Vaissnavi Shukl
I’ll be honest, I love movies about the outer space. I have probably seen Interstellar more times than an undergraduate architecture students should be allowed to, but I never really thought about it as an architect. I never thought of the extraterrestrial species as real estate, or that the extraterrestrials realm could be privatised. I never thought about the life of satellites or how they die and I definitely never thought about what happens to the debris after they are decommissioned. Not until I saw Rajji’s master’s thesis presentation at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. I was truly blown away when I heard her talk about space waste, and how these objects are attached to what I and the spacecraft cemeteries. So today, we are in conversation with urban climate researcher and designer Rajji Desai about the afterlife of orbital infrastructures and how these objects in outer space have an influence and everything that spans from the Earth’s high orbits to its high seas.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.

Hi Rajji, it’s so, so exciting to have you here today and, you know, be on Architecture Off Centre. We’re here today to talk about your thesis, which has been fascinating. So tell us a little bit about your thesis and I think more importantly, how did you end up in the outer space?

Rajji Desai
Thank you so much Vaissnavi for having me on this amazing venture of yours. I am really, really thankful to you for that, that you considered me worthy to speak something that I keep doing all the time. This was fairly recent in kind of like my academic trajectory. I had graduated from undergrad where I’d done a similar kind of investigation for my undergraduate thesis, which looked at the ship breaking industry in India, you know, is one of the world’s largest. It’s actually the world’s largest shipping industry. And so I was always fascinated with the intersection of like environmental history as externalities and waste. And especially to do with like large scale infrastructures that facilitate our day-to-day lives. So it was always a topic of fascination for me, like, you know, ships being these kinds of colossal, almost like these cathedrals floating in the water and then how they come to be deconstructed and going to read so collated within our systems of like everyday production extraction, circulation, et cetera, was always very fascinating for me. So it kind of was like, you know, invited my internal memory in some way, like subconsciously these were the threads, which were always being at the back of my mind and because it was fairly recent since, you know, from undergrad to graduate school, it was not, you know, I didn’t have that much of time to kind of fully bake these ideas in my mind. So when I came to graduate school, this was something that was still subconsciously in my mind. As far as my thesis is concerned, just like I was looking at the concept of externalisation one step further, where I was really fortunate to work with Neil Brennan, who was the…who was at the GSD at the time was like a professor of Urban Theory. And I was really fascinated with what happens, you know, with like, especially structures such as satellite and orbital infrastructures, like space stations, et cetera. Which similar to ships in a lot of ways, or so like, you know, we’re almost oblivious to them. These are large kind of structures, which are, you know, so fundamental to facilitating our lives. Exactly. It’s also instrumental in our day to day workings. Like whether it’s GPS, whether it’s monitoring our weather, whether it’s like simply communicating across different kind of, you know, It places. So I was really fascinated with what happens, like, you know, with these and like, in a lot of ways, like, you know, these are also kind of objects, which I like, you know, which we all know of their existence, but they’re still,  understanding of a world.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I think this for me is super, super fascinating. And I think it’s also super interesting how you refer to these as the orbital infrastructure, you know, “infrastructure” quote unquote, so let’s try that a little bit and you can. Get into more detail, I’m in shape by your particular joys of the word infrastructure. You know, when you think about infrastructure on earth, you think about state sponsored transportation projects, right? You’re thinking about highways, you’re thinking about large Metro projects. You’re thinking about infrastructure as in a physical thing that you almost see building on a day-to-day basis, that the axial is what makes you think about these objects in space as infrastructure. And why do you call them infrastructures as opposed to I don’t know, services or  frameworks or something?

