Diversity in Space: How we can ensure equality within future space settlements

Since the 60’s Space Race, strides have been made within the space industry.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic was the world’s first commercial spaceline, while Elon Musk’s SpaceX hopes to enable the colonisation of Mars. Jeff Bezos, who owns sub-orbital spaceflight service, Blue Origin, has said he foresees a trillion people living in millions of space colonies.

While advancements in space tech have moved, one area where the dial has stalled is diversity. The figure of women in the international space industry is just 20% - a figure that hasn’t changed much since 1990. Within that figure, only 11% of astronauts have been women. And just four Black women in history have been to space, including Nasa astronaut Jessica Watkins, who made history in 2021 after becoming the first black woman to lead the International Space Station (ISS).

The fight for equality is still raging on Earth, so how can we be expected to create equality in space?

We speak to Jesse Shanahan is Chief Technology Officer at Another Round, Astrophysicist and Disability Activist, to examine exactly what human settlements in space will look like, how we can achieve equality in space and what more the space industry can do to increase representation.

Passionate about AI Ethics, Jesse is a machine learning dev at heart. Day to day she heads up the technical innovation at Another Round, leading and growing the technical team and strengthening their training methodology. Prior to joining Another Round, Jesse was Technical Lead of Applied AI at Peltarion, an AI software company which in June 2022 was acquired by the video game developer King, where she focused on democratising AI. 

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