ROAM

Ad astra per aspera

Space Exploration and Colonization - all systems, vehicles, environments

Preparing for Life on Other Worlds and in Exosolar Starship Habitats

A Program within the TETRAD Institute of Complex System Dynamics


The objective of ROAM is to establish a self-sustaining framework architecture and implementation for spaceships and other structures including habitation environments, mobile and stationary, for humans and intelligent machines to live and work together in the exploration and inhabitation of other worlds in space.

ROAM is the most complex imaginable Program and it has many component projects. These include all of the following and things not listed here but careful thought can lead to their consideration as well.

  • Habitats and all environmental, energy, and infrastructure requirements for populations of humans, animals, plants, and robots, living and working together

  • Energy sources and methods of transformation, storage, and utiliation

  • Obtaining raw materials for use in a variety of chemical operations for production of gases, liquids, and solids needed for life support and for construction and assembly of many types of structures to be used upon "land" (e.g., Moon, planet, or some in-space base( and on long-duration space flights

  • Biological adaptation - thus, the close tie-in with the Mugenics Program of this Institute

  • Propulsion technologies to minimze the length of flights anywhere including within the (local) Sol System

  • Psychological and social adaptation and change for the different type of life required (again, the Mugenics Program)

  • New form of agriculture, new forms of human culture, neew forms of human-machine(robot) culture

This is, we repeat, not "Star Trek" or "Star Wars". This is REALITY.


Some of the fudamentals about ROAM are in the ASTRIC Project. Go read some of the older materials.

We suggest here and now that the ROAM doe involve a starship capable of voyaging far beyond the boundaries of our present "home" solar system. But this ROAM "ship" will not look like the Enterprise or anything out of fmiliar NASA or Hollywood visions or designs or things actually built in the past. Such a ROAM will be more of a colony that grows by acquisition of materials through visits and encournters. This will be built using what the ROAMers find and acquirre on different worlds - planets, moons, asteroids, comets. It will be more like Arthur C. Clarke's "RAMA" perhaps.

We really are just at the very Beginning.

But we state, unequivocally, strongly, emphatically:

Ad Astra per aspera

and we share the Spirit of the Future as expressed in modern times:

"Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here."
    --- "Cooper" in "Interstellar"


"Stepping out into the universe, we must confront the reality of interstellar travel. We must reach far beyond our lifespans. We must think not as individuals but as a species."
    --- "Professor Brand" in "Interstellar"


"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one."
    --- "Spock" in "Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan"



This page and others on this site are not yet finalized, so this is only a placeholder. Contact us to learn more about this Program underway!

Comprising TETRAD Institute is a faculty comprised of Fellows, Mentors, Researchers and Visitors. There are organizational affiliations with multiple universities and other institutions but the Institute and PRIMUS Center are independent from any other external institution. (The mission and activities are consistent and similar to some of the original motivations and founding ideas of the Institute for Advanced Study, Perimeter, Kavli, and several others worldwide.)

Read more about the Institute organization and people HERE.