Rajji Desai
Yeah, it’s interesting that you asked me this, you know, for me infrastructure in a lot of ways has always transcended their physical being and do like something, which is like a form or a mode of institutionalising, certain codes of conduct, certain behaviours. Infrastructures for me have transcended them being like, say Metro rails or they’ve transcended them being roads, et cetera. They also become a certain kind of way of coding human behaviour, you know, and hence like because of the profound implications that arbitrary infrastructure such as satellites, I want to realise whether it’s like, you know, their importance in like nationwide kind of political domains where it’s used as a means of warfare or whether it’s a means of facilitating communication or whether it’s means of like predicting future climate data trends, et cetera.
So they become very important in a lot of ways like infrastructures as a means or institutionalising human behaviours for me has always been that also for me, infrastructures form a very important kind of lens, although like, you know, a specific point in time and space, which is about to do with a different kind of, you know, coming together of historical economic, environmental, social, political kind of situatedness of different actors together. An infrastructure project is not simply like a one agent thing. It’s something which has like, it cuts across scale. It cuts across geographies. It cuts across races. It cuts across a lot of different things just because of the massive and the sheer scale of it and the implications that it has in a lot of ways. So for me, it almost came naturally to, it was almost in my mental vocabulary to use infrastructure when it came to arbitrary systems to just satellite systems, you know? So that’s been my kind of understanding of infrastructures per say.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So you mentioned something about these infrastructure as, things that cross socio-political boundaries and race boundaries basically literally transcending everything that limits us on earth as well as in space. Can you talk a little bit more about what these things actually are? Because, I mean, I… I’m super familiar with but for people who don’t know what do you find in this space and what are these things there? They’re GPS satellites. What else? Because I am by default reminded of the space race of the 60’s and the 70’s, when, you know, there was this almost,It’s pretty similar to what’s going on right now, you know, there’s a race for vaccine. And the other day I was talking to a friend, you know, you, you, you first saw Pfizer saying we have a 90 point something accuracy, and then you have another company saying, “Oh no, but we’re 95”. And then you kind of one up each other. And that was pretty similar to what the space was in the 60’s and 70’s was where everybody’s like, you’re going to one up the other person to kind of get to the space super fast, you know, and kind of lay your claim on that domain or that, that space like quite literally the outer space. So what is it that… that happens in the eldest space and what, what does that gem look like?

Rajji Desai
Let’s take a case in point of the internet infrastructure. Now we, the internet, is something we are all familiar with, all of us, almost, in developed countries and developing countries are using it. So from 16 or 15% of the world population in 2005, that had internet users, it jumped to 47% in 2016. And by 2017, approximately half of the world’s population had access to the internet. So now at present, there are about 2.5 billion users, from Europe and the United States itself. Then I could see it itself by the remaining 80 million who are still largely living in urban centres across the developing countries who have access. So what essentially happened in this jump or the gap, which happened is the standard of operationalization, as Neil Brenan says it of outer space. So essentially in this provision of internet infrastructure, we started using it. From when we switched, we made a switch from using like say underground data cables to provide internet services for using satellites in outer space to use the example of the internet structure. Was it something that all of us, it’s almost indispensable to us and it’s been largely facilitated through satellites. So satellites is one of the first reason which, you know, it has so much profound implications on our day-to-day living. And similar to getting like coal for fossil fuels, which gets transported to ships, et cetera. You know? So it’s something like that. We’re just of wondering, because these satellite infrastructures you need in your day-to-day life, you know, like whether it’s the GPS or whether it’s like, you know, where the monitoring, or like, you know, a bunch of all these kinds of different remote sensing systems, you live, you have a lot of kinds of uses of these objects in outer space, these infrastructural objects and outer space, they are so integral to our day-to-day living.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So who owns these objects? So are they kind of state-owned, are multinational corporations owned?

