Schiaparelli Crater: The Real Mars Behind The Martian
Explore ESA’s 2026 flyover, ancient Evros Vallis river valleys, impact-crater infill and the real science behind Mark Watney’s fictional destination.
Explore Schiaparelli Crater →SPACE • SETTLEMENT • ENGINEERING
Space & Colonization
Exploring what it would actually take for humans to live, work, manufacture, and thrive beyond Earth.
BEYOND EARTH
Building a permanent presence
The New Space Race
Why NASA, commercial launch firms and international partners are reshaping access to the Moon and orbit—and why lasting infrastructure matters more than a single first landing.
Read: Competition, Cooperation & Space Futures →The Solar System Settlement Initiative
From the Moon and Mars to Venus, Titan, Mercury, asteroids and orbital habitats: where could people live, and what would long-term independence really require?
Explore the new ALCHEMY initiative →CD-35 2722: A World That Defies Simple Labels
A Jupiter-mass candidate satellite orbits a brown dwarf instead of a planet. Discover how its gravitational wobble was measured and what remains unconfirmed.
Read: Beyond Planet and Moon →Orionids 2026: Halley's Comet Debris
A practical guide to the October 21–22 peak night, moonlight, observing conditions and the science behind these fast meteors.
Read the viewing guide →Habitats
Radiation protection, pressure vessels, local materials, architecture, and safe living spaces.
Read: Radiation & Shielding →Microbial Ecosystems for Space Agriculture
Could beneficial fungi, bacteria and compost improve food production in sealed off-world habitats? What Earth-based research has—and has not—shown.
Read: Engineering Living Agricultural Ecosystems →Life Support
Air, water, waste recycling, food production, closed-loop systems, and human factors.
Read: Closed-Loop Life Support →Exploration & Industry
Transportation, robotics, resource extraction, energy, manufacturing, and settlement logistics.
Read: Mars ISRU →Ocean Worlds & Astrobiology
Enceladus, Europa, Titan, subsurface oceans, plume sampling, prebiotic chemistry, and the search for biosignatures beyond Earth.
Read: Enceladus — Sampling an Alien Ocean →Deep Dive: What If Titan Replaced Our Moon? →
Space Debris & Reentry
What happens when orbital hardware comes back to Earth? The Mukuku rocket-ring case shows how reentry, attribution, safety and responsibility intersect.
Read: When Space Junk Comes Home →Space Resources & Industry
Asteroid prospecting, water extraction, refining, propellant depots and orbital manufacturing could form the supply chain for an off-Earth economy.
Deep Dive: Asteroid Mining & Space Industry →Moon Formation
New simulations ask whether rock strength and temperature could allow a coherent Moon to emerge within hours of the Theia impact.
Read: Could the Moon Have Formed in Five Hours? →Further reading and viewing: Isaac Arthur
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur (SFIA) explores space habitats, settlement engineering and humanity's future. The following external episodes are Isaac Arthur's work, not MKP productions or an endorsement of MKP. We link to the creator's original pages and offer our own questions for discussion.
- The O'Neill Cylinder Space Habitat: Islands in the Sky — rotating orbital habitats and their engineering requirements.
- How Colonizing Space Benefits Earth — possible benefits for Earth and the assumptions behind them.
- Generation Ships — the challenges of voyages lasting generations.
Questions for MKP readers: What would make a space settlement economically and ecologically sustainable? How should future communities govern themselves? What technology could be useful on Earth before anyone settles space?
More frontier ideas and discussion
Explore thought experiments and proposed future technologies with explicit evidence labels and credited learning resources.
Project ALCHEMY lives here
Space settlement is one of the central long-term investigations of the Murphy Knowledge Project, connecting engineering, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, and human survival.
View Project ALCHEMY