth
small payloads of samples but that do not materialize commercial profits
grand enough to drive industries. Should the promise of great profits out-
weigh the disappointment of this scenario, stakeholders in near-Earth aster-
oid production will come to realize that they require an infrastructure to
make these spaceborne mines worth anything.
This realization will crystallize as stakeholders and naysayers struggle
with the issues of ‘‘mining the sky.’’ Costs might come down if a big rich rock
could be tractored into a safe Earth orbit and mined there. But, there will be
those who will fear a hanging mountain overhead in their celestial backyard
no matter how safe it may be. The expense of the enterprise would be
reduced as well if low-cost cargo ships could be launched and returned to
Earth or even if a space elevator could be established to transport large
volumes down to industries. Then, however, stakeholders would have to

grapple with those who do not want a space elevator connecting to any spot
on the Earth.
Out of conflict may arise opportunity. Near-Earth asteroid stakeholders
could anchor the space elevator to the Moon. They could tractor their
mother-lode asteroid in a safe orbit around the Moon and there do what must
be done to make near-Earth asteroids pay off. The lunar space elevator could
transport loads down to the surface for processing (requiring a facility,
machines, and workers there). That same elevator could be used to transport
asteroid, as well as lunar, products up to cargo ships delivering to the Earth.
Those ships in lunar orbit could then transport large loads of materiel to
Earth industries (manufacturing facilities that may, by this time, be conve-
niently located in low Earth orbit).

Making the asteroids pay off would enhance ‘‘Highway to the Moon’’
infrastructure, which could make the Moon a productive human ecology.
With this infrastructure in place, the mature, second stage of humanity’s
engagement with the asteroids will materialize.
Asteroid settlements will be established by an intermix of workers who
have previously lived and worked on space stations and on the Moon—or
who were even on the ground floor in the earlier days of asteroid pro-
duction. Larger asteroids, the size of mountains in space, might form the basis
of long-term facilities in space. Mined-out asteroids could serve as fuel and
supply caches that could be tractored to appropriate points along shipping
lanes. This hollowed-out off-world real estate might be usable as exotic
tourist locations.
Mining consortia, like the Rio Tinto Group, will be involved in asteroid
mining from the outset, but there are a lot of asteroids to go around. As the
costs decline for them to get themselves and their equipment into space, we
expect to see the near-Earth asteroids also in the province of wildcatters and
entrepreneurs.
Mars, Deimos, and Phobos

Mars has an atmosphere, and many of the terrestrial processes of Earth can
be seen at work on that planet: wind, dust storms, and weathering. It is a
polar desert like the Arctic and Antarctic on Earth. Best-case scenarios have
put the terraforming of Mars in a time frame of 50–200 years following
human permanence there.47 However, barring advances in technology, such
terraforming of Mars so that humans can tread its open surface without
pressure suits and breathing apparatus are overly optimistic. Mars will be a
challenge to terraform.
The processes to thicken the Martian atmosphere are understood. A sur-
face gravity of 0.38 holds what atmosphere Mars has today. No molten core
means the lack of a magnetic field. Mars has no ionosphere to deflect the
solar wind that ablates its atmosphere. The planet is simply not suited to
hanging onto anything denser to support human life. However, if we can
thicken the atmosphere to several hundred millibars, who cares if it will
ablate over the next few million years? We can crack oxygen from the oxides
in the regolith, and we have certainly become experts in producing green-
house gases. A technical problem will be the generation of nitrogen required
for an atmosphere suitable for a complete ecosystem of plants, animals,
fungi, bacteria, etc. Without the technologies to protect them, humans on
Mars will experience many other challenges, such as ultraviolet radiation,
galactic cosmic radiation, and solar proton events that can destroy living
tissue.
Despite its differences from Earth, Mars does have soils that are usable
for crops under appropriate atmospheric containment. It has water sources in

the form of permafrost that can be mined and piped to human habitations. It
has a day (called a sol) that is very similar in length to an Earth day. It has
wind and weather. How to power human settlements on Mars is still an open
question. Solar power may not be commercially viable (about half the power
density of insolation incident on Earth). Any Helium-3 has been well mixed
with the regolith by the wind. There are no oceans, so no ocean tides. There
are no petroleum deposits, no geothermal sources, and no hydroelectric
potential until we can make it rain in the mountains. The atmosphere would
need to be significantly thickened for wind power to be commercially viable.
That leaves us with nuclear power, but we have no idea yet whether Mars
has any uranium to fuel fission plants. The most likely source to power the
human enterprise on Mars will be Helium-3 or other sources needed to oper-
ate fusion power plants. If Deimos and Phobos, the Martian moons, do not
offer such sources, then settlements on Mars will have to depend on regular
shipments from elsewhere in the inner solar system.
There will likely be three generations of missions to Mars. When
humans do finally go to Mars, Earth’s whole suite of economic sectors will
arrive on the planet with its human crews. The technological means of pro-
duction in the form of equipment and material do not have to arrive in their
entirety with the human crews. Unmanned shipments could be sent ahead
and in follow-on supply vessels. However, the sophistication of first-sector
and second-sector Martian economies will depend on necessary supply lines
between Mars and other sites within the MSS. Those links are weak links, due
to distance and costs of missions, which could be quite expensive until space
shipping fleets can operate at low costs and are competitive. Human groups
on Mars will attempt to get indigenous first- and second-sector economies up
and running at the soonest for their own use, like extracting raw material to
make bricks, for example. The Mars enterprise will not be easy. Exploration
could get stalled because of a weight of latent challenges to humans on Mars.
A latent challenge could be something like nanobacterial life hostile to
humans, to the plants and animals that they bring with them, and that even
break down the materials they use to build their infrastructures. Or, such a
challenge might be a psychosocial phenomenon that might arise in distant,
contained environments. By the time humans mount a first wave of missions
to Mars, most physical, biological, and psychosocial phenomena as relate to
that planet will be known. However, we cannot be entirely certain until we
get there.
Barring impediments to its progress, a second generation of Mars mis-
sions will occur. By this time, humans on Mars will have likely mastered
indigenous manufacturing of many necessities with materials extracted
from the planet and by using manufacturing equipment and materials sent
from elsewhere in the MSS. This second wave of missions to Mars is a
transition phase for human groups on the planet whose infrastructures
offer the possibility of ongoing settlement. At this time, human groups on

Mars will be from among first and second generations of missions. We will
likely see the first glimmers of a unique Martian culture from among these
groups.
Those among the third-generation missions to Mars will likely find a
mostly self-sustainable settlement in place (or more than one). Third- and
fourth-sector economies (services and intellectual production, respectively)
develop from the first and second generations of missions. The influxes of
people from the third generation of missions will arrive to find established
humans on Mars ready to sell or rent them a host of goods and services to
help them make a go of it there. The new arrivals will be much like those
who followed others later to Earth’s frontiers, after those frontiers had some
infrastructure established.
Between in situ experimentation and an influx of new ideas, a
number of different infrastructures and building styles will manifest in the
habitations that people construct for themselves on Mars. The third-
generation arrivals will likely find the settlements on that planet an amalgam
of kibbutzim and high-technology frontier towns with shops, restaurants,
and hotels. Unique local ecologies of capital and technological means of
production will likely generate a signature surplus that makes its contribution
to the MSS.
Mars’s distance from the planetary cradle of Earth will put its stamp on
humans living there: on their social organizations, their technology, and how
they view themselves in the human ecology of the solar system. There will be
no other humans quite like those on Mars until people find a rationale to
establish outposts on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We will have Mars
to thank for being the gateway to the outer solar system. The disparity of
scale between vast spaces and small places cannot help but leave its impri-
matur on perceptions and cognition of those living so far away from Earth.
How we deal with being human on an alien world will be a paradigm shift
as ideologically shattering as realizing that humans are not the center of the
cosmos.
Between the Planets, Moons, Asteroids, and Stations—The

Spaceships
It is beyond the scope of this article to forecast the detailed evolution of
spaceship technology. We presume that high-impulse propulsion systems
will develop and that the operation of spaceships will be cost-effective for
all concerned.
The temptation is to think that these spaceships that will knit the MSS
together will be just like space stations that move around. To some degree
that will be true. However, ocean-going ships of all types have taught us that
crews develop a bond with their vessels and with each other. This affinity
likely will not be the case for near-Earth space stations where workers come
and go. Containment for life support and the long voyages between the
Earth–Moon area and the asteroids and Mars will ensure that spaceship life
will bear a striking similarity to that of submarine crews.
The spaceships will likely be assembled in lunar orbital shipyards. The
Moon is rich in light metals such as aluminum. It follows that the smelting
and machining of aluminum may be among the more important lunar surface
industries, in which case the manufacturing of spacecraft structural compo-
nents will be as well.
An obvious ploy by Earth industrial elites to even up any economic dis-
parity between Earth and off-world societies will be to attempt a takeover of
the spaceship companies. However, this might be hard to achieve. A choke-
hold on shipping might mean hostile inroads to Helium-3 production and
profitable spin-off activities. Spaceship operators would likely be able to
count on their friendly relations with Helium-3 miners on the Moon and else-
where to pose obstacles in order to resist such a takeover of their fleets. In
addition, due to their indispensability, operators of spaceship fleets will pos-
sess a great deal of wealth, power, and prestige that would counteract any
intrusion on their industry. Changes in space shipping will likely come from
within, giving rise to competing shipping lines. This might occur in order to
avoid legal entanglements relating to monopolization and=or because a
follow-on generation of young shipping magnates will think that they can
do better than the gray heads of their industry. Competing shipping lines will
try to outclass each other with better service, faster vessels, and roomier com-
partments for cargo and passengers. They will offer modular facilities aboard
their ships to industries that produce more portable items, like computer
chips—combining resource pickup, production, and end-product delivery
functions.
In addition to their more pedestrian functions, the spaceships ensure
‘‘gene flow’’ among the MSS. We used to think that people on Mars might
eventually develop into another species of humanity. However, that is not
likely with an influx of genetic material from incoming passengers from
everywhere to anywhere in the MSS.
Technology
The long-duration space enterprise requires a technology that subscribes to a
‘‘quality of life’’ versus a ‘‘man in a can’’ model.48 As we have written else-
where, if space tourism would mature to where a low Earth orbit (LEO) hotel
could open for business, the boundaries of quality of life in space would be
defined.49 The minimal man in a can model was meant for short-duration
spaceflight but remains the model seen on various spacecraft and space sta-
tions so far over longer durations. As a result, a lot of mission time is spent on
maintenance and housekeeping—so much so that these activities dig into
science mission time budgets. It is not clear, however, at this point whether
space tourism will ramp up to the level of a comfortable orbital hotel before
the energy problems of the Earth necessitate seeking out and operationaliz-
ing SBES. In the early stages of this endeavor, the quality in quality of life
may be low.
For the off-world society providing energy resources to a power-hungry
Earth, the quality of its technology, its availability, and the confines of
environmental containment of that society will determine the size of the
population that can be supported and the sophistication of its social organi-
zation. History sheds light on the future. Advanced industrial technology has
allowed for the level of current globalization that has shaped the world order
of Earth’s WSS. This same principle will be at work in the MSS.
WESTPHALIA’S END
Over time, microsocieties in space will become larger societies. Worker

