In 2020, design lecturer Dr Russell Kennedy was invited by the World Design Organisation (WDO) and NASA’s International Space Station to help design and develop the Orbital University: a university based out of the International Space Station.
Now, he and his team are hard at work on an integral step towards realising the University’s potential: they’re developing an immersive communication system to help enhance the experience of Orbital University students on earth.
Below, he discusses his journey into reimagining space as an accessible frontier, his hopes and experiments, and the incredible and subversive power of design thinking.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that it is the year 2032
You, reader, are one of the millions of humans who still reside on this blue planet. High above you, the face of space is changing. Astronauts are emptying out of their respective stations to make for a new space station that orbits the moon, while luxury spaceflight is a commonality and the idea of going to Mars is less of a broad theory and more of an actionable plan. But while like many others, you remain gravity-bound to Earth, you’re part of space’s broader change as well.
For recently, you’ve enrolled in a new university: one that promises to beam your consciousness up into the body of a robot, which you’ll control to work alongside, collaborate with and learn from actual astronauts in actual space. And getting there is simple: all you’ll need to do is strap on a VR headset, lie back on a zero-gravity emulating piece of furniture, and log in.
If Dr Russell Kennedy’s work goes according to plan, the above scenario could soon be less sci-fi pitch and more tangible reality. For the past year and a half, the Deakin design lecturer has been seriously exploring and building out the concept of a ‘telepresence and microgravity simulation system’ that’ll help students connect to a university based out of the International Space Station (the ISS). Or, in layman’s terms? He’s investigating how to help students on Earth feel like they’re ‘studying in space’.
Russell’s focus on making space accessible began in late 2020, when he was invited by NASA and the World Design Organisation to imagine a new future for the International Space Station (the ISS).
‘Funding for the ISS runs out in the next few years, but NASA is happy for it (the ISS) to continue orbiting if they can find a different form of funding for it,’ Russell said, ‘which is where we came in. And while some of us were talking about privatisation and exploring some of NASA’s other questions, like whether the ISS could be transformed into a business incubator, I wanted to explore their idea of starting an orbital university by 2050.
Something we all agreed on was that from space, you get a different vantage point of the world; it’s something astronauts call the Overview Effect. Suddenly you go from thinking of the Earth as this huge place to seeing it’s quite vulnerable, a little blue marble. This vantage point helps us see the issues that we’ve really got to start dealing with, these bigger wicked problems, rather than pretending they’re going to go away.’
So the idea was to create what NASA were calling an ‘orbital university’; a university that’s virtually located on the station, which gives students who enrolled in the university first-hand access to astronauts and space-based experiments. The aim would be to nurture some of the world’s best and brightest talents (in this university), to solve some of Earth’s most pressing challenges.’
Building an out-of-earth concept
The idea of a space-based university might seem humble in comparison to the recent expansion-focused innovations of the space industry. But, says Russell, it’s an idea that feels true to the purpose of the International Space Station and his views of what space should be.
‘When you think about it there will be other space stations like the International Space Station, that will orbit Earth, and their focus will always be connected to Earth. It makes sense that the aim of space research should always prioritise Earth, its health and its biggest challenges. ‘Design in Space for Life on Earth’ was the mantra of the WDO-ISS Orbital University workshop in 2020.’
He and his team also drew inspiration from the words of Christa McAuliffe, the first school teacher and civilian selected to go to space.
‘She (McAuliffe) used to say, space is for everybody; it’s not just for a select group of astronauts, or for a few people in science or maths. It’s a new frontier out there, and it’s everybody’s business to know about space. That’s why we hope this university will be accessible to everyone really; that’s what we’re trying to achieve.’
In fact, he adds, McAuliffe served as such a guiding light, his design team considered naming their proposed university after her.
‘We’d like to honour her legacy, but respectfully understand that it will need her family’s blessing.’
With the support of an international team of space scientists and design stakeholders, the university concept quickly began to take shape. The Orbital University would take the form of an ‘open-collaboration platform’ that, via remote uplink, welcomed both dedicated Orbital University students and students taking special credits from other universities. It would, the team hoped, be realised in physical form by 2050. And it would offer academic courses and research opportunities for a wide range of fields, including in STEM as well as arts, creative arts, psychology and more.
