SRI IV WORLD CONGRESS

Dec

2025

End of 2025, lost in fog for 2026 (my Christmas thoughts)

Dear SRI Friends and Supporters,

I don’t feel to wish you anything for the next year, since Wishes are obvious, when war drones are flying in the near skies, and too many times Wishes were unfulfilled.On the contrary, I am calling for help. Don’t be afraid, this time I am not asking for money, though money is always indispensable to NGOs, and my activist’s duty is to remember that you know how to do it, by the proper forms on the SRI website main menu (Funding and SRI Crew).

Straight to the point. You likely know that 2026 is the year of the SRI IV World Congress (30 June – 4 July). As you likely know from our past 3 World Congresses, since 2011, every 5 years, we inflicted on ourselves a very hard and ambitious task: to assess the status of civilization, and indicate our priority goals to solve the main global issues. Of course, if you follow SRI, our papers, our campaigns and activities at UN COPUOS, IAF, outreach and public events, you know what our analysis and proposed strategy are. We already described them in our 2021 thesis document. Those forecasts are now more than confirmed – civilization risks an irreversible implosion – and the strategy to avoid such a scary fate is only one: to kick off civilian space development before 2030, relaunching economic growth at 2 figures, and making Earthly resource wars obsolete.

But, comparing today’s situation with that of 2021, we see enormous changes and differences. Terrible wars and genocides have begun, and don’t promise to end, in the heart of or at the neighbors of the “advanced” world, and many other forgotten conflicts are killing thousands of unreplaceable human lives, a clear symptom that the implosion already started.

Terrific technological advances are developing, first of all, artificial intelligence, so full of promises and threats.

The space economy is going to lead the possible sustainable development. Yet, both the mentioned vectors, AI and Space Economy, can be sustainable and lead the global sustainable development, only if civilian space development really starts. Yes, of course, the Space+AI investors could even point once again only to automated orbital and Moon development: that would be just another illusion, destined to bring about further economic “bubbles” to explode, reiterating further stages of the global development crisis. Why? Because Planet Earth cannot tolerate the current and growing level of anthropogenic pressure. That should be clear nowadays, but it is not. So, our main task is to develop proper outreach and explain it in simple and understandable words.

The point is not that our home planet is now poor in resources, though this is also true. Yet we have already seen that new fossil reserves are being discovered, and new (terrestrial) energy sources are also discovered, like vegetal fuels, photovoltaic, etc. Yet we have already seen that the energy demand coming from supercomputers to support AI, electronic money, and electric mobility is not sustainable by terrestrial sources. And the main point is that, even if terrestrial sources were available, the needed large industrial extraction processes are not sustainable. That’s why we need to move outside, developing data centers in space, and the main industrial development, too. To produce what? For which customers? For Earthly markets only? That would not relieve the pressure; that would even increase it. Any growth limited within Earth’s boundaries is unsustainable. Let alone the wars… Wars are over any criteria of sustainability, and a global war as it is nearing is simply incredible, worthy of psychiatric treatment for its main dealers.

Coming to my today concerns and sleepless nights. Are we, at SRI, able to draw a realistic description of today’s civilization status? And, even more important, are we able to define an actualized strategy, the best priorities to be pursued, to help humanity pass the 2025-2030 “Eye of the Needle”?

For some weeks, the SRI Board and the Space Renaissance Academy have been tackling this terrific task. And I have the thankless duty to try assembling different contributions and drafting a coherent thesis paper. I confess that any approach seems to me too poor, neglecting some important points, or giving too much relevance to some not really important ones.

Now, the Space Renaissance movement is larger than the SRI Board, Academy, and Membership. Very interesting discussions are raised each month in our SRI Open Forum. I have the very great pleasure and am proud to see that our Forum is also used by other sister organizations, such as AIAA, NSS, and other communities.

So I have decided to open this discussion and to ask all sincere space humanists to provide help on some key questions and issues.

We titled our Congress “The Quality of Life, on Earth and Beyond”. Clearly, we are talking about a 360° concept of quality of life, from the basic needs (food, clothes, shelter), to social and belonging needs, to the highest needs (self-realization and transcendent aims). What is your idea of the Quality of Life? Yes, my idea includes not only the acknowledged needs (physiological, social, and cultural). I might also refer to a famous slogan that says: “We don’t need only the bread, but also the roses!” Meaning that the superfluous is necessary. A hedonistic Western vision? Maybe, but nothing wrong, if we can provide a beautiful life for everybody… And that’s the concept that I had in mind, proposing the Quality of Life topic for our congress: space will make possible a beautiful life for everybody. Not just to survive, but to thrive, and to improve our quality of life.

