• Soil and Survival

  Dirt, water, food, and the biology that has to come with us.

  1. Worms: The Backbone of CivilizationWhy the first Martians will need a bucket of worms more than another rocket
  2. Wet the Ground and WaitA passive water generator for the desert, and why we should build one before we need one on Mars
  3. Fish, Salt, or DirtThree ways to feed a habitat, what each one costs you, what each one can't survive, and a question for the reader.
  4. The Box Nobody TestedIn 1991 eight people were sealed inside three acres of glass to prove a closed world could keep them alive. It nearly didn't, and the reason was sitting in the walls the whole time.
  5. The Workforce Nobody HiredMy grandfather ran nitrate and manure over the same field for thirty years and never used the word bacteria. In a sealed habitat, you don’t get to not know.

• Robotics

  Machines that go first, and the people who run them from here.

  1. Send the Robots FirstWhy the road to Mars runs through the moon, and why the first lunar miners will never leave Earth

• Resources

  Mining, refining, and what it costs to move mass around the solar system.

  1. Send the Refinery, Not the OreWhy the belt gets mined by factory ships, and why that is the one job we cannot run from a chair
  2. A Message in a Bottle, Thrown HardEvery article in this magazine is about how to build something. This one is about how to pay for it.
  3. Refuel It or Strip ItThe graveyard belt is the closest junkyard we've got.

• New technologies

  Manufacturing, materials, and tools that do not exist yet.

  1. Grind the Asteroid, Print the PartWhy there will never be a steel mill in space, and what replaces it
  2. Powder or WireThe two ways to print metal, why neither one is ready for the Belt, and the questions somebody has to answer first
  3. Built for Earth, or Built for Something Bigger?The tools a colony needs are being perfected right now, by people who say they are building them for us
  4. A Thousand GaragesBefore there is a printer in space, there has to be a shipyard on the ground, and the shipyard does not have to be in one place
  5. Thirty Thousand Volts and a Piece of Tin FoilI drove an hour and a half to call a man a liar. He turned on a computer monitor instead, and I have been thinking about it for twenty years.
  6. Out the Side of the MountainTwenty miles of vacuum tube under a Hawaiian volcano, and a freight train that never comes back down. What a ground-based mass driver would actually take, and why it exits the flank instead of the summit.
  7. That’s Not a Rocket, It’s a Freight TrainHow I wired the one on my bench in 1994, the one I drew and never built, and why a mass driver runs on railroad logic, not rocket logic.
  8. Cold, Vacuum, and a Hundred Thousand JointsWhat geosynchronous orbit does to the ten-inch panels in "A Thousand Garages," starting with the question every steel man asks first — and one thing that article got wrong.
  9. Powder or PlateThe garages stay. What's in them changes.

• Habitats

  Where people actually live once they get there, and what gravity does to them.

  1. Commission It FirstWe have already run phase one. It cost one man 150 million dollars of his own money, and it very nearly killed the people inside.
  2. Bones Don't Travel WellThe one problem no rocket solves, and why Gerard O'Neill worked out the answer in 1976
  3. Blow the Rock Like GlassMy father's answer to how you build something big enough to spin, and the man who worked it out in 1963
  4. Sixteen Inches of SteelThe number that breaks the mile-wide barrel, four ways around it, the one we would bet on, and a file you can print tonight
  5. Launch the Parts, Not the ShipYou cannot launch a habitat big enough to spin. So you launch a shipyard, and you let the robots build it.

• Mission Watch

  What other people are doing in space right now. Private enterprise first, then the agencies. Twice a month.

  1. September 29, 2026Mission Watch: Late September 2026Starship reached orbit on Monday, carried real cargo, and came home early. What that does and does not mean.
  2. September 6, 2026Mission Watch: September 2026What private enterprise and the agencies actually did this summer, in the order that matters

• Ground School

  The plain facts the rest of the magazine leans on: the sky, the orbits, the neighborhood. Eight interactive maps to start.

