Scots prisoners help design space colonies
An Edinburgh University professor has turned prison inmates’ attention to the stars, to remind them there is life behind bars.
The ‘Life Beyond’ project, an initiative of the UK Centre for Astrobiology “to take astrobiology into the prison environment”, asks inmates to share their experiences of living in a highly-centralised, tightly-controlled community to help inform and design future space colonies.
Professor Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh, founded the project in 2016 with a series of visits to prisons in Scotland including HMP Shotts, Edinburgh, Glenochil and Lowmoss.
“This sounds a bit strange, but I’ve always had this idea that prisons are a bit like Moon and Mars stations – confined groups of people, isolated from the rest of society,” he said.
“If you need to ask someone what it’s like to live in a confined planetary station for several years, then surely prisoners have the best idea how to do this. I literally wrote an email during a lunch break, this would have been eight years ago, to Jim King who was head of education at the Scottish Prison Service.”
Prof Cockell found himself giving talks to inmates to see if any prisoners would be interested in taking part. “I gave a series of talks to different prisons, like Lowmoss, Edinburgh and Glenochil, and what resulted from that was a four or five-week programme, where prisoners would design their own settlements on the Moon and Mars,” he said.
“In a sort of quite rough way, we think about prisons as being similar to planetary stations in that people have experience of confinement and getting on in small groups of people. So prisoners have a sort of unique experience of living in a rather close-knit, institutional environment. We thought that maybe they've got some interesting insights on how we can successfully explore other planets in isolation.”
The project, which has now been run several times in HMP Glenochil and HMP Edinburgh, has produced two books. Life Beyond: From Prison to Mars was published in 2018 and presents their Mars station designs. The second book, Life Beyond, From Prison to the Moon, presents their lunar station designs and the first long-term exploration and settlement plans for the Moon developed by prisoners.
“We normally have about 20 people who take part, and it just gives them an opportunity to contribute to something interesting,” Prof Cockell said.
“Space exploration is something that interests a lot of people. There’s a lot of public interest in it. And by publishing a book at the end of it, they’ve actually produced something tangible, then those books are put out to space agencies and to people interested in developing Mars missions.”
The project has a tangible impact on the prisoners themselves, too. “We have got feedback from them,” said Prof Cockell. “And I think they enjoy having the opportunity to think about something outside the prison environment, to think about space exploration.
“They’ve also said that they really enjoy working in groups with fellow prisoners and use that time to socialise over something that is serious study of some sort. It also provides a distraction, something bigger to think about, how humans will expand civilisation and move out beyond the Earth.
“These are great questions for anyone, but they’re particularly valuable for anyone in the prison environment who wants to be able to just have a bit of escapism and think about something else.”
In particular, the mental health and self-esteem of prisoners is improved by the project. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to have a chance to give their own ideas and expertise about something,” he said. “We find that many who are in prison don’t necessarily have an opportunity to express expertise. They just get given a routine they have to follow.
“And for someone to come from the outside and say ‘we
Prisons are a bit like Moon and Mars stations – confined groups of people, isolated from the rest of society Professor Charles Cockell
want to design this space station, how do you think we should do this?’, they’ve said has been really fulfilling for them.
“I think it’s very eye-opening: the idea that they might actually have some expertise about how we go out into space and someone else will listen to what they have to say about that.”
In the first week of the course, participants consider what challenges there are to living on Mars. In groups of four or five, they design their own station, although movement between groups to share ideas and knowledge is encouraged throughout.
In the second week, the prisoners transition into designing their own Mars station, incorporating the challenges identified in the first week, such as oxygen and food production. They focus on an intensive effort to consolidate the station design and its key features, according to Prof Cockell.
“It’s not just about science, it’s also about art,” he said. “They’ve made paintings of Mars bases. They’ve done creative writing. We held a competition in Glenochil where they wrote their first email from home back to their families back on Earth. It’s a really interesting creative process.”
In 2020 and 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK Centre for Astrobiology developed stand-alone materials that any participant can use from a prison cell or learning centre either on their own or with others.
The materials come with an educator’s guide to inform prison teachers about the course and how to implement it. There is a set of short activities that prisoners can do in an afternoon and a full course that takes two to three months. The materials take the participants through the design of a Mars or lunar settlement, getting them to write letters, draw designs, even to contribute to a Lunar and Martian cookbook.