settlements turned into societies on Mars and elsewhere will produce a sig-
nature surplus. That surplus will make a multi-planet economy sustainable
to such a degree that its life will lead to the death of the Westphalian
nation-state system.
In our time, the nation-state system has been weakened by the rise and
flourishing of multinational corporations, transnational supply chains, inter-
national capital flow and trade, and the proliferation of global communica-
tions that give rise to broadly shared culture and values. Furthermore, the
primary raison d’être for the sovereign state—defending its population
against foreign military threats—has been undermined by the end of the Cold
War and the expansion of the pacific community of democratic states. Also,
the 20th century’s expansion of government to provide social services has
been reversed under the economic stresses of globalization. In the early
21st century, there are fewer and smaller tasks for the sovereign state to per-
form, while more and greater tasks are being arrogated by international and
transnational organizations. Accomplishing large-scale projects, like mitigat-
ing the effects of global warming and doing substantial endeavors in space,
requires transnational ties that guarantee multiyear revenue streams of

investment. Like the goals of multinational corporations, these transnational
ventures will take precedence over national interests.
With the Westphalian nation-state system already on the ropes, the for-
mation of societies in space will not lend to it nor revive it. Current space
treaties on outer space forbid national sovereignty claims on celestial bodies.
However, it is not simply because of the prohibition in the Outer Space
Treaty against ‘‘national appropriation by claim of sovereignty’’ that
nation-states will not form in outer space; this prohibition alone would be
insufficient to prevent it were there a sociopolitical need to establish such
states. To explore whether there will arise such a need, one must consider
the historical models of nation-state formation.
Five Models of Nation-State Formation

The first model, the coalescence of European nation-states, was a steady pro-
cess throughout the medieval period. As examples, England coalesced in the
10th century, France in the 13th, and Spain in the 15th. However, the
nation-state system is usually considered to have taken off with the Thirty
Years’ War, at the end of which German princes acquired sovereignty and
the Holy Roman Emperor lost control. Because the Empire could no longer
protect them and could no longer exercise a moderating influence over the
ambitions of princes, the patchwork of German geopolitical entities found
themselves in an anarchic system, a world much more threatening to their
security. In such a self-help environment, the more resources that a state
could access, in terms of territory, population, and wealth, the more secure
from external threats it was likely to be. Over the next two centuries, imperial
free cities and minor territorial states aggregated into successively larger
states, until finally Germany unified under the House of Hohenzollern in
the 1870s. German unification is but one example of the consequences of
the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Swiss independence was recognized, the
‘‘Low Countries’’ eventually threw off foreign rule and became nation-states,
and eventually Italy unified as well. Earlier established nations, such as
England, France, and Spain, lost their feudal character because political
power became increasingly centralized so that they could more effectively
respond to foreign threats.
A second model, wars of colonial liberation, had its first example in 1775
with the beginning of the American Revolution. Despite the emergence of
the nation-state system a century earlier, it was not clear at the outset that
the American conflict would lead to the establishment of a new nation-state.
Indeed, during the first year of the rebellion, its stated aim was to restore to
the 13 colonies the limited sovereignty they had enjoyed prior to the British
Parliament’s imposition of various taxes on them following the French
and Indian War. The American colonies refused to recognize the British
Parliament’s right to tax them, because the colonies had no seat in

Parliament. In American eyes, the proposition was simple: give us represen-
tation or do not tax us. In essence, the first year of the war was over a vision
of the British Empire as a federation, in which the colonial legislatures and
Parliament would be equal under the king’s rule. Britain was not ready to
accept such a vision, and the American colonies declared their indepen-
dence. As absolute monarchies, Spain and Portugal were even less disposed
to transfer limited sovereignty to their American colonies, which followed the
example of British America to independence early in the 19th century. These
new sovereignties organized themselves as nation-states because this had
become the organizing principle of the world system.
A third model of nation-state formation is the 20th-century process of
decolonization. Although there were examples of violent civil struggle pre-

ceding independence, particularly in British India, violence typically did
not rise to the level of war between organized military forces. A distinctive
aspect of the nation-states that emerged from this process is that their borders
were based on the administrative divisions previously established by the col-
onial power, borders that in many cases divided distinct ethnic groups
among two or more sovereign states. Today’s divided Kurdistan and divided
Pashtunistan are living examples of relict boundaries.
A fourth model of nation-state formation is the collapse of a multi-
national state. Examples of this include the breakup of the Austrian and
Ottoman Empires at the end of the First World War and the fracturing of
the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold
War. Finally, a fifth model of nation-state formation is the unification of a
people previously divided by foreign intervention during the Cold War com-
petition between two political–economic ideologies. Examples that illustrate
this model are the unification of Vietnam in 1975 and of Germany in 1990
and the possible unification of Korea in the future.
Applying the Five Models to Outer Space

How do these five models apply to the emergence of sovereignty in outer
space? The fourth model clearly does not apply because outer space will
not consist of ethnic territorial enclaves contiguous to the territory of and
under the rule of a different ethnic group based on Earth. Equally doubtful
is the applicability of the fifth model, because it is unlikely that the inter-
vention of foreign powers would force the division of a distinct people into
two political entities. The first model also does not apply, because outer
space colonies will not be embedded in an anarchic, threatening world sys-
tem of nation-states, against which there will be the need to coalesce in the
interest of security. Most off-world settlements will be isolated from such a
system by the vast gulf of space, although near-Earth stations and lunar set-
tlements, being closer to that anarchic system, would be most apt to feel its
influences. Whether off-world settlements would acquire the means to estab-

lish a high degree of sovereignty, and whether they would prefer it to living
under the sovereignty of the nation-states that established them, is problem-
atic. If humans in space were mostly groups of transient workers—as we
expect will be the case aboard near-Earth space stations—then it is doubtful
that a distinct group identity would evolve to the level of a national identity.
The stations would be to Earth as continental shelf drilling platforms are to
the mainland.
The evolution of a distinct national character on the Moon is an open
question. The demographics of the Moon might be analogous to that of
Alaska during the construction of the oil pipeline to the North Slope, where
jobs went to many permanent Alaska residents but also attracted many tran-
sient workers. The distances between Earth and celestial bodies other than
the Moon suggest a parallel between Europe and other continents and the
future possibility of struggles of independence, either on the violent
revolutionary model of the 18th and 19th centuries or the more peaceful
evolutionary model of the 20th century. However, whereas European
nation-states established sovereignty over territories elsewhere on Earth,
celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claims of
sovereignty. This principle of international law protects outer space settle-
ments from the depredations of terrestrial nation-states. Furthermore, surely
it would be more expensive for a nation-state to seize control of a deep
space facility through the use of force than to simply establish a facility of
its own.
With respect to territory, there would be no national sovereignty to
wrest from the grasp of terrestrial states. International law does provide for
the exercise of national sovereignty in facilities that are subject to a state’s jur-
isdiction. For instance, there was never any doubt that the Salyuts and Mir
space stations were subject to Soviet=Russian jurisdiction or that Skylab
was subject to American jurisdiction. Likewise, were a terrestrial nation-
state to establish a Mars base, the base would be subject to national juris-
diction. In the case of a multinational project, national jurisdiction would
need to be sorted out between the participating states, as in the case of
the ISS. In the case of a transnational corporation or corporate consortium,
the national territory of launch sites would be a factor in determining national
jurisdiction. The ‘‘freedom from interference’’ principle in international law
reasonably may be construed as permitting the establishment of zones of
exclusive use of very limited extent around such bases, in effect, functional
national sovereignty over a small area during the time that the facility is in
use.
This sort of circumscribed sovereignty is unlikely to be a path to devel-
oping distinct national identities in deep space, whether on Mars or on aster-
oids. In such cases, national sovereignty merely means that bases and
facilities are subject to the municipal law of the applicable nation-state;
one might well be a foreign national with the right to work within the
nation-state’s jurisdiction and not necessarily a citizen of the nation-state
having jurisdiction over the facility. The multinational nature of facilities,
whether governmental or corporate, is likely to be the rule, rather than the
exception, and one can envision personnel transferring between off-world
locations in pursuit of economic opportunities. Such mobility in deep space
could inhibit, and probably prevent, the coalescence of distinct national
identities. More likely to evolve is a system of shared sovereignty, with local
sovereignty being exercised as needed and permitted by the municipal law
of nation-states having jurisdiction and sovereignty throughout deep space
being mediated according to international law.
That being said, it is possible that an off-world facility might come to
regard as intolerable the regime imposed on it by its terrestrial nation-state

