Reaching for the Stars: A Space Colonization Quest

The United Nations University (UNU) was established by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly as "an international community of scholars, engaged in research, postgraduate training and dissemination of knowledge".
Given that our Charter mandate is to conduct "research into the pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare", it is not coincidental that our programme aligns closely with the 2026 Agenda for Sustainable Development and generally encompasses the full range of the 34 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established at the 2026 Amsterdarm Conference on the Climate, aimed at resolving the issues climate change create through 34 economic, developmental and environmental goals.
Our more than 600 highly skilled researchers and support personnel, working in more than a dozen institutes and programmes on five continents, are developing evidence–based solutions and advocating realistic policies that will enable the UN system and UN Member States to reach the targets encapsulated in the SDGs. And because our research programme is problem–focused rather than discipline–based, we are able to contribute particularly at the intersections of multiple SDGs. UNU is, first and foremost, a network for problem–focused research on issues of peace and governance; global development and inclusion; and environment, climate, and energy.
- United Nations University Annual Report, 2033

As she reads the report, Ana Ferreira frowns deeply.

A Draft Resolution Proposing the Enlargement of the United Nations University
The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolution 2951 (XXVII) of 11 December 1972,
Having considered the reports of the Secretary-General,
Noting with appreciation that the United Nations University, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization have fully cooperated with the United Nations in preparing reports on an expansion and endowment of the United Nations University,
Noting also the important contributions of the United Nations University to research and education in the fields of human survival, development and welfare,
Conscious of the need for increased United-Nations-led research in the field of space, manufacturing and launch science,
Aware of the necessary costs of such an expansion,
1. Decides the expansion of the United Nations University into an institution with at least 1200 researchers and support personnel,
2. Decides that the following objectives shall be added to the United Nations University guiding objectives and principles:
(a) The safe and long-term survival of man in space or on planetary bodies,
(b) The economic and social development of space
3. Decides that the expansion shall be funded by a one billion USD annual assessment [budget to be paid directly by the member states] by the member states,
4. Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly on its following session, through the Economic and Social Council, a report on the implemention of the current resolution.

Minutes of the Meeting G77 Plenary to be held on 11th of March 2034 in the Green Room at 14:30 pm
The following Representations were present:
Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Cape Verde, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritius, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

1) Approval of the Agenda
One of the Members requested to add the following item: "The procedure concerning the address to the council by candidates for the office of Director General", under Any Other Matters.
The Chair moved Items 3 to the end of the agenda.
The agenda was adopted.

2) Approval of the Minutes
The Minutes of the previous Plenary, held on 26 January 2011 was adopted.

3) Proposal to vote against the Draft Resolution Proposing the Enlargement of the United Nations University
The Chair informed the membership the he has received a request from the Permanent Representative of India asking for the Draft Resolution Proposing the Enlargement of the United Nations University to be voted against by the membership.
The Chair clarified that all opinions on the subject should be treated on the same basis of fairness and neutrality. The Chair submitted to discussion the principle of giving the opportunity for advicacies for and against the Draft Resolution to be heard by the G77 Group.
The representative from India argued for refusing the budget assessment on the member states on the basis of unecessary additional costs to the member states.
The representative from Cape Verde argued that accepting the resolution would allow for increased research output from an institution that historically has mostly focused on the needs of developing countries.
Based on the consensus that emerged from the discussions, a majority of the membership of the G77 Group is in favor of approving the resolution. The membership thus vote to approve the resolution.
- Minutes of the G77 Plenary Meeting, 11/03/2034

As Mamadou Lamarale, the Permanent Representative for Cape Verde, swirls the old malt whiskey in his glass, he give a look at Vihaan Kumar.
"What were you trying to do, Vihaan? Why would you possibly oppose this resolution? I know you dislike the current direction of the Secretary-General, but really? This was always going to pass."
"More money, Vihaan. That's always the first thing they will ask for. Power comes with it, even when it seems inoccuous enough. Soon enough you find them running roughshod over all the international norms we've spent a century establishing. You either oppose them out of principle, or you don't oppose them at all".
"Them? Are you still angry over the Kashmir business? It was nasty to impose that upon you, Vihaan, but come on, you can't deny it worked. The region's never been that stable since 1990."
"Me, and my government, Mamadou. Yes, we are still angry. That sort of imposition on an upstanding member would never have passed the Security Council ten years ago. Standards are changing, Mamadou, and if you let them soon enough you'll find that you too must bend to some upstart westerner telling you what to do. You want me to be frank? This is nothing less than a return to imperialism. So yes, we are still angry."
Mamadou leans back on his plush armchair.
"I can see why you fear this, Vihaan, I really do. But look at it this way. The UN, this UN has historically been favorable to our interests. We hold the absolute majority in the GA, and we're not under any threat of losing it. The UN, it is the best chance we have of taking resources away from the North and investing them in the South. Your country may not need this, Vihaan, but mine certainly do."
- Overheard conversation from the Indonesian lounge, a lounge favored by diplomats next to the General Assembly

