What does the East India Company have to do with Mars? How can the failures of Soviet mining towns inform the design of self-governing space habitats? Throughout the semester, students explored historical case studies and drew surprising connections between Earth’s past and the governance, labor systems, and social structures of imagined space settlements. These research stories highlight specific insights that stood out—some strange, some sobering, some even hopeful—and reflect on how history might guide the futures we build beyond our planet.
Category: Research Stories Page 1 of 2
Throughout my research process with Bass Connections, I discovered an intriguing and recurring historical pattern: when private or quasi-private companies initiate large-scale settlement projects, they often leave behind economic and social collapse when those company towns fall apart. The public sector ie. government is then left to deal with the consequences. This pattern, which played out in the twentieth-century totalitarian regimes I studied, offers crucial insights for how we should think about the future of space settlement.
Examining how historical developments in transportation and logistics have made remote settlements more feasible, and how these lessons can be applicable to future space colonies, has been one of the most intriguing parts of my study. Reliable supply lines are essential to maintaining human existence in isolation, whether in isolated Arctic settlements, Pacific island populations, or Antarctic research sites. The extent to which contemporary shipping advancements, including as automation, containerization, and predictive logistics, might directly influence the design of supply systems for Mars or lunar colonies caught me off guard.
My name is Zachary Partnoy and I studied British East India Company settlements in South and Southeast Asia for the company towns team on the Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History Bass Connections project. My research primarily centered on the three East India Company Presidency towns of India, Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, each of which began as a small fishing or trading post and gradually developed into a commercial hub and later a global metropolis. Something I found particularly fascinating during the course of my research was the history of the Company’s land reclamation projects in Bombay. The EIC’s approach to urban development of Bombay, which was originally a settlement spanning several disparate islands (Portuguese maps listed four, while others counted seven), featured a series of large-scale environmental engineering projects to reclaim land from the harbor in order to connect these islands into one more easily governed whole. Taking over from the British Crown in 1668 (which had previously gained Bombay from the Portuguese as part of Catherine of Braganza’s marriage dowry to Charles II in 1661), the EIC was eager to conceptualize of Bombay as one island, for political and economic purposes.
The first amendment of the United States Constutution makes a couple of big promises, but all of them fall under the general idea of freedom of expression. One idea that the Constitution doesn’t touch on, though, is the idea of personal expression. Do we have the right to be who we want to be? Is that even a right that needs to be written out?
While conducting research for the Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History group, I identified a compelling parallel between current advancements in wearable health monitoring technologies and the lessons learned from Biosphere 2, one of the most ambitious isolation experiments of the late 20th century. Built in Arizona as a prototype for long-term space habitation, Biosphere 2 was designed as a fully closed ecosystem meant to simulate the environmental and life support conditions required for sustaining life beyond Earth. From 1991 to 1993, eight individuals lived inside the structure for two years, attempting to survive on self-grown food, recycled air and water, and minimal external input.
One of the most interesting stories I came across in my research this year for the Bass Connections project, “Future of Space Settlements: Lessons from History,” was the story of the computer that flew with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard the Apollo 11 lunar lander. That first Moon landing, which became so immortalized in our collective social and cultural memory, very nearly ended in tragedy. After the lunar module carrying the two astronauts separated from the Apollo command module to descend to the Moon’s surface, the descent was suddenly interrupted by a program alarm flashing on the computer screen in the module. It was a 1202, an alarm code which indicated an overload to the computer and a potential system failure. This was important because many of the most critical guidance tasks in both the Apollo shuttle and the lunar lander were performed by the automated systems on board. A failure in the computing system was not just a programming error; it indicated an immediate and potentially catastrophic problem in the most essential functions of the system on which the astronauts depended to survive. The alarm sounded not just once, but five times in a matter of minutes.
My research for the Bass Connections group Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History focuses on environmental legal parallels between historical colonial sites and potential space settlements. A current common interest between the two is resource extraction. The Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea serves as a particularly interesting historical corollary. The Mine began operations in 1984 when a consortium led by BHP Billiton started extracting copper and gold from the Star Mountains of Papua New Guinea. Initially, the construction of a tailings dam was planned to contain mining waste. However, after a landslide destroyed the partially built dam, the company—with government approval—continued operations without constructing a new one. Consequently, the mines discharged approximately 80,000 tons of mining waste daily into the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers, causing extensive ecological damage and affecting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people living along these waterways.
In examining historical settlements in extreme environments for my research, I found Longyear City which began as an early 20th-century mining town in the Arctic. This example stood out to me because it is a valuable case study in understanding the social and structural components necessary for long-term settlement. It was established by the Arctic Coal Company (ACC) to support its mining operations in Svalbard. Similarly to many other mining towns, Longyear City provided basic infrastructure such as shelter, food, and transportation. However, despite meeting the physical requirements for survival, the settlement ultimately failed to meet its profit targets because the workforce was unstable and did not choose to live in the settlement long term. I discovered the central issue was the company’s limited investment in community development.
The most interesting finding I discovered through Future Space Settlements: Lessons in History is that the future of interstellar law might depend on astronauts’ daily food choices. As a member of the Legal Systems Team, I conducted research centered on developing a legal framework for Mars space settlements through analyzing the findings of space analogs and historical legal precedents. The purpose of a legal system is to provide a clear set of rules for a community based on established societal norms. However, the uncertain conditions of space effectively challenge such norms during long-term space missions. Sending a research team to establish a civilization on Mars requires astronauts to navigate interpersonal relationships in an unfamiliar and stressful environment. For a long-term legal system to be implemented at a settlement, the initial crew of astronauts must survive the journey. Since group cooperation is critical during this interim, I turned to the field of Organizational Psychology to understand what group rules, conditions, and behaviors contribute to positive social dynamics in space. Interestingly, NASA specialists discovered that food systems play a significant role in the physical, psychological, and social health of astronauts.
