I will share highlights of more than three years of research investigating how people will live in space from a technical perspective, and its implications for economics, society, and the future of both human civilization and non-human species. Acknowledging the limits imposed by forecasting the future, I nonetheless reach some startling conclusions driven by fundamental limitations of resources, time, and distance, as well as practical considerations. I will end my talk by discussing how Orbital Assembly is helping to achieve this future by designing, constructing and operating large-scale, sustained, habitable structures with gravity on-orbit, in cislunar space, and throughout the solar system.

As co-founder and vice-president of science and research at Orbital Assembly, Jeffery Greenblatt plays many roles, including project management, technical analysis, research, cost estimation, market assessment, and fundraising. He currently leads development of the Pioneer-class space station, which will be the first commercial station on orbit with artificial gravity for manufacturing, training, research, and entertainment. A well-known expert in energy analysis, climate policy and sustainable transportation, he began expanding his focus to emerging space technologies in 2014, and founded Emerging Futures, LLC, an environmental and space consultancy, in 2016. Greenblatt also hosts the Our Future In Space podcast about the implications of humans living throughout the solar system. Prior to that, he served as a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has worked in research and management capacities at Google, Environmental Defense Fund, Princeton University and the NASA Ames Research Center. He has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. in Physics and Chemistry from Haverford College.