Within the Technology & Innovation Sub-Team of the Bass Connections Project, I leveraged my background in policy analysis and archival research to survey the innovation patterns in technology and policy of various isolated, extreme, and constrained human settlements across history. In particular, I explored how healthcare practice and management—at the cellular, individual, and human collective levels—have been successfully employed throughout time, and which generalizable patterns and lessons are worth emulating for a future populated human space settlement.

Across continents, cultures, and centuries, the literature review I curated showcased how human collectives have, despite all odds, flourished: the Chaco Canyon Puebloans of 900 CE championed thermoregulatory architecture to mitigate environmental morbidity; the 15th-century Elima Castle outpost on the Gold Coast adopted rigorous hygiene standards and quarantine protocols to prevent widespread disease; and the 19th-century Hudson Bay’s Red River Settlement created hybrid knowledge systems to ensure even laypeople could perform surgical procedures. Building from this initial collection of historical case studies, I honed my curiosity on a central question: which historical texts and policies offer the most critical lessons for crafting protections for future astronauts and space-faring individuals?

This deeper dive into my literature review’s policy dimensions prompted a close reading of the development of international maritime law, which is arguably the first comprehensive body of codes regulating and safeguarding human activity aboard transitive vessels in the global commons. Returning to my summer research archive, I poured through the 7th-century Nomos Rhodion Nautikos, the 13th-century Lex Maritima and the Laws of Oleron, the 14th-century Black Book of the Admiralty, and the evolving body of maritime law from the 19th century to the present. What emerged from this analysis was a striking historical precedent: when humans operate in ungoverned, hazardous, and resource-scarce environments—whether vast oceans or distant orbital stations—law and strong policy are essential for the preservation of human life.

Maritime law offers a blueprint for ensuring safety, mutual aid, accountability, and medical readiness in these liminal spaces. In Earth’s orbit, cis-lunar space, or deep space transit, analogs could be drawn from how historical maritime codes required captains to keep detailed logs of crew health, allocate space for makeshift infirmaries, and maintain sanitary conditions, even under the extreme environmental stress of months-long voyages. While these precedents cannot be directly transplanted into the context of outer space, their wisdom provides a rich analogical foundation for crafting space-era protections for astronauts and space-faring individuals.

As we look to the stars as the future domain for humankind’s technological and political progress, let us remain down to Earth by observing how human collectives have innovated and practiced self-sustaining care for one another in historical settlements. Contemplating the viability of future orbital colonies or settlements on celestial bodies invites us to assess where the gaps in our existing technologies and policies lie—and how those gaps could jeopardize the survival of a single cell, a single human, or a greater human collective. Survival, after all, is only the baseline. The aspiration is flourishing. Nothing is new under—or around—the sun.