The Regolith House In 2053 the first permanent lunar settlement was not a dome or a lava-tube city. It was six buried habitats on the rim of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole. Each habitat was a 12-meter-diameter cylindrical pressure…

The Sweeper’s Orbit In 2097 the orbital graveyard above Earth was full. More than 36,000 tracked objects larger than 10 cm orbited between 300 and 2,000 km altitude—spent upper stages, defunct satellites, fragments from 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision, 2007 Chinese ASAT test,…

The Shield Wall In 2091 the first permanent habitat at Sun-Earth L4 was not a gleaming city in space. It was a stack of six cylindrical pressure vessels, each 22 meters long and 8 meters in diameter, bolted end-to-end like a…