Bass Connections consists of university-wide multidisciplinary team courses
“Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History” (2024-25)
This project brings together scholars and students from across the university to explore human expansion into space through the history of planetary exploration, settlement and colonization on Earth. The team will investigate what lessons past experiences on Earth may offer for future communities off-Earth, from Norwegians settling Iceland in the 870s C.E. through the Mayflower Compact in 1620. Team members will investigate whether the long history of company-led colonization, such as the East India or Hudson’s Bay Companies, might inform policy decisions by and about the ambitions of corporations like SpaceX or Blue Origin. The team will also consider the consequences of encounters with life on other planets in light of the legal, cultural, etiological and environmental impacts of past settler encounters with indigenous human, animal, plant and microbial life.
“Going to Mars: Science, Society and Sustainability” (2020-21)
This project team developed and examined a series of risk-based decision scenarios of the settlement of Mars. Team members developed analyses and recommendations on key elements of settling Mars, drawing on tools from multiple disciplines including science, engineering, history, economics, ethics, law and international relations.