sovereign and declare its independence. However, such an independent
political entity would far more resemble a city-state than a nation-state.
The international system is one of mutual recognition; a state is what the
other states in general recognize it to be. Any claim that a deep space sover-
eignty might make to extensive territory would not be recognized by other
sovereignties elsewhere in the solar system, whether terrestrial or not,
because they would have a vested interest in preserving the stability of the
existing system of international law.
With the eventual emergence of many off-world city-states independent
of terrestrial nation-state jurisdiction, the Westphalian model of nation-state
coalescence would not appear to be applicable. First of all, there will be
no discriminator for clumping into one group versus another, because nearly
all city-states will be of multinational origin; there will not be a Hesse or a
Baden who would prefer union with a fellow German-speaking regime to
absorption by France. Secondly, such deep space city-states will probably
not exist in an anarchic system in which security from external military
threats is a perpetual concern. Rather, these states will emerge in an environ-
ment of mutual help, not self-help, in a tradition of peace and security, not
war and insecurity. Thus, there will be neither the basis nor the need to
coalesce into more extensive and more powerful sovereignties contending
with each other. The organizing principle for a larger political entity, should
there be a need, is likely to be one of universal confederation.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the global problems of an Earth becoming
more extreme will continue to forge the nails of the Westphalian coffin.
And, in time, Earth’s relations with its off-world colonies will drive those
nails deeply into that coffin and then will bury it. A whole Earth will
participate in a dynamical system with multiple economic centers off the
Earth. The transnational way of doing business on both sides, together
with the emergence of a new political paradigm in outer space, will
make the nation-state a quaint concept. We will return to this issue later in
this article.
DIASPORIC NETWORK AS A SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND A

TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
Thus far, we have been forecasting the outlines of the future political econ-
omy of the inner solar system through a thought experiment guided by con-
sideration of the interplay among the POET structural factors. Such a cascade
of events as we have described would be a big step in societal evolution, and
we indicated that space logistics was key to that big step.
Our informed speculations may seem more like social science fiction as
typified by Ursula K. Le Guin, the daughter of pioneering anthropologist
Alfred L. Kroeber. However, we are not interested in telling an entertaining
story. Rather, we have been attempting to discern the forming shapes of a
multi-planet economy and an MSS. Our methodology, thus far, has taken
its lead from structuralist and human ecological approaches in the social
sciences. Such methods are not uncommon to serious and practical research
of the future, such as corporate forecasting. Yet, in academe, these methods
are typically confined to past and present phenomena, barring some efforts
at certain universities to study the future. Our exercise herein poses a strong
argument that other sectors of societies would be advantaged by mapping
out the shape of things to come. We believe that a wide array of social struc-
tural methods can be plumbed to provide insights about the human prospect.
Imaging Social Structures

The different ways that social structures can be apprehended depend upon
the ways that aggregates of people and societies can be envisioned. The pic-
torial process of scientific theorizing cannot be underestimated. Once one
can put a problem into images (a sketch of an inclined plane being an
example from early physics), it becomes easier to consider the image in
quantitative ways. This is eminently achievable with social structures. Struc-
tural sociological tradition demonstrates an evolution in the ways in which
social structures have been envisioned. The more ways in which sociologists
can envision social structure, the more social structures and details about
them emerge. Over time, social structuralists have viewed human social
and societal phenomena in terms of hierarchies, then in terms of degrees
of association between different human groups, and finally in terms of net-
works. The POET structural factors we used above were part of an envision-
ing process, examining what situations could emerge in how populations,
social organizations, environments, and technologies interacted. It is beyond
the scope of this article to discuss all of the ways in which social structures
have been imaged. Suffice to say that each new image of social structure
allows for increasingly more complex mathematics to be applied, and data
about social phenomena can be more quantitatively explored, described,
explained, and predicted.
Though the word structure implies a static edifice, social structures can
endure with changes, be completely transformed, or dissipate. One of the
more interesting things about donning the lenses of a social structuralist is
to see how human social structures have unfolded over time. Even more
interesting is trying to see what those structures would look like based on
differing circumstances. In the next section, we look at another social struc-
ture image we can use to forecast the political economy of humans living and
working permanently in space.
Diaspora as Social Structural Image

An important image that can guide us, particularly since we have been writ-
ing about the human diaspora into the solar system, are terrestrial diasporas.
What is a diaspora, but a social network that emerges over time. The
quintessential diaspora, the one with the capital D, refers to 597 Before the
Common Era (BCE) when there was an early significant dispersal of Hebrews
in response to King Nebuchadnezzar’s putting down a rebellion in the
Levant.50 There are, in fact, several important diasporas observable in the
world, to include those closer to our own time. One is the Chinese diaspora
and another is the Indian diaspora. That these are two advanced industrializ-
ing societies on the upswing causes us to wonder whether there is a strong
positive correlation between degree of diaspora across several variables and
economic success of originating societies that were the original central nodes
of the diaspora. Finding the answer to that question is for another time, but it
is a compelling question that makes the image of the diaspora a tantalizing
driver to our structural and human ecological considerations herein.
Diaspora as a Transnational Entity

A diaspora of persons bound by common goals and other variables proceeds
from a central location to establish, typically, several nodes across the human
ecology. Back-and-forth transactions occur among the central parent location
and the one or more nodes of the diasporic network; that is, financial transac-
tions, genetic exchange, and mutual assistance. Those with common goals
and other variables cross national boundaries; they may assimilate into other
cultures without completely giving up their own cultural traditions. The dia-
sporic network is not just any garden variety social structure, it is a transna-
tional social form. Transnational social forms are powerful. Peter F.
Drucker51 characterized the transnational organization by the following
criteria: in its own sphere, transcending the nation-state by setting the
common interest of the world community ahead of national sentiments
and interests; establishing a sovereignty of its own, recognized by
nation-states, and directly controlling citizens and organizations within the
nation-state; and addressing challenges that cannot be tackled within the bor-
ders of a national state.
We have argued in proposals, presentations, and papers since 1999, and
more formally in 2004,52 that long-duration human spaceflight has to be a
transnational effort, because the diaspora of humans living and working in
space cannot be enacted by the annual budgetary cycles of the United States
Congress. Multiple revenue streams must underwrite and sustain the human
diaspora into space. This transnational approach will put its stamp on the
transnational network that the human diaspora into space will be.
Technology Fuels Diasporic Networks

The level of globalization we see in the world today accommodates and

enhances diasporas. The current level of globalization is driven by fast trans-
portation and instantaneous communication. This level of globalization
enables more people to participate in diasporas. It allows them to rapidly
spread into many more nodal locations that meet their common goals. This,
in turn, creates a density in the social space of the diaspora, establishes an
array of nodes and nodal clusters, and creates opportunities for a host of
transactions. Figure 3 illustrates these phenomena at a glance.
FIGURE 3 A social network display. Source: http://www.fmsasg.com/SocialNetworkAnalysis

(accessed September 2012). (color figure available online.)
Putting this in concrete terms, let us use the Tongan diaspora as an

example. Polynesian diasporas are compelling analogs for the projected human
diaspora into space and they have been used before. Ben R. Finney and Eric M.
Jones, and their contributing authors, made reference to the analog several
times in their book Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience.53
ISLANDS IN THE HUMAN ECOLOGY: TONGAN

LOGISTICS AND SPACE LOGISTICS
The Tongan diaspora is compelling as an analog for the human diaspora into
the solar system. The Chinese and Indian diasporas might also be good anal-
ogies, but we think that the Tongan diaspora is more appropriate to our topic
because of the smaller numbers of persons involved and because of some
other features that have emerged due to the relationships between diasporic
Tongans and home islanders.
The smaller population of diasporic Tongans seems a reasonable pro-
portional fit with the number of humans who will be able and willing to go
to work and live off the Earth. From the limitations of current human space-
flight, we can extrapolate incremental increases in off-world humans based
on improvements in technology from that baseline. Similarly, Tongans on dia-
spora have increased in small increments as the technology of heightened glo-
balization has improved and as the volume of relatives has increased in nodes
in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
By the time the authors came to the Kingdom of Tonga, we were aware of
the many numbers of Tongan communities in various cities around the world.
However, we did not fully grasp the details and ramifications of the Tongan
diaspora until we were living and working on the scene in the day-to-day.
The Kingdom of Tonga is comprised of four island groups numbering over
171 islands, 45 inhabited, comprising a total land area of 720 km2. Perhaps
because it was settled by explorers (ocean-going Polynesians), Tongans have
been unafraid to make their own later diasporic forays, setting up Tongan com-
munities in places like Sydney, Auckland, London, and Salt Lake City. At a glo-
bal estimate of a quarter of a million Tongans, with about 121,000 in the home
islands, we can deduce that there are somewhat more Tongans living outside of
the Kingdom than in it. Although Tonga is the only South Pacific country that
was never colonized by a foreign power, European interests, particularly
British, have colonized Tongan culture and other sectors of Tongan society.
The Tongan diaspora constitutes a form of reverse colonization.
If Tongans managed to miss being terribly exploited by higher techno-
logical powers during the age of colonialism, they did embrace Christianity,
which combined with their cultural traditions. This cultural hybridization has
ensured that everyone’s time is appropriated through church bells, choir prac-
tice, and elaborate weddings and funeral observances. Yet, this assimilation
of Christianity, which imposes so many demands on them, allows Tongans

the resources to reverse-colonize places like Salt Lake City. The Church of
Latter Day Saints is a fast-growing denomination among Tongans. Many
Tongans embrace Mormon Christianity as a means of upward mobility—to
get scholarships to Brigham Young University, for example.
The communal nature and obligations of Tongans maintain the global
Tongan network. A key financial transaction over this network is the flow
of remittances from overseas families to their home island kinspersons.
Remittances are an important adjunct to the Kingdom’s gross domestic pro-
duct that is dependent upon crops grown on the Tongan home islands.
The logistical technology that drives these transactions over the Tongan dia-
spora is electronic bank transfers, postal and express courier services, and
Western Union. A recent estimate by a reliable source working within the

