SPACE IS AN ECOLOGY FOR LIVING IN

摘要

Since the last edition of Space Architecture, which I guest edited in 2000, when space tourism was just an emerging possibility, the notion of the general public going into Space has now become reality. Private individuals (namely Anousheh Ansari, Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Garriott, Guy Laliberte and Charles Simonyi) have stayed on the International Space Station after going up in the Soviet-designed Soyuz, and the first private cargo mission to the station for NASA was successfully completed by Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), whose next step is to fly up to seven people per year to Space in a cone-shaped capsule called Dragon, starting from 2015. Further developments for a booming space tourism industry are promised by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which is reaching its final stages of development. Around 700 people including businessmen, Hollywood stars and Branson's own family members have already signed up to become space tourists. And if the prospect of Space in your living room still seemed limited to the super-rich, in 2013 Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield broke new ground in making living in Space publicly accessible through his video diaries aboard the International Space Station, which he posted through social media such as Twitter.