February 04, 2009

Developing the Free Space game

Posted by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang at 3:28 PM

The first of the Signitific Lab games is based on a scenario I developed around cubesats. Someone asked how I came up with the idea, and I thought explaining it would provide a simple illustration of how futurists work.

I became aware of nanosatellite projects a couple years ago, after reading a report on microsatellites and the future of Third World space programs. I've also been following the DIY movement, and the growing use of amateurs in scientific research. I've also been really interested in what happens when a resource that traditionally has been really precious-- scarce enough to shape the way you work and do science-- becomes essentially free. We've seen how making computational power incredibly cheap has changed the way people do science, and I think you can make a case that cheap sensors and vehicles are having a similar impact on things like public health and oceanography. (You can even see tagged ocean predators as something like very cheap scientific labor.)

The recent NSF decision to put some money into supporting cubesats struck me as a sign that the technology was starting to... well... take off. And cubesats seem to me to be balanced at a point where they can make good use of DIY energies, and because of their low cost, radically alter the economics of space science.

After digging into it a little more, I was impressed by some historical parallels to cubesats. As we all know, in the 1970s, computers were expensive, exclusive, and used by scientists and governments. Within a couple decades, the personal computer democratized access to the technology, and started a revolution in how we work, communicate, and play.

Space, it seemed to me, is like computing in the 1970s, and cubesats could be the Apple II-- the technology that brings it within everyone's reach, and spurs a whole new generation of design and innovation. It was that dynamic that I wanted to explore in the game.