Tongan Ministry of Finance said that as much as 41% of the Tongan gross
domestic product depended upon remittances.
Tongans in the home islands, in turn, pay the price for the external
remittances and the ability to visit family members in off-Tonga locations.
The demands of external Tongans who visit the homeland, and who
often live for some extended period back in the home islands, who carry
Australian, New Zealand, American, British, and other passports, have
brought expectations of advanced industrial infrastructure that they think
should be available in home island communities. Once those infrastructures
are in place, homeland Tongans become accustomed to them and expect to
see those infrastructures up and running in the everyday. Some examples are
electrical power, cell phone service, and indoor plumbing. Tonga still finds
itself in need of inexpensive and reliable Internet access. On some days,
the infrastructure of Internet providers on Tonga slows to unusable speeds
or goes down completely. This is a serious deterrent to Tonga’s tourism
and other budding industries.
The Tongan diaspora is not the only Tongan social structure of interest
to us. Tongans form a highly communal society, even in their off-island
communities. The extended family, the network of neighbors and cowor-
kers, and the allegiance to important secondary groups, like one’s church
congregation, ensure that one has little personal time. There are few lonely
Tongans. The private relationship between husband and wife is spoken of as
having to ‘‘steal time’’ for themselves. However, Tongan communality means
that one has little risk of being without the necessities of life and a good
chance of enjoying some of its luxuries. It is said that no one in this develop-
ing nation goes hungry; homelessness is virtually nonexistent. If the Tongan
diaspora presages for us the human off-world diaspora, Tongan communality
provides insight into how people would be expected to live in small,
enclosed off-world habitats, right in each other’s faces.
If ‘‘no man is an island,’’ no island is an island. Though the Internet ser-
vice is not good in the Kingdom and the metrics of the Internet is a primary
indicator of how globalized a nation-state is, Tonga is not all that cut off from
the globalized world system of societies. Diasporic networks seen in Tonga
likely account for features of globalization that are abundant in the market-
place. Diasporic Chinese and Indians living and running businesses in the
Tongan islands bring in an array of products from China and India. However,
Tongans have wider tastes. They have a number of institutionalized flea mar-
kets where American, New Zealand, Australian, and British brand-name
foodstuffs, cleaning supplies, and appliances are sought out for purchase.
The larger grocery stores carry foodstuffs from mostly New Zealand and
Australia, but other foodstuffs packaged, bottled, and canned in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore,
and Fiji are also common. It is not unusual to see that one’s can of Coca-Cola
was produced in Indonesia or Vietnam.

The institution of remittances from diasporic Tongans to home islan-
ders, driven by Tongan communality, point up the likelihood that similar
institutions will emerge between diasporic off-world humans and their
families and friends on the Earth.
TIME AND THE HUMAN DIASPORA OFF THE EARTH
In our structural codes analysis above, we implied time in the sequencing of

events, but we did not specify in detail an evolutionary time frame for the
events that will result in the multi-planet economy and the MSS. One way
to discern this time frame is to make inferences about the diasporic spread
of humans into the inner solar system.
As with the progress of the Tongan diaspora, we foresee that the num-
ber of humans who will be willing to live and work off-world will be small at
first, as will the opportunities to do so. However, when the rewards become
great enough to induce individuals to labor off-world, and when their associ-
ates on Earth recognize that it is worth the risk to go off-world, the number of
off-world humans engaging in SBES pursuits and its support infrastructures
will increase. If the Tongan analog is appropriate to the human diaspora
off the Earth, more people will be able to count on their fellows already
off-world to help them get started and assist them in establishing themselves
there. With the diasporic network image in mind, we are still reliant upon the
sequence of events to estimate the timing of the human permanence in
space. We discuss this sequence as follows.
First Encounters: Near-Earth Asteroids

As we said before, there will be at least two stages of humanity’s encounter
with the asteroids. The first stage already has been set in motion as a result of
abandoning the effort to return to the Moon. Instead, technology is being
developed for possible missions to near-Earth asteroids. We expect it to be

realized fairly early on in those missions that making them pay off requires
an infrastructure around the Earth and on the Moon that is not yet there.
However, this first phase of missions to near-Earth asteroids could demon-
strate the enormous value of the strategic minerals that could be found in
those boulders and mountains in space. Pressures for profit and hunger for
resources could drive the construction of the infrastructure necessary to mine
asteroids. In the meantime, as these events play out, the growing strain on
the terrestrial hypergrid will not have been abated. Industrial-grade space sta-
tions, meant for tapping SBES, will be built in Earth’s orbit. They will become
beachheads for other industrial activities in space as well. Instead of being
competing space programs, fighting over miniscule funding allotted them
from one national government, the need for energy and other resources will
stimulate transnational goals and funding streams that enable multiple space
projects.
Near-Earth asteroids may come to play a role in the SBES that lends to
the MSS, the multi-planet economy, and its fleets of spaceships. In this first
phase of human encounters with near-Earth asteroids, we will likely find
out whether there are substantial Helium-3 deposits on them and what it will
take to exploit them.
Near-Earth Space Stations: 2050 to 2070

The enhancement of space station technology is central to the human
prospect for many reasons. These reasons include the following:
. Space stations are platforms to deploy SBES. An example of this is

the solar-to-microwave infrastructure as proposed by the Space Island
Group54 and technically described by McSpadden and Mankins.55
. Space stations are platforms for microgravity industries, such as improved
pharmaceuticals and materials.
. Space stations are test beds for obtaining quality-of-life technological
systems for human groups living and working in space for increasingly
longer durations.
Practically nothing can be done in space beyond the current level of

effort without the last of these rationales being addressed. Right now, there
is a test bed on orbit—the ISS—but it is relatively primitive compared to what
is needed to start whole new industries, and political decisions pose a threat
to its continued existence. However, if collaborative transnational space net-
works were to springboard off of the ISS and current launching technologies
to develop space projects at a steady-state rate, a station accommodating a
large force of SBES workers could be brought on-line within a few decades.
We must cut the cost of unit mass to Earth’s orbit by at least an order of
magnitude, and probably two orders of magnitude. One of the major reasons
why solar power satellites in the late 1970s did not come to fruition is that
they were predicated on the Space Shuttle reducing launch costs by 90%.
Pressures toward space logistical progress will likely be in response to a
demand for a highly advanced industrial standard across most societies in
the WSS,56 the growth in global population and that population’s demand
for energy and resources, and consensual agreements between governments
and industries to bring a dedicated space power station and its attendant
infrastructure on-line. Making near-Earth asteroids pay off will likely factor
into this process. All of the pieces have to be in place before a ‘‘G. Harry
Stine’’ industrial revolution can begin.57 It may be reasonable to expect
one or more industrial-grade space stations on orbit from 2050 to 2070.
In this time frame and following, successes in constructing and operat-

ing power stations on orbit and engaging in other industrial activities in space
will assist the development of an infrastructure between the Earth and the
Moon. The problems of building quality-of-life stations will have mostly been
solved. Advanced experiences with large space stations may see manned sta-
tions in the space between the Earth and the Moon and beyond the Moon at
the Earth–Moon Lagrangian point EML-2, likely crewed by the type of tour-
of-duty workforces as on the Earth orbital stations. And so emerges the
Highway to the Moon.
The Moon: 2070 to 2095

A major reason to set up a Highway to the Moon—and to settle it—would be
if Helium-3 becomes a resource of value in fusion power plants and in rocket
propulsion. Other reasons include the role the Moon may play in the com-
mercialization of near-Earth asteroids and providing materiel to construct
fleets of spaceships. The experience with construction and operation of
on-orbit power stations and related infrastructure will mean that Earth-to-
Moon facilities can be completed in a comparatively short time with guaran-
teed revenue streams, perhaps within two decades of the completion of the
Earth orbital SBES and other industrial facilities.
The human diaspora will gather steam with people on the lunar surface.
Within a few years of completion of the Highway to the Moon, it is likely that
one or more well-established bases and family quarters will be in operation
there. We forecast a time frame for this activity from 2070 to 2095.
Near-Earth Asteroids: 2090 Onward

The first phase of asteroid exploration segues into its second phase, a surge
of commercial production, around 2090. Making the asteroids pay off will
likely motivate the cascade of events that construct the Highway to the Moon.
These logistical activities feed back into the construction of industrial-grade
space stations between the Earth and the Moon and ensure the permanency
of lunar production and settlement.
Spaceships and the Opening of the 22nd Century

In this article we have not detailed the evolution of spaceship technology,
but certain things are clear. Current spaceship technology could likely build
an industrial-grade space station in Earth’s orbit, engage in lunar orbital man-
euvers, and explore near-Earth asteroids. However, it is too primitive and too
costly to do much more. The effort to commercialize space and the rise of
fusion technology could converge to make high-impulse rocketry a reality.
Entire industries may develop to provide systems of consumables to not only
keep spaceship crews alive but comfortable for long periods. These indus-
tries would find ready customers, too, in the less mobile off-world habitats.
A fairly mature spaceship technology will likely be available to accom-
modate the needs of a wider human ecology in the last few decades of the
21st century. Competing fleets of large spaceships could be in full swing
by the opening years of the 22nd century. This scenario is essential to
second- and third-generation missions to Mars.
Mars and Its Moons: 2090 to 2130