‘You know, in the future, you could even use the Orbital University to conduct in-person experiments. There are 16 sunsets and sunrises each day with dramatically different temperatures – the opportunity to expose materials to extreme conditions like this is valuable, to test or improve their capabilities. One of the guys on our teams was a horticulturist, and he wondered about testing growing plants that require very little water but which grow quite quickly and have high protein. A spaceship would be a perfect place to test that.
My point is: the potential of the University is enormous.’
But there were still some challenges. For one, there were only certain windows in which students could connect to the International Space Station. For another, there was the question of how to affectively situate remotely-linked students within the space station.
Probing the outer edges of possibility
When it came to the latter question, Russell possessed a secret advantage. He practiced ‘design thinking’: an iterative process of design wherein he continually challenged his own assumptions and expectations of a product, all with the needs of the end user in mind. He follows the Stanford model of design thinking, which proposes five stages of design development: empathy, discovery, ideation, prototyping and testing.
‘What historically happened in design was, designers would only be engaged when the client knew what they wanted. These days, designers get involved, using design thinking, prior to the client’s final decision on a product. It’s about testing and developing that works for all stakeholders – client and user.
I think design thinking is really important to do, because what happens is, people come in with their own preconceived ideas of what they want to do or achieve, which is great. But where design thinking comes in is, it really promotes innovation.
A really important part of design thinking is the concept that it’s important to fail within the process. If you don’t fail, you’re not pushing your ideas hard enough. What normally happens when we don’t go through the design thinking process is, our ideas fall short of the edge needed for innovation, because we’re too afraid of failure.’
There are, arguably, many similarities between design thinking and NASA’s approach to space. (It’s arguably part of the reason why Russell’s contributions were considered so valuable in the first place.) But in the months since the NASA workshops have concluded, Russell and a new team of Deakin researchers have been applying his design thinking to a ‘natural follow-on project’, driven by what Russell calls his ‘lifelong captivation with space’.
‘This new project asks the next question in this Orbital University’s journey, which is: how will students engage with the space station through remote uplink?’ he says. ‘Which means, right now, we’re trying to explore how we can really immerse future students in this sense of being in space, in an effective and low-cost way. To help, we’ve been provided with a virtual reality 3D model of the ISS, to help us map out our students’ remote engagement with and experience of the space station.
We believe we can do it. Currently, we plan to recreate the experience of space through clever furniture choices and a VR headset. The headset will put students into the perspective of an Astrobee, a small robot, while further equipment will allow them to control the Astrobee’s ‘hands’ and movements, which in turn will help them feel as close to ‘being an astronaut’ as possible.
The question of how to simulate the weightlessness of space is less clear, but we’re confident we’ll find a way to trick the brain through the right combination of physical motion and immersive vision.’
Russell’s current aim is to develop a product that can be sent to Orbital University students, via flat-pack, which will help simulate the experience of zero gravity. Options on the table for creating this sense of weightlessness include: a yoga ball, a hammock, a Teslasuit, or even a massage chair whose vibrations simulate the ‘sensation of moving through space’. So long as costs are roughly under $1000, Russell says, it’s all on the table.
‘We don’t know if this physical immersion will help with the emotive immersion,’ he says, ‘but that’s one of the things we’re planning on studying.
‘But we don’t want it to feel like a ride, It has to feel real. So it would be augmented reality, rather than VR. We’re hoping we can get remote students to experience, for example, the feeling of a spacewalk. That’s what we want.’
He adds that while the project is still in its early days, he’s been surprised (and delighted) by the support he’s received from space and space-related bodies so far.
‘This technology, really, could be applied to any remote space initiative; currently we’re in conversation with the Australian Space Agency and Axiom (a commercial space station due to be operational in 2024.) The project also got a boost when Olga Bannova (a space architect and world-leader in her industry) from the University of Houston joined the team.’
For now, the future of the Orbital University – or any other space-based university – remains several years out of reach. But, says Russell, he’ll continue to pursue the research and do the design work needed to make the ‘university of all universities’ a success.
The future is coming – and he plans to be one of the people drawing it ever-closer.
Discover more about Design at Deakin at deakin.edu.au/design. Learn more about the other design projects our researchers are exploring at motionlab.deakin.edu.au.