Moritz Bierling (Exosphere) interview to Adriano Autino, President of Space Renaissance International

Moritz Bierling (Exosphere) interviewed Adriano Autino, President of Space Renaissance International, in the frame of the Exosphere show called “The Creative Economy Interviews”. Autino talks about the Renaissance, begun 500 years ago, now aiming to outer space.

Your work with Space Renaissance, what is it about and what do you plan for it?

To make the meaningful steps of civilian expansion into outer space during next ten years is very urgent: low cost access to orbit, protection of life and human health for civilians passengers and settlers, a coherent space law system, to rule the commercial civilian activities in outer space.
The change of paradigm, now feasible, from military space exploration to civilization expansion into outer space. This is our presentist vision: the future shall be now! Traditional futurism, that used to promise a brilliant and distant future, is now obsolete. Humanity needs that brilliant future, now.
We recently had a very good methodology lesson by Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX: let’s do what we can with the technologies we have, which demonstrated that we can certainly achieve immediate results.
A Columbus egg, a brilliant yet logical idea after all, if we cannot yet build a single stage transportation directly to orbit , let’s take both stages back down to Earth surface for reuse. Such a simple strategy is already downsizing the cost to orbit, making the old monopoly of expendable rockets obsolete.
So we have some urgent priorities, as we discussed during the recent Space Renaissance 2nd World Congress:
– to accelerate the development of technologies for Low Cost Access to Earth Orbit,
– to resolve the issues of protection of civilian life and health in space,
– to develop a suitable set of laws, to rule the activities in Outer Space, i.e. to code the civilian rights in space
– to build the geo-lunar space infrastructures, from Earth orbit to Lagrange Points, developing habitats, manned workshops, industrial settlements, asteroids mining, hotels, advanced research settlements
This is a complete change of paradigm: from (military) space exploration to civilian space development.
In this perspective, priorities change: protecting life and health assumes great relevance, since people will live and work in space for long periods or undetermined time. In the space exploration paradigm, we had mission requirements, for round trips, or lingering few months in space. In the space settlement paradigm, we have humanist anthropologic requirements. The exploration time didn’t need a space law system, since astronauts were subject to military rules, with no warranties, nor the space agencies were responsible for their life. The space settlement urgently needs space law, to be evolved from the Outer Space Treaty (1967), and the marittime law. During next four years, SRI will develop the Space Renaissance Tour, bringing our proposals to the five continents, with big events involving rocket stars, and rock stars… we are negotiating, i cannot make any name, so far.

And your advice to young people just starting out and wanting to get into cool work, what do you recommend the young people of Italy and the world to do in order to get started with their careers?

Everything we are doing is done for young people.
The birth of civilian space development will create millions new jobs, on Earth and in space, as it was done during the past century, by the aeronautic industry, the automotive industry and other industrial vectors, now obsolete.
My first suggestion would address more to the education and entertainment dealers.
Our young people are shamefully kept in the ignorance of the ongoing renaissance, and the extreme need to support it.
The Space Renaissance Academy is trying to fill such a big gap, providing knowledge about history of astronautics, history of the renaissance, our present and our future.
Initiatives like Exosphere are very opportune and useful too, since they allow many young people to join together, sharing meaningful contents.
But i take this chance to extend a call to all journalists and medialists: come to us, take our urgent message and spread it to the young generations, the Renaissance needs them, and they need the Renaissance!
There are many works that can be made in Earth orbit, today, with high return, in terms of costs saving, in the frame of the current space market.
Talking about satellites, it would be very much convenient to mount, them in orbit, by manned orbit workshops. The satellites could then be placed in the required orbit, and periodically maintained, by such orbital workshops.
The recovery and possible reuse of the space debris is another topic that will gain momentum in the immediate future.
But we should start to think to a context in which many earthling jobs will have their counterpart in space: restaurants, shops, arts, sports, entertainment, tourism, hotels…
The civilian space travelers and inhabitants will not be “astronauts”, in the meaning we know today…
And the geo-lunar civilization will not need only scientific and technological skills… there will be need of philosophers, writers, psychologists, cultural operators, and many other humanistic skills.
So, a pragmatic suggestion to young people:
give to your studies another direction, whatever your preferred field: to the high!