Our best-case time frame for humans on Mars is 2090 to 2130. This will be an
unpleasant shock to those who have been comfortable for the past 50 years
with the idea that the human exploration of Mars is only 15 to 25 years in the
future. By this time frame, our combined experiences in space, advances in
high-impulse rocketry, and the availability of low-cost shipping will set the
stage for permanent settlements on Mars.
A good reason to go to Mars is to ‘‘get our eggs out of one basket,’’ to
have a backup site for the continuation of our species if a catastrophe were
to occur that threatened human life on Earth. It is an obvious rationale to
long-range thinkers. Nevertheless, at present, there is no near-term and over-
whelming reason to go to Mars except for purposes of scientific explorations.
Sending unmanned systems is cheaper than sending humans, and a variety of
probes and robotic rovers seem to be meeting the needs of science. Despite
those explorations, we have not found any obvious energy source on Mars
that could power human settlement there and that could provision any other
site in the MSS. Perhaps Deimos and Phobos could provide Helium-3, but
that is yet to be determined. Because of its terrestrial likeness, if energy
sources could be found on or near Mars, settlers could realistically live off
the land to meet local demands and resource needs.
The maturity of settlement on Mars will likely occur beyond 2090, taking
time to unfold over several decades and at least over three waves of missions
to Mars. This migration will see the establishment of multiple sectors of the
Martian economy that we discussed above. By 2130, there may be a number

of compelling reasons why an increasing population of humans will want to
go live and work on a settled Mars.
A CASCADE OF EVENTS IN SPACE
Table 1 summarizes our estimates for the event cascade should user strain on
a terrestrial hypergrid require on-orbit SBES.
The timing of these sequences necessary to the human diaspora
off-world is still a best informed guess. Several things could occur that could
throw the start date for the sequencing off. As we cautioned from the outset,
advanced industrialization of the whole Earth may cause global population to
drop below replacement. In addition, terrestrial energy sources may be ade-

quate for the hypergrid to support a falling rate of global users. Furthermore,
SBES might never need to be developed. There may be further step-backs
from space than we have already seen. If the ISS is not used as a springboard
for larger quality-of-life, industrial-grade space stations, political decisions
might be made to de-orbit it and to stop any more expenditure on it without
any improved space station for replacement. Current U.S. policy supports ISS
to 2020. A huge technological gap may emerge as time passes and those who
worked on station design, systems, and operation themselves pass into his-
tory. We suspect that such a technological gap was evident between Apollo
and the recently canceled Project Constellation lunar program. In the
four-decade interval between them, America forgot how to get to the Moon.
In light of such events, low-cost launch systems with the ability to move bil-
lions of pounds of passengers and freight off-planet might not be developed
for centuries.
TABLE 1 Cascade of Events in the Human Diaspora Off-World and Their Time Frames.
Event Time frame
Experience is gained through the preparation for and Present day to 2060
enactment of missions to near-Earth asteroids
An SBES infrastructure is built in Earth’s orbit and goes 2050 to 2070
on-line; collateral events encourage space station
development to accommodate other industries
The Highway to the Moon is completed and humans are 2070 to 2095
living and working in well-established lunar bases
Transition to high-impulse space transportation and Last few decades of the
shipping 21st century
Maturity of commercial asteroid development 2090 onward
Maturity of space transportation and shipping industry In place by the early years
of the 22nd century
Three generations of Mars missions leading to ongoing 2090–2130
settlement
If that were to be the case, the space endeavor would not come to an
end. Unmanned missions would predominate, continuing in a large way in
the military space sector and in the civil space sector to a lesser degree. How-
ever, a human diaspora into space, like the vigorous Tongan diaspora away
from the home islands, will not occur without an overarching reason. If that
reason were to emerge, a new world order would be inevitable if humans
indeed settled off the Earth. We shall discuss this inevitability below.
SHIFTS IN THE BALANCE OF POWER IN SPACE
When we address space logistics in this article, we are mainly talking about
civil space logistics. However, there is another type of space logistics that the
general public does not know much about, and when it does bother to think
about it, it compresses and confuses it with the civil space enterprise. In the
United States, there are two major space programs, with the least visible, but
larger one, being the military space program.
America in Space: Militarized Space Logistics versus Civil Space

Logistics
When Gangale was an Air Force aerospace engineer and cleared into the Sec-
retary of the Air Force’s Office of Special Projects space systems in the early
1980s, he was welcomed to ‘‘the real Space Program.’’ In Sorrows of Empire,
social scientist Chalmers Johnson made the claim that the United States
desires to block other nations from space, can control the world through
dominating space, and ‘‘intends to ensure that domination.’’58 Johnson made
a compelling argument that American military space technology can seize the
high ground in the sense that American military commanders can better tar-
get actors hostile to the interests of the United States. In U.S. Department of
Defense circles, this is called the space-sanctuary argument. Bruce M.
DeBlois has discussed the different sides of this argument.59 Just because
there is a real Space Program and a high degree of weaponization of space
is within the grasp of the American military, those things do not lead to a fait
accompli. DeBlois reminded us that decisions about weaponization in space
are a balance between military costs and broader social, political, and econ-
omic costs: ‘‘The decision to weaponize space does not lie within the military
(seeking short-term military advantage in support of national security) but at
the higher level of national policy (seeking long-term national security, econ-
omic well-being, and worldwide legitimacy of U.S. constitutional values).’’60
However, unless American military space technology returns to an
agenda of dedicated launch systems and space stations, unmanned military
space technology will not enable anyone to get to the high ground to install
on-orbit SBES or to make a diaspora to the Moon and beyond. The rationale
for a military manned presence in space was weak from the start of the Space
Age and declined further over time. Early American military manned pro-
grams, such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar (America’s first manned space project,
preceding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s [NASA] Pro-
ject Mercury) and Manned Orbiting Laboratory, were canceled. The Soviets
conceived the Almaz military space station in response to Manned Orbiting
Laboratory and pressed on with the project after its American counterpart
was canceled. Although much of the Almaz program remains shrouded in
secrecy, it is known that it was discontinued after only two short-term space
stations were operated successfully, with the program’s remaining hardware
redirected for use as modules on the civil space station Mir and an unmanned
space weapons experiment platform.
Even though military space projects are unmanned systems, they com-
mand a great deal of funding in the United States. The annual budget of
the civil space endeavor in the United States is considerably smaller by com-
parison. However, a hopeful note rings for civil unmanned and human
efforts in space.
Prospect of the Civil Space Endeavor

As mentioned earlier, outer space production has been responsible for the
newer chapters of globalization. And, in turn, globalization has pivoted to
transform outer space production. Dudley-Flores has termed this transform-
ation the ‘‘globalization of space.’’61 The globalization of space has led to
transnational transactions concerning civil space endeavors that are supplant-
ing the Space Race model of civil space endeavor.
The Space Race was a competitive instrument of the United States and
the Soviet Union to guarantee the survival and dominance of one or the other
in the world order following World War II. Today, outer space production—
particularly civil production—is necessary for a different kind of survival con-
cerning many more stakeholders. People the world over face climate change
and its effects, the paucity of resources to run an increasing number of
advanced industrial societies, and many other large-scale challenges. The
transnational approach in the face of such global need is felicitous. That is
because enduring space projects that ‘‘step to’’ doing useful things for the
WSS require sustained, ‘‘time certain’’ multiyear funding streams that no
one nation-state or corporation can ensure. The budget that the U.S. Con-
gress parcels out to NASA every year will not ‘‘save the world’’ or benefit
the course of human evolution in and of itself.
Space-based systems are essential to monitoring and mitigating the
effects of climate change and other pervasive problems of the global
collective that can be seen from space. It is not just about the overview from
above but in the many ways that satellites ‘‘see’’ beyond the abilities of
the human eye. The discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica led to its
monitoring and mitigation. The progress of the recent South Asian tsunami
was tracked by a satellite. Later, it turned out that a collaboration of existing
Global Positioning System satellites could detect tsunamis within about a
15-minute lead time.62 These and other examples argue that space-based
systems are useful in countering natural and anthropogenic threats to the
globe.
Space technologies are instrumental to developing the green technolo-
gies to run an Earth on the decline side of petroleum. Living and working in
the most extreme of environments can inform sustainable and renewable
technologies for an Earth becoming more extreme due to several converging
phenomena. Space technology can inform green technology in ways that
Earthbound attempts cannot. The solar power systems that keep space sta-
tion systems running is a prime example. At present, most green technologies

