Like every emerging paradigm before it, the space sector seems to inspire a mix of optimism for the future and deep concern that it will entrench or overwhelm the laundry list of problems we already have. For others (perhaps most), it feels like an irrelevant distraction. We often hear something along the lines of "what about all the problems here on Earth?" But that framing is a false choice. Earth and space systems are linked. And what happens in space will shape life back home, from the integrity of our democracies to our ability to address issues like climate change and inequality. Space is also a rare thing: a literal and figurative vacuum in which to test new ways of living, working, and making decisions together. It is, in many ways, the perfect place to test truly innovative civic tech.

Key Question/s: What does space actually need from civic tech, and what can civic tech learn by treating space as a proving ground for systems built from scratch?

The focus of a lot of my recent work, from a Lunar Governance sim to a participatory space policy initiative and current academic research on “Democracy at a Distance.” I’ve also worked with organisations like the Open Lunar Foundation, LunARC, MoonDAO and more recently the Planetary Society, who are all supporting different kinds of civic purpose in space. With so much going on out of public view, there’s a huge opportunity being lost to design civic infrastructure for a domain that doesn’t yet have entrenched systems. The feedback loop between off-world experiment and on-world implementation isn’t limited to science.