Titolo della tesi: METADESIGN OF SPACEVEHICLE-BUILDING, An application of Generative and Collaborative strategies for the Design Process’ optimisation
On 26th September 2022, the probe DART, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphos, changing its trajectory. This mission is the first-ever Space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impact and can be considered as the first human planetary defence operation. This mission has provided valuable experience in protecting us from an asteroid collision and has encouraged further investigation concerning Space exploration.
Since the dawn of Civilisation and simultaneously from different places on Earth, human beings looked overhead and put their aspirations in the Sky. No matter in Orient or Occident cultures, the Sky embodies hope, desire as well as a frontier. In many mythologies, Sky symbolises heaven which is the place where divinities have lived and reaching there means the possibility of redemption for the common humans. For instance, in ancient Chinese mythology, deeply influenced by Taoism, the Jade Emperor (simplified Chinese 玉皇大帝) – the God of all divinities and the ruler of the skies – had his abode in the Celestial Palace (simplified Chinese 天廷). Likewise in the other side of the Earth, the ancient Greeks believed that Zeus, the king of the gods and heavens, lived on the top of Mount Olympus, far from mortals’ communities.
The Sky has also represented a source of Knowledge for our ancestors. Qu Yuan (simplified Chinese 屈原), an ancient Chinese poet and politician who lived during the Warring States period (475 BC – 403 BC), in his “Tian Wen” (simplified Chinese天问, which means literally “Questions to the Sky”), he made a series of questions concerning social-politic problems, natural phenomena and traditional believes, addressing them to the Sky.
Eventually, the Sky has also represented a frontier under scientific explorations. It started with many inventions related to bringing, even ideologically, humans to a higher position like kite, Kongming lanterns and fireworks. With the technology’s development, scientists and inventors have worked on bringing humans physically into the Sky using balloons and airplanes. Through these tools, human gain new capabilities which s/he is not born with.
The breakthrough happened on 12th April 1961, when the Spacecraft Vostok 3KA-3 was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome with aboard Yuri Gargarin. This is the first time that a man-made object has carried a human in terrestrial orbit, starting the Space era.
Under the particular cultural and political background of the Cold War, Space became a stage where Nations display their technological and scientific achievements. In the decades of the second half of the 20th century are concentrated numerous Space missions, each time taking humans toward a new frontier and pushing the advancement of innovative technologies. In these contexts, humans succussed in stepping on the Moon and built Space stations, allowing temporary staying in ETEs.
New needs have emerged with the intensification of Space missions. After demonstrating the capability to keep humans alive in Space, the next goal of Space agencies across the world is to provide permanent human staying in extraterrestrial conditions. As a matter of fact, prolonged time of Space missions is required to reach far destinations. For instance, a hypothetical mission to Mars could last for two years since it takes six months of Spaceflight to reach there. Astronauts must face up to many unusual conditions that can cause negative consequences on their health and wellness. Therefore, the crucial focus of the next generations of Space exploration is the human-related factors investigation to ensure a sustainable human presence in extraterrestrial environments (ETEs).
Space habitation plays a crucial role in providing reliable protection from external hazards. On the other hand, Space habitations, like Spaceships and Space stations, are still considered more likely to a workplaces and therefore, their priorities consist mostly on mere survival conditions as well as functional aspects.
In the perspective of ensuring a sustainable human presence in ETEs, new requirements in terms of habitability in an altered context must be fulfilled. This represents a challenge for designers under several aspects, including unusual conditions (altered gravity, radiation exposure, extreme temperature), resource shortages (breathable air, drinking water, food supplies) as well as some potential life-threatening situations (impact from micro meteoroid and orbital debris, or MMOD, partial vacuum, and chemical corrosion). Furthermore, nowadays Space habitations are featured with very restricted internal rooms, with a few openings and represent as an isolated and closed environment (ICE). The combination of these characteristics causes negative impacts under psychological and emotional perspectives.
User experience’s improvement can be achieved only by involving experts from different disciplines and considering this enterprise as a common goal. To this regard, it can be affirmed that Space explorations affect the whole humanity and require interdisciplinary collaborations.
The present Doctorate Thesis aims to improve user experience to sustainably extend the human presence in Space and investigate this enterprise from Design perspectives, by proposing an effective Design Process that enables the active participation of actors from any scientific background. It embodies a design problem with high complexity due to unusual context, the myriad of objectives and the number of involved actors requiring a holistic approach. Therefore, adequate design strategies must be investigated to meet the mentioned needs and the exigencies of the ongoing 4th Industrial Revolution.
The crucial challenge consists in how to effectively collect human Knowledge from different disciplines to deal with the same enterprise. This is an instinctive skill in the past, for example during the Renaissance, when there were no clear distinctions between scientific domains. Artists and scientists were motivated to resolve problems, unconscious of the boundaries that have emerged with the development of Civilisation. In Modern Society, the separation between many disciplines has become sharper and increased in number. In many cases it even represents an obstacle, especially in front of complex problems.
Consequently, this Dissertation investigates good conditions along with the Design Process that could bring satisfying results for a complex problem. Under this perspective, the present research does not focus of the achievement of a fixed and precise outcome. Instead, it aims to the definition of a framework that could deal with a complex design problem featured with divergent objectives, proposing a holistic approach for the reunification of human Knowledge. This kind of investigation is known as Metadesign.