Declaration of the Space Renaissance

We, the people who dream of space development, have committed our lives to the mission of igniting and supporting a global renaissance of the astronautical endeavors that humanity embarked upon during the past century. Civilian Space Development will significantly contribute to resolving many recurrent global problems as well as the physical limits which humanity’s mother planet imposes on present civilization.

Expanding civilian activities into outer space will relaunch economic growth on an unprecedented scale, offer solutions and hope for the underdeveloped and impoverished nations and peoples of Earth, and facilitate peace by bringing the enormous and extremely useful resources of the Solar System to everyone on Earth and to the citizens of the future space communities. This expansion into the solar system will progressively relieve our home planet from the burden and pollution of human industrial development, further the natural evolutionary impulse of human beings to explore and settle into new and bigger ecological niches, and ultimately amount to no less than a new, collaborative space development paradigm.

We acknowledge that all of the above will only be possible when most nations and their governments agree to work together towards facilitating a civilian expansion beyond Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the human presence in Earth orbit, in the Geo-Lunar and asteroid regions while progressively reaching ever farther into the richness of the Solar System and beyond. Such an expansion will include the lowering of space transportation costs, developing civilian low cost, fully reusable space transportation vehicles, building orbital workplaces for industrial manufacturing processes, guarding, manning, and governing Earth’s orbits, the recovery and reuse of space flotsam, wreckage and debris, the generation of power in space and the mining of asteroids and the Moon. These activities will create a durable space-based infrastructure that will serve as humanity’s starting point for industrial and residential settlements wherever needed. The resulting process may resemble the progressive expansion of a tridimensional sphere – the Anthroposphere – marking a new era of human presence and settlement beyond Earth.

We, the people of the Space Renaissance, strongly recommend that all governments on Earth escalate their investment in the search for timely and viable solutions to the main issues that threaten life in space: protection against cosmic radiations and the long term effects of low gravity on the human body. Such solutions will likely be achieved once humanity is established outside of the gravitational well in an environment where new technologies can be suitably tested. An equal effort should be dedicated to assisting all initiatives to develop artificial closed ecosystems. These are primarily scientific endeavors, but they are also very much human development issues that are best handled collectively.

We, the people of the Space Renaissance, also believe that civilian space development will allow for an incremental transformation of humanity’s military expenditures and activities to a focus on jointly facilitating and protecting human and entrepreneurial expansion in outer space from any and all fringe threats. With the availability of incredibly vast space resources for all citizens of Earth, many of the basic causes for conflict and warfare can be resolved, and the self-determination of all peoples and nations will be easier to achieve.

We, the people of the Space Renaissance, strongly recommend that all governments cooperate to establish  a comprehensive legal framework for outer space, utilizing, not only the existing Outer Space Treaty, but all international, commercial and civil codes, including the Maritime Law of the High Sea as design based inputs, to promote interchange, opportunity and equitable human rights for future spacefaring generations.

We, the people of the Space Renaissance, send a heartfelt call to all people of good will to join us in this vital mission, devoted to ensuring that human civilization may survive and thrive in the decades and centuries ahead.

IF YOU SHARE OUR DECLARATION, LET US KNOW, BY SIGNING IT    

Download the pdf version, that you can upload to social networks and websites, or print it on paper, and distribute it in your communities.

See who already signed the Declaration.

Also see:

• the Space Renaissance Manifesto, a detailed view of the SRI Philosophy
• A Position Paper on Civilian Space Development and Space Technology

Do you think our work is important? You can help in many ways: register as a SRI member, donate some money to SRI, organize a SRI national chapter in your Country.