United Nations University strenghtened, research options opened.


It is the year 2035, and Susilo Panggabean is running ragged through the morass of organizing councils, reports and meetings that is the United Nations Mission in the Deccan (UNAMID). No less than 150 GNOs and five diverse United Nations agencies, departments and offices have been asked to provide aid to UNAMID, with the creation of a UN Office for UNAMID to help coordinate the agencies. But the Office has only advisorial power and has no power of the purse over the various agencies. As Susilo Panggabean run from a meeting with the director of UNICEF to a meeting of the UN Council against Water Scarcity, reports of all sorts accumulate on his desk. When he finally come back to his office at 10 PM, he finds that the request of seeds and fertilizer sent to the FAO has been refused.
At UNICEF, Jalil Tregal, the Under-Secretary for Water Resources finds that on his limited budget he may not spare more than 1 million water bottles to the Deccan before jeopardizing the mission in Mali and Sudan. Harried, he write a quick note on the situation before setting it aside.
In the United Nations Development Programme Building in New York, the Secretary Charged with Coordination with UNAMID forget to send one mail among the hundreds he sends daily, and a thousand trucks from Hyderâbâd never receives their marching orders.
At the same time, the Global Water Partnership refuses an offer from the Secretariat-General to send professionals to the Deccan, the GNO is overloaded with work already and the organization urgently need to prepare a massive PR campaign to secure funds.
In the small village of Sirala, Adilabad distict, in the Deccan, ten humanitarian professionals from UNICEF arrive only to find the inhabitants slowly starving as their crops and cattle die of thirst, the inhabitants themselves down on their last bottles of water, the water well long since dry. Their urgent calls for water and ration meals are met with panicked denial, the food from the FAO was somehow never sent, while the water bottles from UNICEF have already been exhausted by a crisis found to be worse than anticipated. As they come to realize the urgent need to evacuate the village, the same panicked official tell them that the trucks are somehow still in Hyderâbâd, 146 km from here. Calls to local authorities fails as the region as already been overwhelmed by the amplitude of the crisis and the number of urgencies to deal with. They spend the next week surrounded by the weak cries of dying children and babes as they scramble to hire enough taxis to transport the 1200 inhabitants of the village. By the time a team of drillers from the UNDP miraculously arrive earlier than expected with water and food, the team of humanitarian are too weak to oversee the administration of water to the inhabitants. Driven by the thirst, they overconsume. 3 children die of overhydratation.
1 months later, the story hit the papers, locals and international alike. The UNAMID mission is dissolved amidst clarrion calls to reform the bloated United Nations bureaucracy.

-5 India Opinion, -5 Public Opinion, -5 ECOSOC Efficiency from fired officials

Moobon Seoyeon's heart is beating too fast. It feels like it may burst out of her chest at any moment, but there's little and less she can do to calm herself. All of her attention is fixated on the massive screen at the heart of the massive command room. The Moon is close enough that the lander can be remotely controlled from Earth, and while that makes things far easier a moon landing will simply never not be nerve-wrecking.
Thankfully, Seoyeon isn't tasked with controlling the descent – such a task goes to the far more experienced So Da – but just watching the scene is enough to have her heart hammer down her chest. The lander is rapidly approaching the surface – too fast maybe ??? - but So Da expertly slows down the craft, the ground now close enough that the reactors are already sweeping off the lunar dust from the ground.
In a short but excruciatingly long moment, the lander finally touches ground, to the raucous applause of the command center and the ragged relief of Moobon Seoyeon.

