Tanya Eskander

The future of space exploration will undoubtedly be driven by economic imperatives rather than scientific research. 

From 2022, a technological bottleneck results in a shortage of rare earth metals, the demand for which is likely to be met by the advent of celestial mining funded by mass investment in commercial space exploration. Simultaneously, a corporation called EXTRACT, will fund a base in the UK through the expansion of The University of Essex’s Colchester campus (home to the world’s deepest weightlessness training pool) to house the development of future and future possible space technology. 

The scheme is designed and explored through the eyes of three conflicting characters. The Drivers, Techno-futurists, are tycoons concerned with the investment and profit from the commercialisation of space. The Dreamers, Retro-futurists, comprised of university professors, philosophers, astrologers and land artists, who consider the ethical implications of celestial mining. They postulate mining a face on the moon to engage the public in this ethical debate through lunar land art. The Detectorists, Frugal-futurists, mine their homes and recycle old technology, anxious about the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources.

The architecture brings verisimilitude to the emerging field of asteroid and moon mining, quelling contemporary public anxiety by physically providing a set which displays the future technology as necessary, plausible and viable. The technology is ushered into reality through ‘hyperstition’- the act of ‘making fictional entities real’ by encouraging public awareness about future scenarios which at present may be seen as science fiction.

The project is intended to both critique our current dependence on technology and to highlight the relationship between our digital selves and the hard core physical, geological processes transforming our planet. By exploring the subject of celestial mining through the lens of three different demographics, the project intends to bring to the fore the ethical implications of our accelerationist society.