  1. Earth’s atmosphere, layer by layerFive layers, the Kármán line, and the landmarks in between. Switch to true scale and watch the breathable part shrink to a hairline.
  2. Where the satellites areEvery ring from the space station to the Moon, with geosynchronous orbit and the Van Allen belts marked. True scale shows how close to home it all is.
  3. The neighborhood: our solar systemThe Sun, eight planets, Pluto, the asteroid belt, and StarmanThe Sun, eight planets, Pluto, and the asteroid belt. Tap a planet, press play, and see the whole thing in true proportion.rsquo;s car on its loop past Mars. Tap a planet, press play, and see the whole thing in true proportion.
  4. Earth and the Moon, to scaleDrawn with no compression at all. Run a month of the Moon’s orbit, then line the eight planets up in the gap and see if they fit.
  5. Where the Voyagers areA ruler from the Sun to the nearest star, with both Voyagers placed for today. And the Golden Record, playing from NASA’s own account.
  6. The Milky Way, and where we are in itOur whole galaxy from above. One button lights up the single dot that holds everything else on this site, the way the Desert Museum did it.
  7. Everything we can see, and where we are in itOne step past the galaxy: the cosmic web of galaxies, and the observable universe. The same button, one more time.
  8. From the galaxy to the MoonOne continuous dive: the whole Milky Way, then six clicks down through the nearest stars, the Oort cloud, and the planets, until Earth and the Moon fill the frame.

• Life Support Systems

  Air, water, food, waste, heat, radiation, medicine — every system a sealed barrel has to run forever, laid side by side and argued out.

  1. Watney Was LuckyThe potatoes kept him alive for a year and a half. In a place nobody is coming to, that same plan takes your fat, your soil, and eventually you. What a crop list has to pay for, and why it is the hardest page in the manifest.
  2. Heirloom, or NothingAn editorial position, stated up front: no modified seed goes into the habitat. Here is the best case against that, and why I still hold it.
  3. Two of Everything, and a QuarantineNoah did not have to worry about what was living in the gut of the goat. We do. Which animals earn a berth in a sealed world, what each one costs, and the stowaways that beat the last crew that tried this.
  4. The Gas Nobody Budgets ForEverybody has a plan for oxygen. Nobody has one for the four-fifths of every breath that does nothing at all — and you cannot live without it.
  5. Light Is the ThrottleWhat a mine in Idaho and a garden in Alaska taught us about growing things fast — and what continuous daylight does to a plant that never gets to sleep
  6. Top of the Loop, Bottom of the LoopThe two animals nobody budgets for, and what happened the last time we forgot them
  7. Life in the BarrelO’Neill gave us the barrel in 1976 and got very little of it wrong. What he did not finish was the inside — and the standard the inside has to meet isn’t twenty years. It’s forever.

• The Punch List

  Everything that still has to be invented, built, or proven before people can live off Earth. 37 items so far, numbered and kept.

  1. PL-1 · Lunar oxygen plantBake oxygen out of regolith with sunlight — and deal with thousands of tons of spent dirt afterward.
  2. PL-2 · Airlock pump-down and gas recoveryStop throwing nitrogen out the door every time somebody goes outside.
  3. PL-3 · Martian atmospheric nitrogen separatorThe only free nitrogen in the inner solar system, if you can compress enough of it.

• Life Lessons the Hard Way

  Knowledge somebody already paid for — sometimes with a failed mission, sometimes with a grandfather working it out alone in a field.

  1. The Gas That Doesn’t LeaveBiosphere 2 sealed out the weather. It also sealed out the one thing that was quietly cleaning its air, and nobody noticed until the gas built up enough to threaten the crew’s nervous systems.
  2. A Capability Is Not a PossessionEverything you take for granted is a chain of people who knew how. Set the house on the Moon and the chain is gone. The first link we follow down is glass.

• Trade-offs

  Every idea in this magazine buys you something and costs you something. This is where both columns get written down.

  1. One Press or Ten ThousandElon Musk casts a car underbody in one shot with a machine the size of a house. We proposed ten thousand garages. It turns out we may both be right, on different walls — but nobody knows until somebody breaks fifty panels on purpose.
  2. Cast It or Print ItThree ways to make a hundred thousand habitat panels. What each one buys you, what each one costs you, and where each one belongs. The first entry in a department that exists to write both columns down.

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