are green wash. Green wash are the attempts that companies make to assure
the public that they are being environmentally responsive. Some companies
are even founded on green wash. The Zap electric car is a stunning exemp-
lar—overpromised and underdelivered. Gangale referred to it in 2008 to his
member of congress as ‘‘Who Shilled the Electric Car?’’ There is nothing
singularly transformative about such huckstered technologies, certainly not
in the way that the plow transformed agriculture, in the way that the com-
puter created the Information Age, and in the surge of technological progress
that the Apollo program gave the world.
Until the American Apollo program won the Space Race to the Moon, it
could depend upon a guaranteed, time certain level of funding. With the goal
achieved, the certainty in NASA funding went away. Following, the Space
Shuttle fleet and its companion space station were de-coupled as twin pro-
jects and became down-moded at the mercy of funding whims. People from
the Earth never again went to the Moon. In recent times, the Space Shuttle
fleet was stood down, just as soon as the ISS was completed. G. Harry Stine’s
vision of a higher-level industrial revolution based on the Space Shuttle and a
space station63 never had a chance. The Space Shuttle itself was a 40-year-old
design, and what remains as human space transportation to the ISS—the
Russian Soyuz—is a 50-year-old design. It is as though the biplanes of the
First World War were still the state-of-the-art in the late 1960s. The transna-
tional approach holds great promise for changing this picture.
Space-capable societies that use the transnational approach are chan-
ging the core and periphery of the space enterprise, as we have previously
argued.64 In terms of the civil space endeavor, the partnerships and projects
of an interdependent European Space Agency and the space programs of
China, Russia, and India are filling the bill concerning sustainable space
monitoring, mitigation, and the ‘‘greening’’ of innovation. The willingness
of supranational Europe to partner on space projects is creating a European
core in the civil space sector. In the meantime, the United States suffers a
flailing lack of focus concerning its civil space policy.65
On an Earth growing more environmentally extreme, geopolitical issues

are tracking increasingly more with environmental realities. Civil outer space
production is essential to the ‘‘corehood’’ of societies in the WSS. Moreover,
the United States is sliding further from the ‘‘core of the core’’ in that world
system due to declining civil outer space production and for other reasons.
However, the United States could dominate the world through its military
outer space production to ensure the United States’ survival. Such a strategy
only stalls the inevitable. The United States will be stuck hoarding those
things that it views as its global interests, providing miserly oversight and
actions through its military space assets. It is doubtful that those military
space assets will be able to contribute to the large-scale challenges facing
the whole Earth posed by nature. In the end, the United States may find itself
facing a more dependent role, a more peripheral role of limited benefit to

others, in an increasingly interdependent world system where core of the
core societies are those that can provide assistance to the others in the WSS.
Sustained civil space enterprises are necessarily collaborative and trans-
national ventures that are goal driven and that can rely on multiyear funding
through multiple revenue streams, which cross national boundaries over the
life of the project or program.66 The globalization of space sets the stage for
sustained space endeavors and the permanence of humans in off-world
locales using the transnational approach. If humans do colonize the inner
solar system, they could change the world order of the Earth.
THE FORMATION OF TRANSNATIONAL STATES
In examining various definitions of the nation-state, we find that it is more or

less a sociological ideal type. In other words, no nation-state has existed as a
perfect model. The nation-state is generally understood as the combination
of the nation and the state. The two are not the same. A nation is a group of
people who have a real or imagined common history, culture, language, or
ethnic origin. They have or seek to have their own government. A state is a
government that is internationally recognized. Countries where the social
concept of nation co-occurs with the political concept of state are called
nation-states. Very few nation-states fit the ideal type.
Nevertheless, nation-states seek to preserve their integrity and conti-
nuity. That is difficult today due to the degree of globalization that enables
transnational transactions with little regard to national boundaries and that
sees a great deal of power and resources in the hands of multinational
corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and the like. The Earth has
become a smaller place in the lives of its people. With the human diaspora
into the inner solar system, the Westphalian nation-state system may find
itself finished. If a global public and organizations that have obtained easy
access to the whole world already challenge nation-states, imagine the
challenge when that same public and those organizations obtain access to
the cosmos. As individuals and organizations embrace wider horizons, it
may well be that the collar of the Westphalian nation-state fits more loosely
upon them.
Does this mean that small aggregates of people who find themselves in
off-world locations will be able to establish sovereign off-world microna-
tions? Well, first of all, in consideration of this question, one is really talking
about a state, not a nation. A nation is a distinct people, which, like the
Chechens or the Kurds or the Pashtuns, may not have a sovereign state. A
state by definition exercises some aspects of sovereignty, even a state that
is embedded in a federal system. So, are we really talking about microstates,
small sovereign states with small populations or land areas? Some examples
are Nauru, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Vatican City, and, of

course, the Kingdom of Tonga.
Gangale, in The Development of Outer Space: Sovereignty and Property
Rights in International Space Law,67 came to the conclusion that sovereignty
in outer space would be shared between local governments and a solar sys-
tem–wide umbrella regime. By regime he meant merely a set of rules. He
characterized local off-world governments as resembling city-states, but since
publication of that book, he has said that he is just as comfortable with the
term microstate or ministate.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 cleared the way for such microstates to
develop. Article 2 states that ‘‘Outer space, including the moon and other cel-
estial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty,
by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’’ What does this hold
for our argument here? Above we explained that states exercise sovereignty,
not nations. The confusing terminology arises from the fact that sovereign
states are called nation-states, governments exercising sovereignty over
territories that more or less encompass a distinct people. In the scholarly
literature on international relations, the international system is called the
Westphalian nation-state system. However, a more accurate term is territorial
state, because a number of states contain more than one distinct people; for
example, the United Kingdom includes English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish.
Gangale’s interpretation of Article 2 is that ‘‘national appropriation’’ means
appropriation by a territorial state. This prohibition was meant to apply to
the territorial states of Earth, obviously, but it also might be construed to
prohibit the rise of sovereign territorial states based on celestial bodies.68
Even if this were not the case, the system of off-world local sovereignties
will be an unmilitarized, low-threat environment lacking any incentive for
microstates to coalesce into territorial states ‘‘to provide for the common
defense.’’ More than anything else, the off-world system of societies will
resemble the pre-Westphalian system of the Holy Roman Empire, in which
sovereignty is exercised primarily by the local government and an umbrella
regime of international law mediates relations among the local governments.
The relationship of the overarching sovereign to the local sovereignties is

consensual, not coercive, because the umbrella sovereignty rests on the
moral authority of universal norms; in essence, the universal sovereign is
the human race itself.
Where there are people there must be sovereignty in order to define and
to secure certain rights for them. As the United States’ Declaration of
Independence asserts: ‘‘That to secure these rights, Governments are insti-
tuted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov-
erned.’’ Thus, it seems to us that the basis of sovereignty in outer space
will be the people, not territory. However, there has never been a near-
universally recognized sovereign state that did not control some territory.
Even a microstate exercises sovereignty over some territory of its own, and
that sovereignty is exclusive in the Westphalian system. This suggests two

principles: first, that sovereign control of territory will derive from what ter-
ritory is under the use and occupation of the citizens of a microstate and,
second, that sovereignty may be shared between the microstate and an
umbrella regime, which would define in detail the requirements of ‘‘use
and occupation,’’ define the extent of exclusive zones, and so forth. In
1965 the U.S. Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, originated the term
primary rights to describe the rights guaranteed in international outer space
law. Katzenbach’s work, which preceded the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, was
elaborated on by Wayne N. White, Jr., in 1998 to describe limited ‘‘functional
sovereignty’’ concerning the rights and duties of a state under the Outer
Space Treaty.69 Such functional sovereignty describes a state that has control
over and responsibility for its citizens while they use and occupy a particular
location. The state has the right to exclusive use without interference for the
duration of that use and occupation. Such functional sovereignty is circum-
scribed both in space and in time. By extension, as long as the citizens of
a microstate use and occupy a location, the microstate may—indeed, has
the duty to—exercise sovereignty over that location.
The Moon Agreement of 1979 was meant to be a step toward the devel-
opment of a regime for outer space, a regime in the sense of a set of rules.
First, it added some specificity that is lacking in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,
which is a declaration of principles, and, secondly, the Moon Agreement
committed states’ parties to undertake to negotiate a later treaty to establish
a legal regime. Gangale believes that something like the Moon Agreement
(and subsequent iterations) is inevitable—call it Moon Agreement 1.1 fol-
lowed by the Moon Agreement 2.0 that Moon Agreement 1.0 originally
envisioned.
Once the territorial states of Earth negotiate and enact Moon Agree-
ments 1.1 and 2.0, providing the legal certainty necessary to attract invest-
ment, commerce, and development, permanent settlements would be
enabled, requiring the establishment of local sovereignty. Moon Agreement
3.0 could provide the specificity for such establishment, thereby transferring
functional sovereignty from the territorial states of Earth to sovereign local

governments.70 From there, Gangale has proposed a Solar System Treaty that
could redress what many perceive as ambiguities and outright mistakes in the
Moon Agreement, as well as a mandatory protocol to the Solar System Treaty
to define a regime of property rights.71 Prior to the transfer of functional sov-
ereignty from Earth’s territorial states to local sovereign governments
off-world, the space settlements would be under the direct jurisdiction of
the umbrella regime, as exercised perhaps through some international
organization, because it is very likely that settlements would be established
by transnational entities. An analog is the process of an unincorporated area
becoming an incorporated municipality. Such municipalities establish local
public safety services and ordinances. In Outer Space Territories and
Sovereignties: Politics Beyond Earth into the 22nd Century,72 Gangale pro-
poses reviving the United Nations trusteeship system, under which a number
of colonies in the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific Basin were mentored
toward eventual independence, rather than creating a new international
organization that would have similar responsibilities in outer space.
It will be realized at some point that the controlling regime established
by the territorial states of Earth via the international treaty process will
become inappropriate, in that the off-world settlements will have local sov-
ereignty but they will not be sovereignties in terms of the international sys-
tem. They will be subject to international law, but they will not be states’
parties to the international treaties pertaining to outer space. Thus, they will
have no standing to negotiate the further development of the solar system
regime itself. The realization will occur that Earth must stop calling the shots,
and the off-world local sovereignties must acquire control of the solar system
regime, transforming it from a system of locally self-governing trust territories
into a federation that is recognized as sovereign by the international system.
We are describing the simplest case we can think of, and we do not mean to
suggest that there could not be intermediate levels of sovereignty between
the ministates and the Solar Federation, such as planetary governments for
the Moon and for Mars.
We would appear to have come full circle in that the Solar Federation or
planetary government would be a territorial state that has effected ‘‘appropri-
ation by claim of sovereignty.’’ Gangale, however, argues on legal grounds
that such entities would be non-territorial states that have jurisdiction over
locations ‘‘by means of use or occupation.’’ Any unoccupied, unused territory
would remain the commons. Abandoned sites would revert to the commons.
A state’s appropriation of territory by means of use or occupation would not
constitute national appropriation in the sense of appropriation by a territorial
nation-state. Still, such an argument appears to tap dance around the issue.
Would the establishment of such a state violate Article 2 of the Outer Space
Treaty? In that case, a protocol to the treaty might be required to make the
establishment of a sovereign Solar Federation legal. On the other hand, as
a practical matter, sovereignty in the international system is whatever the sys-

