Space Wombism

The Next Billion Years of Human Shelter. The forthcoming book by Anastasia Prosina, with a foreword by Frank White.

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On shelter as humanity’s defining act, and how spacecraft shape human consciousness across cosmic timescales.

Space architecture begins with a hard fact: Earth supplies breathable air for free, and a habitat in space does not. Off Earth, air is an engineered system, made and held stable every minute by hardware, software, and continuous power. Space Wombism examines what follows when shelter itself becomes that system, and when whoever owns and operates it holds power over everyone inside.

The Argument

Life support is not a background utility. It is political infrastructure. Cabin pressure, oxygen, carbon-dioxide limits, redundancy, and control of the reactor decide how people think, work, and survive, and who holds authority before a settlement ever writes its charter. From Apollo 1 and the ISS to the commercial stations and lunar habitats being specified today, the book shows that the design of atmosphere and enclosure is inseparable from the organization of power, risk, and collective life. The party that operates the air operates the habitat, and that layer is being settled now, largely out of view.

Foreword

“Who would have thought that an organic image like the womb might be our new vision of space habitats? Well, space architect Anastasia Prosina has.”
Frank White, author of The Overview Effect, who wrote the book's foreword.