Our published thinking on crew health, habitation, market intelligence, and the discipline of space architecture — plus working notes from the lab.
Looking for the commercial arm? Stellar Amenities Lab is a separate arm, focused on maturing technology through the mid-TRL gap (TRL 4–6) and holding equity in what it builds.
Get in Touch"I watched this happen for 25 years at NASA: promising crew-health and habitation technologies stall at TRL 4 to 6, with no institution built to carry them across."
Also try the interactive Spacecraft Systems infographic. Applied and basic work on crew health, habitation, and the market forces shaping the next generation of space habitation. Imagery courtesy of NASA and SpaceX (public domain).
On the unglamorous human-support systems — waste, hygiene, water recovery — that decide whether the space economy actually works.
A construction sequencing framework for lunar surface habitats — where four-phase planning breaks down in practice.
Sixty years of institutional knowledge, treated as a civilizational commons that requires deliberate stewardship.
Validating the HabitatFit model against analog mission data.
Published performance benchmarks for habitat and crew-health technologies as they mature through the Lab.
Where crew-health and habitation opportunities actually sit in the published pipeline — and where they are conspicuously absent.
Tracing which Human Research Program risk areas have funded countermeasure paths, and which dead-end before TRL 6.
NASA Ames' Mycotecture Off Planet project is growing rigid, load-bearing bricks from fungal mycelium on-site.
The 1975 NASA Ames/Stanford Summer Study produced the field's foundational document. No one has run a serious continuation since.
Every partner solving a different, specific layer of the same problem — not duplicating each other's work.
A closed-loop polymer that could turn locally available regolith into a printable, structural material.
TESSERAE's self-assembling tiles run on the same recursive local-rule logic as a fugue or a tessellation.
An interactive site-selection model for a first Mars settlement, drawn from Anastasia's undergraduate thesis. Try the tool.
When NASA shifts from owning stations to buying services from operators like Vast, its procurement choices become the clearest demand signal the market has.
NIAC, SBIR, and NextSTEP award histories are a public record of where the money actually went. Read correctly, they predict where it goes next.
NASA publishes the human-health risks it has not yet solved. That list is a procurement forecast hiding in plain sight.
Several operators are racing to replace the ISS. The fundable demand is narrower and more specific than the announcements suggest.
The quickest way into a space contract is rarely a space product. It is a terrestrial capability with an honest space application.
Lunar gravity is not microgravity and not Earth. No one has operationalized habitation in the regime between them.
NASA ranks crew behavioral health as the second-largest risk in human spaceflight, after radiation. Design is one of the few levers that moves it.
In a habitat, the ability to repurpose a volume quickly is worth more than any single fixed function.
Analog habitats — lava tubes, polar stations, undersea labs — are the closest thing we have to a testbed for the body in extreme environments.
There is still no good longitudinal dataset across the roughly 730 people who have flown. Chip-scale imaging can close that gap.
Designing microgravity navigation for blind and low-vision flyers produced insights that apply far beyond space.
Applied pressure changes how a body settles. In microgravity, that may be a lever for sleep, stress, and performance.
Space architecture is treated as a specialty of engineering. It is closer to a discipline of its own — and the New Space age needs it.
The methods that keep a crew sane in a capsule apply directly to small apartments, capsule hotels, and tiny houses on Earth.
The space economy grows fastest when it sells to people who never planned to buy space — pharma, longevity, deep-tech, enterprise R&D.
On a crewed mission, habitat design is one of the few levers that actually moves the economics.
A&E firms hold more space-transferable capability than they realize. The gap is knowing how the contracts work.
The architecture you commit to early locks in your competitive position for a decade.
A lunar economy is forming faster than most incumbents assume. The advantage goes to whoever reads the real demand.
Consulting-for-hire and grant-funded research both stall a technology at the same place. The gap is institutional.
After 25 years inside NASA, our founding advisor names the same failure: the human layer is the one no institution owns.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
A working note from the lab. Read in Field Notes.
Layout, volume, and material studies for long-duration crew habitats, informed by analog missions and behavioral research.
How spatial design affects sleep, cognition, and stress in isolated and confined environments.
Tracking demand signals across commercial stations, lunar programs, and agency procurement to guide where research effort pays off.
Ergonomics and interface design between crew, suits, and habitat systems during extravehicular activity.
There's no good tracking dataset yet across the roughly 730 people who have flown to date. We're licensing Butterfly Network's ultrasound chip to build spacecraft-embedded imaging that closes that gap. One of the Lab's internal products, not a separate company.
The intelligence layer reads this directly, on-board: a chip built into the habitat itself, rather than a handheld device a crew member has to operate correctly under stress.
~730 people have flown. No one has ever assembled their record. We're building it.
Also try the interactive Spacecraft Systems infographic.
A construction sequencing framework for lunar surface habitats. Where four-phase planning breaks down in practice.
Sixty years of institutional knowledge, treated as a civilizational commons that requires deliberate stewardship.
Validating the HabitatFit model against analog mission data.
Published performance benchmarks for habitat and crew-health technologies as they mature through the Lab.
Where crew-health and habitation opportunities actually sit in the published pipeline. And where they're conspicuously absent.
Tracing which Human Research Program risk areas have funded countermeasure paths, and which ones dead-end before reaching TRL 6.
NASA Ames' Mycotecture Off Planet project is growing rigid, load-bearing bricks from fungal mycelium on-site.
The 1975 NASA Ames/Stanford Summer Study produced the field's foundational document. No one has run a serious continuation of it since.
Every partner solving a different, specific layer of the same problem, not duplicating each other's work.
A closed-loop polymer that could turn locally available regolith into a printable, structural material.
TESSERAE's self-assembling tiles run on the same recursive local-rule logic as a fugue or a tessellation.
"Establishing a viable commercial space ecosystem depends on the evolution of foundational technologies through the valley of death into institutional capabilities. I watched this happen for 25 years at NASA: promising crew-health and habitation technologies stalling at TRL 4 to 6 with no institution built to carry them across."
Niki Werkheiser, former NASA Director of Technology Maturation
"Two of the most critical issues are the radiation exposure beyond low Earth orbit and the psychosocial effects of confinement and isolation."
The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH)
"Considering natural events, available energies, and human tendencies, the timing to make the most effective effort to achieve multi-planet status is now, before momentum is lost and we become distracted by changing energy economies."
Scott Howe, Senior Systems Engineer, NASA JPL
"I am glad you are working on this amazing frontier... I would add to your list: stories, myths, and monuments."
Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor, Wired
"If you think about luxurious experiences, you want to make sure people feel okay. Sleep quality is something astronauts speak very openly about."
Anastasia Prosina, as quoted in Scientific American