Rajji Desai
You know, Vaissnavi, it’s great that you asked this because, you know, over the course of the latter half of the 20th century, humankind started expanding its boundaries and borders beyond the confines of the planet itself. So what we initially were thinking about outer space and their efforts being carried. I would buy for like, you know, gaining strategic advantage for nationalistic endeavours or the pursuit of scientific knowledge. So in that time, this entire kind of rented outer space became a de facto monopoly, or most sorts of governors repeatedly. As we saw with Russia, we saw it with, sorry, the peak, the Soviet Union, the then Soviet Union with the United States with France, et cetera, with all those countries kind of using this outer space as an operational scape within the international political sphere.  While such ways of looking at all we still continue in our day-to-day life, that people don’t still associate this switch, which has happened, or this transition that has happened from the kind of propaganda of outer space to the spend of private and militaristic, private capitalist switch this, we’re seeing new kinds of actors emerging. In fact, the developments over the past few decades have shown like a crazy jump in this ambitious orbital space experimentation, you know, and what is interesting is that these private kind of beneficiaries are interacting with political frameworks, you know. So what is happening is that we’ve seen collaborations between nation States and then we’re seeing kind of the singular entrepreneurial actors, such as Elon Musk, Jim Benson, you can name Paul Allen. You can like, you know, we have like Jeff Bezos, these are just few kinds of… Richard Branson. These are the few kind of like very strategic actors who are private companies and their entrepreneurial kind of Astro entrepreneurs. That’s what I, you know, many people call them, who are now with the aid of like, you know, nation States are building and capitalising on this kind of a new frontier, almost of sorts, which is outer space, you know? So while this has been like, you know, a way to like operationalize outer space to so called public benefits. Like I mentioned, with internet infrastructure where Elon Musk is seen, he’s actually started putting like internet satellites in the different orbits of the earth to provide internet for every human being. While they are often taken on with this kind of, you know, almost an altruistic notion. They are also very powerful means of expanding access and control over untapped territories and orbital space. And eventually the natural resources like we want, we’ve been hearing about space tourism coming up. So it’s almost like trying to get this kind of, you know, a leg up or a political and economic advantage and interplanetary skills. So we’re no longer looking at the whole planet itself. We’re looking at another scale or another realm or a jump up into the outcomes, like kind of the outer envelope of the earth, you know, which is only set to increase in the coming decades. So that’s what the thing is, you know, in spite of this, having had its roots in this space race that started in the early 20th century. Now we are seeing that these nationalistic motives have almost started eroding with kind of like, you know, it private agencies such as Musk, et cetera, and, you know, pull out with different nation states. So it’s no longer restricted to the United States, but now we are seeing different kind of actors which are crossing across all these political kind of, you know, nationalists boundaries into a more privatised realm in a lot of ways.

Vaissnavi Shukl
It’s super interesting that you’re kind of mentioning the privatisation of the outer space and I found it super fascinating because it seems like a booming market for real estate, except it’s in the outer space. You know, it kind of exists, but it perhaps not real or rather it’s not tangible or visible to those bidding for it. With the kind of stuff that we’ve seen in real estate markets around the world, you know, be it in India or be it in, the US, or anywhere else. Where do you see this outer space real estate market going from here? You know, you mentioned the involvement of a lot of these private actors be Tesla or be it Jeff Besos kind of showing an active and just in looking at the outer space as a space, to kind of invest in, to kind of monopolise on, or to kind of use it as an excuse for if nothing just increasing access on Earth, right? So what does the future look like? What was in terms of it as A there is a booming market, but also kind of the grim side of it and what that potentially could look like to go down that road?