Yes, I have proposed using Maslow’s criteria to try to read the reality, how the quality of life changed over the last 50 years. Some colleagues argumented that Maslow’s “pyramid of needs” suggests a hierarchical stratification of society, implying that one cannot achieve higher levels if one has not achieved the lower ones. Maslow never said that. He proposed his classification of human needs on a probabilistic statistical basis, not at all as a values classification. My personal opinion is that Maslow’s human needs classification is more complete than the Marxist one, which only focuses on the achievement of the basic needs (or maybe, being Marx’s literary production so large, let’s say that his epigones mainly focused on class differences, related to the basic needs).

However, it was said that there are many other philosophers and anthropologists who have provided tools to analyze and measure the progress or regress of civilization. Since I don’t aim to defend Maslow as our unique reference, I am first of all asking for some more references. Please provide concepts and useful tools for reading reality, not just authors. However, I’d like to point out that I consider Maslow’s philosophical and anthropological controbution relevant, though his studies were on psychology. And, however II, psychology is determinant for philosophy and human history (also think about Isaac Asdimov psychohistory).

It was also said that some excellent cases testify that reaching the highest self-realization goals is possible even in very poor conditions. Sure, in human history, we have saints, geniuses, and artists who were able to sublimate their poor living conditions and donate great philosophical concepts, beautiful artworks, or great cultural contributions. Yet, should we indicate those cases as a social model? Often, those great people deprived their families of the necessary things in order to pursue their ideals. I don’t want to denigrate their sacrifice, but neither would I like to suggest a model of society where people aiming high are constrained to renounce their basic needs to pursue their highest ideals. This is exactly the point where humanity’s expansion into space comes in, breaking the zero-sum game of a closed-world society!

When I proposed the Quality of Life as a title for our incoming congress, I had not Saints or Bohemians in my mind, but normal, average people. Normal, average people, at least in the so-called advanced societies, thanks to the industrial revolution and technological progress, were allowed to become aware of their cultural interests, and perhaps cultivate some cultural or artistic high-level objectives. That achievement, together with better housing, clothing, food, health systems, and the possibility to make their children study to achieve a higher social condition, improved their quality of life. Is such a process continuously going ahead in the present? Is it steady, or has it even inverted the march, heading now to social regression? I’d like to assess: has such improvement continued during the last, say, 20 years? Or has the progress in the closed world reached the bars of the cage? What are the main “key performance indicators” to assess the quality of life and social progress/regression? Number of graduates? Quality and availability of Health systems? Quality and availability of Education systems? Ease of establishment and access to the business environment for startups? Employment and opportunities for business?

Btw, my research evidenced a quite disappointing evaluation, made, not by us, but by the UN itself, about the achievement of the 17 SDGs, 10 years after the publication in 2025. 3 SDGs are showing clear regression (including the most worrying one, 16 Peace), 12 are steady, and only 2 show weak progress.

It was also observed that the sentiment of having no future, as described by some youth movements, e.g., “We don’t have planet B”, is prevailing in the western post-industrial world, while the emergent eastern Countries – India first – are quite different. Hope in the future and faith in progress are the most common feelings among the young generations in those Countries. Therefore, it seems that we need good contributions from the East of the world (of course, even to call it “East” is an Eurocentric geographic concept…), to get a really holistic view of the Civilization situation, and maybe different outreach strategies for different continents (not on the substance, but on the narrative style…).

However, it is very clear that the assessment of the status and perspective of Civilization is all but based on numbers and economic figures. Our future depends on the psychological perception of reality. The global data about the economy, ecology, climate change, progress, regression, and sustainability are the same at all latitudes, yet our perception is very different. We are facing a cusp in human history, but it is perceived differently in different parts of our world. How can we get in touch, discuss, and collaborate with all the sincere humanists of Planet Earth?

I know, my list of questions is largely incomplete! Please also suggest more criteria.

Answers are very welcome on our Forum (just ask to enter if you’re not already in): https://groups.google.com/g/sri-open-forum

Your paper abstracts for the Congress are very welcome too: https://2026.spacerenaissance.space/index.php/call-for-papers-abstract-submission/

Ad Astra! (hopefully)

Adriano V. Autino

Dec

2025

THE BRAVE AND THE COWARDS – SRI Newsletter December 2025

As the geopolitical climate shifts, we increasingly hear warmongering pronouncements that tend to resurrect popular sentiments we naïvely believed had been buried by history.Among these is the claim that Europe is weak and cowardly, unwilling to cross the threshold between adolescence and adulthood. Maturity, according to this narrative, demands rearmament and a head-on confrontation with the challenges of the present historical moment. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies a far more troubling transformation.