tem says it is; sovereignties ‘‘recognize’’ each other, and therefore such
mechanisms as diplomatic recognition and admission as a member state of
the United Nations might suffice, superseding any perceived Outer Space
Treaty violation by establishing the fact of sovereignty. However, this is a
political argument. Gangale’s legal argument allows for the right of extrater-
restrial states to appropriation by means of use or occupation; in other
words, to functional sovereignty. States based on functional sovereignty do
not run afoul of the principles in the Outer Space Treaty.73
In this sense, the Solar Federation would not be a nation-state, as most
of the states in the international system are; rather, it would be a transnational
state, created by transnational entities via a transnational process through the
efforts of the peoples of many nations. Its establishment, and its recognition
by the international system, might signal the beginning of the transformation
of the Westphalian nation-state system into a new system.
BACK TO TONGA
The Tongan diaspora may also be a stepping-stone for the formation of trans-
national states on Earth. In other reports, we have addressed global warming,
its effects, and the necessity to view the Earth as a planet in space.74 We have
often wondered what would happen to those sovereign nation-states so thor-
oughly devastated by rising sea level that their citizens would have to be
ensconced in other countries. If sea level were to rise dramatically, due to
global warming, the Kingdom of Tonga would be one of those nation-states.
Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, another vulnerable archi-
pelagic nation, put it very bluntly: ‘‘We will not live, we will die. Our country
will not exist.’’75 What of those nation-states’ sovereignty? Would they
become nation-states in exile owing to natural and anthropogenic
circumstances?
The 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, Article
1, states: ‘‘The state as a person of international law should possess the fol-
lowing qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory;
(c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.’’
Notice the wording should, not shall. Thus, theoretically, a state might not
possess any territory at all or, more likely, just as embassies are considered
to be under the sovereignty of the represented government, a state’s defined
territory might need to be no more than office space leased by its govern-
ment. It is difficult to believe that the community of nations would be so
heartless as to de-recognize a state that had lost all of its habitable territory
due to climate change. The low-lying nation of Kiribati has already asked
the nation of Fiji to sell it fertile land on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu in order
to relocate there as sea level rises.76 We can scarcely see such state’s citizens
readily giving up all of the things that made them a nation-state, their prior
land area being just one of those things.
However that issue might play out, Tongans, by virtue of their diaspora,
have a seed infrastructure in many other places in order to receive their refu-
gee kinspersons. Refugee Tongans and their external brethren would prob-
ably demand some sort of sovereignty rights and similar accommodations
stronger than those currently possessed by some indigenous North American
tribes. In our view, the Tongan diaspora is an important phenomenon that
bears watching by international relations scholars.
The Tongan diaspora is also an important phenomenon that bears
watching by space logistics thinkers. How Tongans make various transac-
tions over their global network, among its various nodes, is one of our best
analogs for the human diaspora into the inner solar system.
CONCLUSIONS
We began our thought experiment with logistical concerns: the challenge of

user strain on a worldwide power grid that required SBES on orbit for relief.
A definition of logistics is ‘‘The procurement, distribution, maintenance, and
replacement of materiel and personnel.77 Our consideration of space logistics
led us to forecast the political economy of the inner solar system. Our meth-
ods depended on thinking about a set of interacting human ecological factors
that we combined with our consideration of a small, nonstatic diasporic net-
work. Such methods may position us to make further quantitative studies in
these matters.
We have argued before and herein that the urgency for settlements in
space will likely derive from a convergence of events: the epochal change
to the Earth that we currently refer to under such terms as climate change
that is made more severe in light of the decline in oil resources; at a time
when fuel consumption is rising; as all societies on the planet move toward
advanced industrialization; and as global population is increasing. Through
the convergence of these events, the energy needs of Earth will be great.
Yet, Mother Nature, the great leveler, could be the great lifter. She may be
nudging us to the brink of a transformation of capital, a new world order,
and an evolution of the human condition. On this brink, we have an opport-
unity for a revolution in human thought regarding human nature and human
rights; the relationship of individual, society, and state; and to question the
factors, the means, and the modes of production.
NOTES
1. Marilyn Dudley-Flores and Thomas Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space—The Astrosociological

Approach,’’ in AIAA Space 2007 Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM] (Reston, Va.: American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007).
2. Ibid., 6–7, 25–26.

3. Marilyn Dudley-Flores, ‘‘Global Warming, Earthly Disasters, the Moon and Mars: Transfers of
Knowledge (TOK)—The American Problem,’’ in 46th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting Papers on Disc
[CD-ROM] (Reston, Va.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2008).
4. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (New York: New Press, 2000), ch. 8.
5. The post-Holocene epoch that the Earth entered about two centuries ago, characterized by the
impact of human activity on planetary climate.
6. Dudley-Flores, ‘‘Global Warming,’’ (note 3), 8.
7. Ibid., 14.
8. Engineers concerned with engineering education seem to understand the postsecondary (tertiary)
education–innovation linkage better than those who study innovators from federal grants made available
at the urging of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. At the 2009 American
Sociological Association annual meeting in San Francisco, a team studying innovator superstars found that
they had stable and secure academic work and similar supports earlier on in their careers than a compara-
tive group of ‘‘ordinary’’ innovators. See P. Shapira et al., ‘‘Measurement and Analysis of Highly Creative
Research in the U.S. and Europe’’ (paper presented at the American Sociological Association annual meet-
ing, San Francisco, August 2009). When Dudley-Flores brought up the question of individuals’ native
talent versus fallen rates of tenure-track jobs in American academe, the room fell silent and the presider
moved on to the next question.
9. Dudley-Flores, ‘‘Global Warming’’ (note 3), 13.
10. Walter Derzco, Mining the Moon; Will China become the New Saudi Arabia of the 21st century?
http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2005/11/mining_the_moon.html(accessedSeptember
2010); Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 29–32; Dudley-Flores, ‘‘Global
Warming’’ (note 3), 6–8; E. B. Kiker, ‘‘Strategic Implications of Energy from Space,’’ in S. Bell and L. Morris,
eds., Living in Space: Cultural and Social Dynamics, Opportunities, and Challenges in Permanent Space
Habitats (Aerospace Technology Working Group, 2009); Space Island Group, ‘‘Clean Energy, Cheap
Hydrogen, and Weather Control From Space,’’ http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/home.html (accessed
September 2010).
11. Otis Dudley Duncan and Leo F. Schnore, ‘‘Cultural, Behavioral, and Ecological Perspectives in the
Study of Social Organization,’’ American Journal of Sociology 65:2 (1959): 132–146.
12. Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski use population, culture, material products, social organization,
and social institutions. See Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski, Human Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm
Publishers, 2006), 24. The late sociologist, Bruce Mayhew, worked on some promising interactive relation-
ships among population, energy, and information. The PISTOL approach of Kenneth D. Bailey is essentially
the POET model with two added factors: information (I) and level of living (L). Also, see Kenneth D. Bailey,
‘‘From POET to PISTOL: Reflections on the Ecological Complex,’’ Sociological Inquiry 60:4 (2007): 386–394.
13. Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (note 4).
14. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 37–39.
15. Immanuel Wallerstein, The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-first
Century (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 15–18.
16. Karl Marx, ‘‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’’ in Marx=Engels Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1969), 98.
17. Wallerstein, The End of the World (note 15), 8.
18. Ibid., 11.
19. Ibid., 15.
20. Ibid., 15.
21. Ibid., 16, 18.
22. Ibid., 16–17.
23. Thomas Gangale, The Development of Outer Space: Sovereignty and Property Rights in
International Space Law (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2009): 234.
24. We do not think the case has ever been observed where declining population, which is usually
very shallow, as a result of advanced industrialization offsets the per capita increase in energy demand
of advanced industrialization. However, if the Japanese population crash is steep enough, it may be the
first instance of this phenomenon.
25. K. S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil (New York: Hill and Wang. 2005).
26. Peter M. Blau, Inequality and Heterogeneity: A Primitive Theory of Social Structure (New York:
Free Press, 1977).
27. See Wikipedia, Carrying Capacity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity (accessed

September 2010).
28. The Drake equation is N ¼ R fp ne f‘ fi fc L. The fundamental problem is to assign a value to each
term in the equation. N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy in which communication might be
possible; R is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy; fp is the fraction of those stars that
have planets; ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets;
f‘ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point; fi is the fraction of the above
that actually go on to develop intelligent life; fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology
that releases detectable signs of their existence into space; and L is the length of time such civilizations
release detectable signals into space.
29. See Wikipedia, Carrying Capacity (note 27).
30. D. Pauly, ‘‘Sushinomics,’’ Foreign Policy, 171 (March=April 2009).
31. See Wikipedia, In Vitro Meat, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat (accessed September 2010.
32. T. Skocpol and M. P. Fiorina, eds., Civic Engagement in American Democracy (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 27–29.
33. Marilyn Dudley-Rowley and Thomas Gangale, ‘‘The Outward Course: Dystopias and Utopias in
Outer Space,’’ in A. B. Shostak, ed., Viable Utopian Ideas: Shaping a Better World (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.
Sharpe, 2003), 251.
34. Thomas Gangale, ‘‘Why Should We Send Humans to Mars?’’ in A. B. Shostak, ed., Moving Along:
Far Ahead, Vol. 4 in Tackling Tomorrow Today (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005), 127–128.
35. See Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘‘Ethnicity,’’ http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Ethnicity.html (accessed
September 2010).
36. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 1–47; Gangale, The Develop-
ment of Outer Space (note 23), 1–261.
37. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 43.
38. See Francisco Plancarte and Democratic World Federalists, ‘‘A World Federation of Nations,’’
http://www.dwfed.org/home.html (accessed September 2010).
39. Adam Aaron Wapniak et al., ‘‘An Astrosociological Approach to Defining Indigenous Martian
Architecture,’’ in AIAA Space 2007 Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM] (Reston, Va., 2007), 16.
40. Kenneth E. Boulding, ‘‘The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,’’ in H. Jarrett, ed.,
Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 3–15.
41. See Wikipedia, Space Manufacturing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_manufacturing
(accessed September 2010).
42. The Apollo astronaut Edwin Aldrin wrote about a similar concept in terms of Earth–Mars cycler
orbits that could be useful for mobile manufacturing platforms that would make goods while in transit
to markets. Aldrin voiced his concept during the Case for Mars II conference in 1984 where participants
worked on a Mars mission scenario. See Mark Wade, ‘‘Case for Mars II,’’ http://www.astronautix.com/
craft/casarsii.htm (accessed 14 September 2012).
43. See Wikipedia, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge
(accessed 19 September 2012).
44. Space visionaries focus on the Moon as an extraterrestrial source of Helium-3, but the same sun
shines on near-Earth asteroids; thus, presumably their surfaces contain that nuclide as well, and resource
extraction at and transportation from these locations ought to be less expensive because of their negligible
gravity. Moreover, Helium-3 is also available on Earth, although in more trace amounts.
45. Today’s automobile manufacturers are transnational enterprises and there have been no
automobile workers’ union strikes of late.
46. Alice Eichold, ‘‘Design for a Moon=Mars Crater Base,’’ in International Conference on
Environmental Systems Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM] (Warrendale, Penna.: SAE International, 2001).
47. Life. ‘‘Mars—Our Next Home?’’ [Special Issue] (May 1991).
48. Marilyn Dudley-Rowley and Sheryl Bishop, ‘‘Extended Mission Systems Integration Standards for
the Human–Environment and Human–Human Interfaces,’’ in World Space Congress Meeting Papers on
Disc [CD-ROM] (Reston, Va.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002).
49. Marilyn Dudley-Rowley et al., ‘‘Design Implications of Latent Challenges in the Long-Duration
Space Mission,’’ in AIAA Space 2003 Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM] (Reston, Va.: American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2003).
50. See Jewish Virtual Library, The Diaspora, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/
Diaspora.html (accessed September 2010).
51. Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper Business, 1993).
52. Marilyn Dudley-Rowley, ‘‘From the Earth to the Moon and Beyond: Transnationalizing Space,’’
First of Three OPS–Alaska Responses to the NASA Exploration Systems Enterprise Request for Information,
Focus Area: Program Management, Acquisition, and Interfaces, 2004.
53. Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones (Eds.), Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1986), 21, 97, 128, 160, 164, 166, 168–169, 171, 176–177, 179, 213.
54. See Space Island Group (note 10).
55. James O. McSpadden and John C. Mankins, ‘‘Space Solar Power Programs and Microwave
Wireless Power Transmission Technology,’’ IEEE Microwave Magazine 3:4 (December 2002): 46–57.
56. Which by no means will be uniform across those societies.
57. G. Harry Stine, The Third Industrial Revolution (New York: Ace, 1979).
58. Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2004), 80–81.
59. Bruce M. DeBlois, ‘‘Space Sanctuary—A Viable National Strategy,’’ Air Power Journal XII:4 (Winter
1998): 41–57.
60. Ibid., 41.
61. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 1–47.
62. Geoffrey Blewitt et al., ‘‘Rapid Determination of Earthquake Magnitude Using GPS for Tsunami
Warning Systems,’’ Geophysical Research Letters (2006), 33.
63. G. Harry Stine, The Third Industrial Revolution (note 57).
64. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 7, 25–26.
65. Christopher Hearsey et al., ‘‘Critiquing Rationales in Space Policy Proposals: Developing a Meth-
odology for Evaluating Space Policy,’’ in AIAA Space 2009 Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM] (Reston, Va.:
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2009).
66. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1), 6–7, 25–26.
67. Gangale, The Development of Outer Space (note 23).
68. Thomas Gangale, Outer Space Territories and Sovereignties: Politics Beyond the Earth into the
22nd Century (Santa Barbara, Calif., Praeger, forthcoming 2014).
69. Nicholas Katzenbach, ‘‘The Law in Outer Space,’’ in Lillian Levy, ed., Space: Its Impact on Man
and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1965); Wayne N. White, Jr., ‘‘Real Property Rights
in Outer Space’’ in Proceedings, 4th Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space (Reston, Va.: American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics), 370. See http==www.spacefuture.com/archive/real_property_rights_in_
outer_space.shtml (accessed 19 March 2005).
70. Gangale, The Development of Outer Space (note 23).
71. Thomas Gangale, Outer Space Empires and Entrepreneurs: International Space Law in the 21st
Century (Santa Barbara, Calif., Praeger, 2013).
72. Gangale, Outer Space Territories and Sovereignties (note 68).
73. In its preamble, the Outer Space Treaty invokes ‘‘the purposes and principles of the Charter of the
United Nations’’; thus, no provision of the Treaty may be construed in such a manner as to violate or super-
sede a purpose or principle of the Charter. Article 1 of the Charter declares the purposes of the United
Nations, one of which is ‘‘to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle
of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.’’ An interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty as prohibit-
ing outer space colonists from establishing a sovereign state under any circumstances would clearly violate
‘‘the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples’’; therefore, such an interpretation is mani-
festly erroneous. It must be admitted that some form of extraterrestrial state is allowed. There would be no
conflict between the Outer Space Treaty and the establishment of states in outer space if those states are
based on functional sovereignty, based primarily on the sovereignty of their people, and only indirectly
over their territories for such time as their people occupy and use them in their pursuit of happiness.
74. Dudley-Flores and Gangale, ‘‘The Globalization of Space’’ (note 1);. Jun Okushi and Marilyn
Dudley-Flores, ‘‘Space and Perceptions of Space in Spacecraft: An Astrosociological Perspective,’’ in
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2007 Meeting Papers on Disc [CD-ROM]
(Reston, Va.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007).
75. Mohamed Nasheed, ‘‘Underwater Cabinet Meeting’’ Girifushi Lagoon, Republic of Maldives, 17
October 2009.
76. See Nick Perry, Pacific Nation May Buy Fiji Land as Climate Refuge, http://phys.org/news/
2012-03-entire-pacific-nation-day-fiji.html (accessed 19 September 2012).
77. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. ‘‘logistics.’’
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Marilyn Dudley-Flores Thomas Gangale

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MARILYN DUDLEY-FLORES and THOMAS GANGALE

Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga

Social structural methods are applied to forecast the political

In the future, a more globally extensive advanced industrialized world

Address correspondence to Marilyn Dudley-Flores, 121 Cazneau Ave., Sausalito, CA

is based on increasing numbers of industrializing societies leapfrogging to

wells. The energy needs of a heavily populated Earth will be provisioned by

Among the technologies needed by a stressed terrestrial human ecology

EXTRAGLOBALIZATION AND SHALLOW GRAVITY WELL

SBES will require humans in space to transport the components of the

FIGURE 1 Comparative gravity well environments.

FIGURE 2 Interacting diagnostic factors of the POET model. Source: http://www.eou.edu/

moment, the combinations of events, processes, people, places, and technol-

to the interactive POET factors in more detail below.

ADVANTAGES OF SHALLOW GRAVITY WELLS AND

The colonization of space is not the colonization of prior centuries. In the

divide visible in today’s terrestrial ecology of capital could give way to

multi-planet economy matures, the division between deep well societies,

MULTILECTIC OF A NEW HUMAN ECOLOGY

Odd Fellows on Mars and Off-World Snobbery

different levels of analysis (i.e., nation, state, community, and organization)

Fuzzy Concepts of Carrying Capacity and Limits to Growth

shelter, then carrying capacity would run about 40 billion people.29 If we

Becoming Other-Cultural—At the Interface of Population

Professional and Voluntary Societies and Networks

societies, engagement in professional societies will be highly prized, just as

Further, Gangale wrote in 2005:

intimately, so inescapably, will tear down social and psychological walls

The World System of Societies

Newbies and Longtimers

The Dynamics of the Multi-Planet Economy

Near-Earth Space Stations

vibration from docking vehicles and boost motors is a challenge, running

of Helium-3 on the Moon and if it is worth mining,44 it will not be such as

volumes down to industries. Then, however, stakeholders would have to

niently located in low Earth orbit).

Mars, Deimos, and Phobos

for crops under appropriate atmospheric containment. It has water sources in

offer the possibility of ongoing settlement. At this time, human groups on

Between the Planets, Moons, Asteroids, and Stations—The

Over time, microsocieties in space will become larger societies. Worker

requires transnational ties that guarantee multiyear revenue streams of

Five Models of Nation-State Formation

Parliament’s right to tax them, because the colonies had no seat in

decolonization. Although there were examples of violent civil struggle pre-

Applying the Five Models to Outer Space