When Do We Move to Mars? (or the Moon)

The maximum number of humans who can currently fit in orbit at once is 14. That's the combined capacity of the International Space Station, the Chinese space station Tiangong, and the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Ariel Ekblaw, aerospace architect and CEO of the Aurelia Institute, points out this startling fact to frame the central challenge: space isn't short on ambition—it's short on real estate. "The challenge for doing this is no longer the rocket," she says. "It's the real estate. It's really real estate and construction."

What a Space Architect Actually Does

Ekblaw defines her field by what it's trying to replace. Current space stations are built as "aluminum tin cans, very fancy pressure cylinders" welded on Earth, then launched inside rockets whose size limits how big any room can be. The ISS is "a lot of little claustrophobic rooms bolted together in space," assembled by astronauts in EVA suits manually connecting pieces—"a human in an EVA suit with a little thin layer of fabric protecting you from the vacuum of space." This is physically exhausting, especially for women, since spacesuits haven't been designed for smaller bodies. "It can be hard to even just move the fingers in the gloves."