We are witnessing a blatant attempt to replace the prevailing moral framework—until recently ecumenically oriented toward a passive and often regressive environmentalism—with a value system founded on belligerence. This new morality defines itself against “enemies” of presumed interests, whether national, ethnic, or ideological.

Those who expected a different kind of shift—one that would abandon regressive policies in favor of an active, forward-looking environmentalism—have been rudely awakened. The self-proclaimed revolutionaries sing an old and worn-out song: war. These new “futurists” embrace a technocratic faith that goes far beyond a legitimate trust in science and technology—long maligned during the previous ideological era—and descends into open contempt for human beings themselves, now portrayed as redundant or even burdensome in the age of the supposedly unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence.

What we face is a dramatic ethical and cultural regression, from which some expect to profit greatly.

Why is this a cultural regression? Because it reintroduces fierce intraspecific competition as the proposed solution to our civilization’s challenges—or worse, without any concern for global challenges at all. The rearmament policies now spreading across the world almost entirely ignore environmental considerations, which until less than a year ago were presented as the dominant justification for largely regressive degrowth policies.

Why is this also an ethical regression? Because ethics, as lived and understood by societies, is neither fixed nor immutable. While profound ethical insights can indeed be found among ancient philosophers, humanity’s moral judgments regarding murder, massacre, genocide, exploitation, torture, ethnic cleansing, and war itself have undeniably evolved over centuries and millennia. Technological and social progress have steadily reduced the objective necessity of ruthless competition, opening the possibility of a world in which losers need not perish, but may still benefit from collective advancement—and perhaps find future opportunities for success.

Even within sacred traditions, this evolution is visible: from biblical narratives that recount massacres, divine favoritism toward specific ethnic groups, and concepts of women as property, to the evangelical message, which introduces a far more humanist vision—one that still resonates deeply today.

From both cultural and ethical perspectives—two dimensions that should never diverge—the realization, around the middle of the twentieth century, that humanity was consuming more resources than Earth could provide was itself a positive step forward. The responses to that realization, however, have been deeply flawed. Passive environmentalism and degrowth policies have paved the way for today’s grim prospect: the annihilation of much of humanity in a global war of all against all.

But here lies the central point.

Until little more than a century ago, space technologies did not exist. Human competition was confined within planetary boundaries, and the stakes were the control of Earth’s resources. Did this reality make war acceptable—or even virtuous? For centuries, poets and historians glorified heroes and conquests, embedding war deeply within educational systems that still emphasize victories, battles, and the demonization of the defeated.

Yet once humanity began to imagine expansion beyond Earth—and the possibility of accessing extraterrestrial resources—a different sensibility emerged. From the artistic movements of the twentieth century to the global upheaval symbolized by 1968, war increasingly came to be seen for what it truly is: an immense waste of lives and resources, an intolerable deviation from the path of civilized progress, and—almost always—a violent appropriation of land and wealth. An ethical and cultural wound that has become unbearable, especially now that a viable alternative exists.

Today, at the beginning of the second quarter of the twenty-first century, space technology—now closely and inextricably linked to the development of artificial intelligence—is on the verge of a true quantum leap. It is paving the way for the civilian development of space, beginning with the Moon and the cislunar domain.

It would seem logical to concentrate our collective efforts on this extraordinary goal. Humanity appears to stand at the threshold of a potential golden age, one in which all people—nations, cultures, ethnic communities, and peoples of Planet Earth—can contribute and share in the benefits. The resources of the solar system and the vast spaces available for industrial and residential development are so abundant that they naturally reduce greed and brutality, encouraging cooperation and fair competition instead. The development of global communication has progressively shown that all people of the world are really very similar in their daily life, hopes, concerns, projects, love for their children, struggle to get better life conditions… not easy for the warmongers to force Terrestrians to see monsters in foreign countries, and hate each other. We may be approaching a new romanticism: one in which looking down on Earth from orbit, and outward into the universe from the Moon and beyond, evokes a profound sense of shared destiny—what Frank White so aptly described as the “overview effect.”

This is not fantasy. It is a path of evolution firmly grounded in centuries of technological, cultural, and moral progress.

And yet, some of those to whom we have entrusted—by vote—the responsibility of leading our nations seem to believe that we must instead relish the prospect of death and destruction, and devote absurd quantities of public resources to this insanity.

In this surreal narrative, those who refuse rearmament are branded as weak and cowardly. In reality, the opposite is true. In today’s world, with the immense potential now within reach, it is precisely the weak and the fearful who turn to war. The brave and the generous do not resign themselves to killing their brothers over dwindling planetary resources. They aim higher. They look beyond Earth, toward new frontiers and new resources for all.

I am convinced that many of us—explorers and pioneers—already exist. What remains is for us to step forward and to begin replacing unsuitable political directions with others that are culturally sound, ethically mature, and worthy of humanity’s future.

