The Customer

SPACE SETTLEMENT DESIGN COMPETITION

THE CUSTOMER

The FOUNDATION SOCIETY is an organization founded for the specific purpose of establishing settlements of its members in space.

The Foundation Society first gained recognition for its successful lobbying efforts with the governments of space-faring nations to establish homesteading rights in space: a corporation or person can claim an orbital location, an asteroid smaller than 10 miles in diameter, or a plot of land up to 10 miles by 10 miles in size, so long as it does not interfere with other active claims. A claim remains valid so long as the claiming entity actively uses its claimed property. Claims not in active use for four Earth years revert to unclaimed status and are available for another entity to claim.

The Society began more direct pursuit of its goal in the early 2020s, when it led several space advocacy groups in fostering commercial infrastructure development in Earth orbit. The Society assured that new launch vehicles would have customers by providing venture capital for new products made in space. Lobbying in the U.S. Congress resulted in favorable tax and equity-protection laws for companies investing in space ventures, and assured a strong customer base for commercial launch services with commitments for NASA space science and exploration missions.

In 2015, to combat the effects of global warming, a United Nations study concluded that a solar shield offered by The Foundation Society would cost less than the adverse global economic impacts of returning to the geological state of a glacier-free Earth. A complex deal involved venture capitalist funding of the project, with profitable reimbursement from United Nations members. The Foundation Society built a huge (Texas Size) solar shield at the Earth-Sun L-1 libration point to reduce solar radiation on the Earth by 0.5% and eliminated future threats of global warming. The plan included the construction of the Foundation Society’s first space settlement, Alexandriat, as a manufacturing base in orbit around the Earth-Moon L-5 libration point. From 2015 until completion the project’s urgency inspired inter-company and multi-national cooperation on a scale not seen since World War II. Money was no object, but the number of available engineers and technicians limited how fast it could be productively spent. Teams of engineers, scientists and technicians from around the world were enlisted by the Foundation Society to develop parts of the design, and to discover break-through technologies for making various products from lunar materials.

In addition to meeting its primary mission, Alexandriat and the 14,000 people living there changed humans’ relationship to space. In part due to the solar shield, space is seen as a source of assets essential to quality of life. People living in space make things in microgravity and vacuum that are difficult or impossible to make on Earth’s surface. The most profitable space products are nanobots, microscopic robots that perform tasks down to the molecular level. They originally were put to work modifying molecules to form an air-tight seal on the settlement’s interior surfaces. With experience, more uses are being developed, including fusion coatings on surfaces, and separating the elements mixed in metallic asteroids. Nanobots are a major export category, spurring increased production of space-based manufacturing facilities and vehicles to get them to customers. Many products used in space are now made in space, and great potential exists for the use of lunar surface and asteroid materials.

Profits from Alexandriat enable the Society to begin implementing its strategic vision for future space settlements. It is one of these future settlements that requires your effort to create a proposal for the Foundation Society this weekend.