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Departments
The magazine has covered the same ground since 1998. These are the standing sections, plus one new one for what everybody else is doing.
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Department
Soil and Survival
Dirt, water, food, and the biology that has to come with us.
4 articles →
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Robotics
Machines that go first, and the people who run them from here.
1 article →
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Department
Resources
Mining, refining, and what it costs to move mass around the solar system.
4 articles →
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New technologies
Manufacturing, materials, and tools that do not exist yet.
9 articles →
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Habitats
Where people actually live once they get there, and what gravity does to them.
5 articles →
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Mission Watch
What other people are doing in space right now. Private enterprise first, then the agencies. Twice a month.
1 edition →
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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.
7 articles →
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Ground School
The plain facts the rest of the magazine leans on: the sky, the orbits, the neighborhood. Eight interactive maps to start.
8 interactive maps →
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The Punch List
Everything that still has to be invented, built, or proven before people can live off Earth. Numbered, kept, never crossed off until it works.
37 items →
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Trade-offs
Every idea in this magazine buys you something and costs you something. This is where both columns get written down.
2 entries →
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Department
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 entry →