A Mission Statement for Space Architecture

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A Mission Statement for Space Architecture

Sherwood, Brent / Adams, Constance / Osburg, Jan

In an effort to define and advance the new discipline of Space Architecture, the AIAA technical subcommittee on Aerospace Architecture organized a Space Architecture Workshop that took place during the World Space Congress 2002 in Houston, Texas. One of the results of this workshop is a “Mission Statement for Space Architecture” that addresses the following core issues in a concise manner: definition, motivation, utility, required knowledge, and related disciplines. The workshop also addressed the typology and principles of space architecture, as well as basic philosophical guidelines for practitioners of this discipline. The mission statement, which was unanimously adopted by the workshop participants, reads as follows ([1], [2], [3]): “Space Architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space, responding to the deep human drive to explore and occupy new places. Architecture organizes and integrates the creation and enrichment of built environments. Designing for space requires specialized knowledge of orbital mechanics, propulsion, weightlessness, hard vacuum, psychology of hermetic environments, and other topics. Space Architecture has complementary relationships with diverse fields such as aerospace engineering, terrestrial architecture, transportation design, medicine, human factors, space science, law, and art.” This paper will document the genesis of this mission statement, expand on its key statements, and give an overview of the typology, the principles and the philosophical guidelines of space architecture.