Deep Space Strategy
Humans have imagined settlements across the solar system for more than a century. Yet human activity in space remains concentrated around Earth. Nobody has walked on the Moon since December 1972, and most missions farther away still depend on government budgets.
However, conditions are changing. Reusable rockets have reduced the cost of reaching orbit, while autonomous systems can operate farther from Earth and for longer periods. Together, these developments make sustained activity beyond Earth increasingly conceivable.
Deep Space Strategy studies how that activity could expand across the solar system. What can be reached depends on the physics of moving mass and the resources available along the way. What can endure also depends on costs, investment, infrastructure and the value created beyond Earth. Over time, these constraints and opportunities shape where activity can develop and how the next steps become possible.
The long-term goal is a primer for expanding the human frontier into the solar system.
Research map
Each row runs from data to strategy: what we measure, which parameters follow from it, which investment cases they decide, and what that means for strategy.
Method
The maps and route tools run on solmaps, our open-source engine. How solmaps works gives an overview; the technical documentation gives the formulas and references.
The route calculations use the standard methods of early mission planning. They match the launch and flyby dates of the Cassini mission to within a month, and those of Juno, Galileo and Dawn to within three months.
About
Björn Hanneke, information systems researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt, leads Deep Space Strategy. You can send questions and corrections through the GitHub repository. The code is open under MIT, the data and texts under CC BY 4.0.