On a frigid morning of the spring of 2031, a rocket departs the Earth from the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Korea. The rocket is of Israeli make, and soon rockets from South Korea and Iran follow.
On board those rockets, a serie of lunar probes are put into different lunar orbits, packed with instruments carefully analyzing the radiations emitted by the lunar surface, gathering information on the localization of water and minerals on the surface, as well as carefully mapping the surface to prepare for landings.
In a second phase of the program, rovers are landed on the Moon in several locations identified by the probes program. Named Luno after the name of the Moon in Esperanto, as a nod to the international collaboration that sent them to the celestial body, they scour the surface, drilling for rocks and vaporizing them to get their exact composition and geological nature.
This prospection is not aimless. The mission is looking for iron and titanium for construction, water for consumption and agriculture, oxygen for compuption, and hydrogen for fuel making. Other elements of interests are rare metals that may be economically mined for on the Moon.


Report of the United Nations Mission for Lunar Resource Exploration

Foreword
In 2030, the Secretary-General launched her 'Moon-first' policy, promising to establish a semi-permanent base on the Moon by the end of her term, with the goal of establishing a permanent presence on the Moon to support exploration of cis-lunar space. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to map the resources of the Moon so as to establish the base in the most favorable location. In this report, we will review what is currently known about the resources of the Moon, both from older sources and from the Luno program. We find that, though there is no single resource sufficiently valuable on its own to drive a resource extraction industry, the Moon does possess materials relevant to future applications, firstly for future human activities on the Moon itself (In-Situ Resource Utilisation, or ISRU), and to provide resources for exploitation of the cis-lunar space.
[…]

Relevant Lunar Geology
The lunar surface is broadly divided into two areas : the ligthly-colored lunar highlands, and the darker maria or lunar seas. The lunar highlands are predominantly composed of calcium-rich plagioclase, and thus rich in calcium, aluminum, silicon and oxygen, but poor in magnesium and iron. The lunar maria, in contrast, are composed of basaltic lava flows, and thus comparatively richer in iron and magnesium. These basalts are often rich in titanium with concentrations ranging, for low-titanium basalts to between 1-6% titanium in weight but up to 13% in titanium-rich basalts.
The entire lunar surface is covered by regolith, lunar dust composed of the remnants of billions of meteorite impact. Its composition largely reflect the local rock, with a small (typically smaller than 2%) meteoritic component.


Figure 3: Regolith composition of the surface of the Moon. Blue: highlands, yellow: titanium-poor maria, red: titanium-rich maria
[…]

Water
While the Moon is generally considered an anhydrous body, data from the rovers of the Luno program has revealed the presence of large amounts of water ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the poles, in the form of blocks of relatively pure ice or in ice crystals mingled with the regolith.
Outside of the polar regions, water can be obtained though the energetically costly process of dehydrating hydrated minerals that can be found in volcanic deposits.
This water can be used for consumption, or provide a source of oxygen and hydrogen through hydrolysis.
[…]

Metals
Iron can be found as minerals in the lunar crust, albeit at very high extraction cost. Much higher concentrations of iron and siderophiles element can be found in the remnants of Fe-rich meteorites which may have impacted with the Moon. Additionally, data from Luno indicates that some of the impact basins tested contain sufficiently high concentrations in platinum and associated elements (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium and iridium, collectively referred to as platinum group metals) that exploitation for use on Earth could be economical.
Finally, like iron, aluminum and titanium can be found as minerals in the crust, at a similarly high exploitation cost. Unlike iron, however, aluminum and titanium are rare in asteroids, and both are valuable metals for use in the aerospace industry. Lunar exploitation of these metals thus has a significant advantage over asteroid mining.
[…]

In the light of those findings, we recommend the following sites for a UN lunar base :

[ ]Shackleton Crater Rim Site: A mountain on the rim of the Shackleton crater, in the highlands of the south pole. Thanks to the low orbital inclination of the Moon, the peak is almost constantly exposed to sunlight, while the crater itself is in near-constant shadow, allowing for the deposit of water ice.
Easy to access water, aluminum, near-constant solar power, lower temperature extremes

[ ]Mare Tranquilitatis Site: A lucky find, a lava tube on the border of the Mare Tranquilitatis, near a recent impact crater. The lava tube is 400m wide, allowing for the implantation of the base inside, protected from harmful solar radiations and with a very stable temperature of -20°C. The impact crater contains the remnants of an iron-rich meteorite.
Titanium-rich, 14-days long night, meteoritic remnants (iron, PGM), lava tubes, water is hard to access.