An enormously successful first annual Space Settlement Summit hosted by the National Space Society (NSS) occurred on January 10-11, 2017, in Santa Monica, California. Industry leaders, financial experts, scientists and engineers, and leading space activists were brought together to assess the state of the art driving space settlement.

The NSS invitation-only Space Settlement Summit featured industry leaders including Josh Brost, Director of Government Business Development SpaceX, Dr. George Sowers, VP Advanced Programs ULA, Michael T. Suffredini, President Axiom Space, Steven Oldham, Senior VP MDA, Karlton Johnson, Director Information Risk Management Arconic, Jeff Manber, CEO Nanoracks, Akshay Patel, VP Strategy and Business Development Planetary Resources, and energy CEO and famous actor Harry Hamlin. Special guest Astronaut Yvonne Cagle headlined a dinner event celebrating the success of the movie HIDDEN FIGURES, speaking on recent medical advances from NASA. Key industry experts speaking included Dr. John C. Mankins on space solar power, Lt. Col. Thomas P. Schilling USAF on ultra-low cost access to space, Steve Wolfe of SpaceCom on open-source space settlement design, and Jeff Greason (XCOR founder) on funding space startups.

“The resources of Earth are limited and humanity is increasingly constrained by these limits. This is particularly true when reasonable environmental considerations are taken into account” said Mark Hopkins, Chair of the NSS Executive Committee. “Fortunately, the vast majority of the resources of the solar system both in terms of energy and materials lie in space rather than on Earth. Space settlement allows us to tap into these resources, thus smashing the resource constraints of Earth. Space settlement can create a hopeful prosperous future for all of humanity.”

“With Elon Musk calling for the colonization of Mars, and Jeff Bezos looking forward to millions of people living and working in space, space settlement is an idea whose time has come,” said Dale Skran, NSS Executive Vice President.

“NSS has been developing a Roadmap for space settlement for a number of years (see www.nss.org/settlement/roadmap)” added Bruce Pittman, NSS Senior Vice President and Senior Operating Officer. “The Space Settlement Summit will provide input that guides NSS’s current updating of the Roadmap. Anyone interested in learning more about how NSS is supporting space development and settlement should attend the International Space Development Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, May 25-29 (isdc2017.nss.org).”