Space: Is Technology really the greatest challenge?

16 November 2020. SpaceX Crew-1. 17 June 2021. Shenzhou-12. 11 July 2021. Virgin Galactic Unity 22. 20 July 2021. New Shepard. Why call out these four? Well, these four missions ultimately represent four manned expeditions that have involved human spaceflight.

But why is this important? Well, these four also represent varying cultural backgrounds and nationalities, originating from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and China. Put simply, varying cultures represents differing points of beliefs, alternative ways of working, and a fundamental difference in core values, to name a few.

So, you may still ask why this is important to consider? Well, the future colonisation or development of Lunar and Mars Base Camps will bring with it, a new paradigm in the way the world works together. Simply replicating the territories, or all the languages, that are born by geographical boundaries on Earth will be counter-productive to the peaceful development of Outer Space, but also the instantiation of how we view ourselves as a species. Afterall, we may not look at ourselves as humans, we may be Martians or Moon-lings.

One thing that is almost certain is that, the initial phases of Lunar and Mars Base Camps, will be felt with some repelling force. Not necessarily from the perspective of conflicts, but more so driven from the lack of cultural structure or a framework that we may have been once familiar with. This means, from the outset, there is going to be a difference in the way we communicate between ourselves, but also Earth itself. Which leads to an impending problem, communication congestion, over-communication, or under-communication. Scarcity of resources, especially in the infancy stages of development, mean that communications will need to be optimised with its capability and capacity extended and made robust over time. But this may be problematic.

Certain cultural backgrounds will expect different levels of communications, being either frequency and/or availability, or even just acceptable languages. Aligning to the point that no one country owns these celestial bodies or planets, mean that there becomes a challenge of sharing communications structures, frameworks, networks, and even basic understandings of what is acceptable, which may effectively lead to an imbalance in trust. Afterall, we would effectively be required to accept a new cultural framework, which sees the acceptance of others, trust towards others, and sharing of resources.

Whilst this human-factor based imbalance is a challenge, this is an opportunity for different cultures to unite, to enable the peaceful development of Outer Space. In essence the biggest constraint to the successful development of Lunar and Mars Base Camps will be linked to human factors, specifically the diversity, language barriers and cultural frameworks that exist on Earth, which ultimately mean, the way we communicate and live will need to operate fundamentally differently.

So, what is the biggest challenge to the future of Space Communications? Human-factors and the diversity factor leading to varied expectations. What is the biggest opportunity? The uniting of human-factors for the betterment of humanity itself.