The “Space for Peace” concept is at the core of the SRI IV World Congress preparation: “Quality of Life, on Earth and Beyond”. The Congress will take place, virtually, from 30 June to 4 July 2026. Some of the key tracks:

Status of civilization and quality of life
Civilian Space Development, a factor of Peace on Earth and Beyond
Space resources: who are the owners? We speak for Space Settlers!
Human rights in space
The permanent space revolution: 100% inclusivity
Protection of life and health in space
Beauty and ergonomics of habitats as an essential life requirement
Space to Space transport vehicles
Orbital Debris recovery and reuse
Cloud computing and big data centers in space
Producing fuel in space

Check the Call for Papers, and submit your abstract(s)!

Register here.

To understand more about the Congress symposia, sessions, and proposed topics, also watch the SRIC4 #00: “Announcing the 4th SRI World Congress”, on the Space Renaissance YouTube channel!

Let’s work together to make a great congress!

Join the Space Renaissance!

Watch and subscribe to the Space Renaissance YouTube channel.

Also download a pdf copy of this article.

Nov

2025

SUPPORT “HI” EVERYWHERE! – SRI Newsletter November 2025

Artificial Intelligence and Civilian Space Development: A Call for Synergy, Not Substitution!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rising at an extraordinary speed, emerging as an entirely new industrial pillar. Leading corporations—NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet—are achieving unprecedented revenue growth, reshaping global markets in just a few years. According to market analysts, the global AI market is likely to overtake the space market before 2030.

Today, the global space market is valued at roughly $512–613 billion (2025) and is projected to grow to $800–1,000 billion by 2030, with continued expansion expected through 2034. Growth drivers include next-generation satellites, launch services, and escalating commercial and governmental investments. Analysts from Grand View Research, the Space Foundation, and GlobalData forecast the space economy surpassing $1 trillion in the early 2030s.

Yet these projections are increasingly compared with the explosive ascent of the AI sector—a sector still in its infancy. This raises several important questions.

Is AI drawing investment away from the space industry?
Will AI accelerate or hinder humanity’s expansion into space?
Can AI sustain its current growth pace—or are we witnessing another bubble?
And, critically: can Earth-based energy and water resources support AI’s massive supercomputing demands?

Elon Musk recently voiced doubts about the sustainability of Earth-bound AI growth, pointing to limited terrestrial energy capacity and the enormous cooling-water requirements of data centers. He suggests that space may offer a more suitable environment for large-scale AI development, providing limitless solar energy and superior cooling potential.

There is no question that AI is an extraordinary tool for addressing human challenges. But confined within Earth’s physical limits, AI could also unintentionally slow the opening of the space frontier—much like previous technological revolutions (industrial automation, the internet, robotics) that gave humanity the illusion it could restart development indefinitely while remaining on a closed planet. Each time, the resurgence of global crises revealed the truth: no long-term progress is possible without expanding into the high frontier.

For the first time in history, we are aware that the new revolution—AI—cannot sustain itself within Earth’s resource limits, particularly energy and water. This presents a stark dilemma:

Continue developing AI exclusively on Earth, risking the implosion of its economic potential as resource bottlenecks emerge.
Shift main AI development into geo-lunar space, using AI to build the space infrastructure, and support civilian space settlement.

The warning has been raised. AI and space development are not adversaries; they can be profoundly synergistic. The question is whether political leaders will act in time. Space advocates have the responsibility to amplify this message before it is overlooked.

Meanwhile, the broader global crisis is hitting younger generations hardest. The COVID-19 pandemic confined them indoors, depriving them of essential social development. In many countries, students were directed to rely solely on remote schooling, undermining both learning and socialization. Today’s geopolitical climate—marked by nationalism, war, and international tension—further restricts opportunities for young people to explore the world and define their path. Increasingly, they are presented with a worldview where survival outweighs culture, and loyalty to narrow national or ethnic identities is valued above global human cooperation.

At SRI, we strongly reject this trajectory. We believe human intelligence exists everywhere—across all nations, cultures, and faiths—and that Human Intelligence (HI) shall remain ascendant over Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our goal is to find and support HI wherever it lives. Rather than attempting to build an artificial superhuman mind to replace our own, we choose to search for the real Einsteins and Mozarts of tomorrow. We know that genius may be found in a child living in a slum, playing football with a ball made of rags. We champion Human Intelligence—and we continue to use AI as a powerful tool, not a substitute for human insight, creativity, and vision.

The above concept is at the core of the SRI IV World Congress preparation: “Quality of Life, on Earth and Beyond”. The Congress will take place, virtually, from 30 June to 4 July 2026. Some of the key tracks: