Funding our shared future on the Moon

This summer, at Open Lunar Foundation, we are running #fundafellow, a fundraising campaign for our Fellowship program, www.openlunar.org/fellow. Our Fellowship program has hosted 17 fellows over three years producing 20+ pieces of original research on space economy, resources, design and governance.

RnD in strategic areas for real progress

In 2019, we engaged a variety of volunteers on topics contributing to the vision of lunar settlement. We had regular working groups and sessions, but we needed deeper involvement. Our Fellowship program was created to enable more focussed efforts in key topics. Since then we have hosted 3-5 fellows per cohort, running 3 cohorts each year.

Building productive cohorts

Our fellowship has an acceptance rate of 6%. Applications are open all year round, and anyone can apply at recruit.openlunar.org. Every day there are incredible people who reach out to us to work in our Fellowship program, and we review every application. When we take in a new cohort of fellows, we have a rigorous process where we consider who will succeed in this environment, aim for a balance of different skills, and ensure that we are well equipped to support their research. 

Ideas whose time has come

At Open Lunar we work with companies and countries at a strategic level, and the fellowship program is an excellent source of RnD for novel ideas and possible new focus areas. This program allows maximizing growth of new leaders in the lunar sector, while uncovering pragmatic approaches to complex problems.

Jeffrey Montes, now at Blue Origin, came to us at a turning point in his career as a space architect, having previously focussed on designs for Mars. Jeffrey had already won awards, and yet paths like this are unconventional and risky. He said “you get to these pinch points where you don't know if you're going to make the trapeze jump from one from one bar to another”. We enlisted Jeffrey to work with us to outline landing pads, or spaceports, and design scenarios for how this could actually be built, depending on the level of investment. Jeffrey developed four completely unique designs, and you can find his ideas here. Architecture is not as much a core part of the space community as engineering, so it was a process of invention and bridging worlds; “there were moments in the fellowship, where I felt like something new was just created, and I had the support to chase it down.” Since then, the European Space Agency and NASA have both invested much more heavily in the development of plans for spaceports and landing pads.

Supporting individual strengths

Each fellow is unique and has their own strengths, background, and perspective. We maximize their ability to work with their strengths by finding the win-win topics between what we see as needs in the industry, and what they are passionate and capable of addressing. 

Nivedita Raju joined our fellowship with a career of space law and security issues already under her belt. Living and working across India, Canada, and Sweden, Nivedita had played a key role in projects such as MILAMOS and the Space Court Foundation. She was ready to dedicate her existing knowledge to focus on the Moon: “Even within space law research, I felt like there weren't enough opportunities to dedicate research to the subject of lunar policy. There is no other place that does this in the space community, not one that is this inclusive and that brings so many different kinds of experts to the table together.” Nivedita leveraged her security expertise to compile options for Transparency and Confidence Building Measures (TCBMs) for the Moon, including new ways to declare planned activities in cislunar space. This work is more important than ever, and much of her work has been further built upon by Open Lunar and other organizations. 

Insights from beyond traditional aerospace

Lunar settlement is a holistic endeavor and requires all disciplines to come together to design and develop the approach. We frequently invite fellows from non-space backgrounds to bring their experience to the table to aid in developing this vision. 

Mariam Naseem had previously worked in electrical engineering and business consulting. She was passionate about finding a way into the space industry and was volunteering in many organizations to understand the landscape. “I was very interested in bringing the skills that I already had, and helping to advance our understanding of what a sustainable future could look like on the Moon.” Her strengths in business and engineering are valuable to assess the coming space economy. Together with other fellows and Open Lunars’ team, Mariam tackled lunar communication utility development as an issue. “I was working on the actors in the lunar communication space, and the different considerations around the frequencies, data rates, etc. We explored business models for what future lunar communications would look like.” Her summary of insights from her work can be found here. 

Using lessons from Earth

In the lunar development space in the past two years, space resource management has become a hot topic. As an organization we see a trend like that and venture to set positive precedents to help steer the path forward. In our fellowship program we sought out applicants who could progress this issue in particular and we put an emphasis on it in 2020 and 2021.

Lukas Kuhn joined our program after a masters degree in common pool resource governance. Lukas’ background in earth resource management and sustainability design, informs the way he thinks about space. Lukas said “we shared the thinking of sustainability science, sustainable governance, and social-ecological systems out into the space governance world. We definitely add a new perspective, and I hope that will add value and positive change to the field.” Lukas led multiple research endeavors on management of different aspects of space resources on and around the Moon, including an influential piece on polycentric governance, and a research group on how to use lessons from Earth to manage the Moon.

“The stipend was utterly fundamental”

Fellows could not take on these incredible projects without compensation. When asked what the stipend achieves in their lives they cite focus, dedication, accountability and self confidence. Stipends cover some of the cost of living during the time fellows work on their projects; about $1000USD per month. Some fellows see this as a unique support structure in the sector – “Funding for this kind of research is sadly limited”, the stipend enabled dedicated research time”, and others see it as a necessity – “coming from a lower-income background, I was absolutely incapable of considering any positions that were unpaid. Unpaid experience is the vast majority of early-career policy work, which is an insurmountable barrier to entry.” All our fellows describe the sense of trust that comes from being valued: “The stipend I got in the fellowship was of very high practical and symbolic value. Having a stipend is the clearest way to tell someone that they're valued.” Across backgrounds and income levels of all kinds, offering this modest stipend unlocks an enormous body of contributions from expertise the sector would not normally benefit from. This is why we are running #fundafellow and this is why we want to connect with you, people who can support more of this work going forward.

Invest in future research

In 2022 and beyond, Open Lunar is exploring the importance of lunar infrastructure. This is not new for us, we have invested in spaceport infrastructure design and standards concepts for many years. However, at this moment in time the political and business environment has changed significantly. In order to make it more likely that we’ll see a cooperative approach on the Moon, we are investing in the design and operations of key pieces of infrastructure that everyone will use, and therefore will help bring the lunar community into practical shared technology architectures.

Let’s get it right on the Moon, visit www.openlunar.org/fellow and donate to this work today. If you’d like to explore larger gifts please contact c@openlunar.org to join our esteemed major donor program.