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Organic / C1 Hub
CO₂ + H₂O → syngas → methanol and olefins (and, via methanol-to-aromatics, benzene-ring products). The source of plastics, fabrics, solvents, surfactants, waxes, and inks.
Research Interests
The Foundation conducts focused research on what it takes to make and keep an extraterrestrial settlement hospitable to flourishing life.
Two questions organize the Foundation's current research portfolio. The first is chemical: which materials can settlers manufacture from local feedstocks, and in what order should that capability be built? The second is social: how does a small, closed community govern and reorganize itself as it grows? Each is a distinct research program with a clearly defined scope, assumptions, and priorities. Consistent with the Foundation's charter, findings and methods — including any resulting patents — are made available to the public on a non-discriminatory basis.
Everything a resource — nearly every material a settlement needs reduces to a small number of conversion hubs.
♂ Martian Chemistry
The Martian Chemistry Research Program studies the chemistry of Martian habitability: which materials initial settlers can manufacture from local feedstocks, and how to prioritize that work. The program rests on a single strategic observation — nearly every material a settlement needs reduces to a small number of conversion hubs, five in all. Three of them feed the post-survival “convenience economy”; the other two are structural infrastructure that also supplies feedstocks to the first three.
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Nitrogen-Fixation Hub
Atmospheric N₂ → nitrogen oxides → nitric acid, and, with hydrogen, ammonia. The source of fertilizer, food-curing nitrite, medical nitrous oxide, blasting agent, and dye precursors.
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Bioreactor Hub
Locally grown sugar plus fixed nitrogen, converted by living cells or enzymes into vitamins, amino and organic acids, lactic acid (→ PLA), fermented foods, and — at the frontier — biologics.
☼
Regolith-Thermal Hub
Heat applied to regolith → sintered ceramics and brick, melted glass and basalt fiber, and reduced structural metals.
☼
Acid-Leaching Hub
Regolith sulfate → sulfuric acid, used to separate minerals and extract metals (the Silicate–Sulfuric-Acid Process). Infrastructure that also supplies sulfate and chlorine to the convenience hubs.
☽ Settlement Sociology
The Settlement Sociology Research Program studies organizational evolution in closed communities: how a settlement governs, decides, and reorganizes itself over time. It treats such communities as a genuinely distinct research domain rather than ordinary sociology in an exotic setting, because four structural features hold together at once — closure removes the option of exit, the social system is tightly coupled to a lethal technical one, populations are small, and founding conditions are deliberately engineered.
The portfolio's priority is the transition zone — designated T2 — the stage at which a growing community first becomes too large to govern by face-to-face familiarity and must build formal institutions to replace informal trust. The program uses a population-scale framework (T1–T2–T3) to locate where the hardest organizational problems arise and to select comparative analogue studies of terrestrial isolated communities that bear on them.
Ⅰ
T1 · Familiarity
The small founding community, governed by formal hierarchies, direct personal acquaintance, informal trust, and face-to-face coordination.
Ⅱ
T2 · Transition
The priority zone: the community outgrows familiarity and must build institutions and governance to replace informal trust and formal command structures.
Ⅲ
T3 · Institutional
The larger settlement running on established institutions and governance structures — the regime the transition must successfully deliver.
The Foundation's research scope, as set by its charter, extends beyond Mars to Mercury, Venus, Earth, the asteroids of the asteroid belt, and such other bodies of the solar system as may become capable of human settlement.
Published Reports
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Conversion Hubs
How a Martian settlement makes almost everything from five raw materials. Five junctions — organic, nitrogen, bioreactor, regolith-thermal, acid-leaching — carry nearly the whole materials economy. What each is good at, where each is likely to fail, and what the framework hides. Written for the technically literate non-chemist. Read the report.
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Who Funds the Settlement of Space?
An open census of funding streams for space colonization, 2016–2026: federal agencies, nonprofits and philanthropy, universities, and corporations — and the near-empty row where the money for settlement governance should be. Published with complete data and code. Read the report.