Rajji Desai
So like, in terms of like, where do I see this going? This is definitely a booming market, you know, like, because what is happening is quite contradictory to what we might think that outer space is infinite. It’s actually not because there are only certain spaces, certain orbits, which are beyond the Earth’s atmosphere that are kind of, you know, useful for us to operationalize or use or capitalise on. Because of the simple nature that when you launch like all out of these orbits, the geosynchronous orbit is the most profitable real estate in outer space. So right now, what has happened. I think with this kind of, you know, the geosynchronous orbit, is that okay? Just a brief history of the geosynchronous orbit is that with the geosynchronous orbit, you only need three satellites at any given point to map the entire surface of the Earth. So unlike any other attributes about the surface of the Earth, where you would need multiple satellites to be launched in order to kind of, you know, carry out your operations with geosynchronous orbit, you, you can only, you only need three. So for it’s very economical in a lot of ways, almost all different kinds of private, as well as nation States have been trying to capitalise on this kind of very, you know, prime location kind of in a lot of ways in outer space. What this has resulted is that it’s become extremely overpopulated, you know, in a lot of ways so there is a very high density of satellites. And as you can imagine, these are very fast moving objects, which are like constantly in motion in print orbits. There is a very high risk of, so right now, because we won’t have any kind of stringent, internationally binding rules or laws or treaties, what often has resulted is whoever is the first to claim a space in the geosynchronous orbit almost gets de facto authority or ownership of that space. So there’s a lot of competition that is occurred in time to capitalise this G.O. which is a geosynchronous orbit. And that’s why most of these space capitalists, if you think about it, are always whining for this attitude, new position in a lot of ways. So largely, I mean, one thing that is so interesting is because it’s real estate is so integral to their operations on earth, we are seeing a lot of terrorists reshuffling or not. So if you were to see like, you know, I noticed that you don’t launch something into the geosynchronous orbit, the best position, you know, for you to be located on would be around the equator. So what you’re seeing is the emergence of more spaceports around the equator so that you can easily launch a satellite into orbital space with the least amount of fuel enhanced is the cheapest way of doing that. So not only has this real estate had profound implications and what it’s doing in terms of reshuffling, geographically in outer space, but it’s also having a very, very significant kind of terrestrial reshuffling, which is happening on Earth. So it’s almost like it’s almost like a couple, you know, it’s a coupling of these kinds of movements, you know, like in outer space, it almost reflects a change on Earth as well. So this has been a very distinctive trait, which we’ve been seeing in this ongoing race towards privatisation that, you know, you’re also seeing the emergence of like these kinds of geographical zones were just strategically positioned near the equator, which would facilitate the easy launch of these satellites into space. The other thing is that, you know, in addition to like these kinds of new geography, this is what I call in my thesis…There cannot, there is a specific targeted geography privileging on earth, which is happening and deep privileging. So we’re kind of considering certain zones to be okay, enough to be sacrificed in a lot of ways, borrowing from Naomi Klein’s like sacrifice zones. So this has been a kind of an interesting way of looking at this new trend of urbanisation organisation in a lot of ways.

Vaissnavi Shukl
You know, this blows my mind on so many different levels, because one, I think you’re talking about a certain kind of land grab, so to speak, in outer space where there is no land to grab, but there’s space to grab. And you kind of saying that whoever gets there first kind of plays a de facto claim on them, occupying a certain territory. And I think the other thing you mentioned more importantly, is the fact that, this because it’s outside of the bounds of Earth, doesn’t mean its infinite space right? I mean, this space is also limited and it has repercussions on what happens on Earth. So currently I think what you mentioned is it’s… its place of takeoff and, you know, it’s privileging of place around the equator. And so I think, while we are talking about the outer space, you also focus on these spaces around the equator, and you also talk a little bit about the role of oceans and what you call the aphotic zone. If I pronounced it right. Where the space debris ends up if it is ever brought back to Earth, in case of the collision that you mentioned all these spaces, kind of satellites being crowded in the outer space, and then they hit each other and then it’s like, Ooh, you know, all those space movies live. Which means that this particular orbiter infrastructure spans literally from the depths of the oceans all the way to the height of the sky, its encompassing everything in between. So it’s, while an object has all these different ecosystems, someday being a part of its entire life, which is so wild to me, I do not know of anything else that has such a profound effect on so many layers of earth and the atmosphere. What do you… what do you think about it? Just literally like the slides that it got through, and at this one, I’m going to reference this one beautiful drawing that you’ve made. And I will put it somewhere on the website or something, but it’s so it just, yeah, I couldn’t even think about it just literally from the sea to the space.

Rajji Desai
It’s really, pretty wild as you say it, you know, Vaissnavi? These are two kinds of like, you know what I call these are these extreme environments. You know, one which we’re looking at is the graveyard orbit, which is a zone at the outermost reaches of orbitals,  which is basically what humans look at, which is 22,000 miles about the surface of the earth. And then we’re looking at this space cemetery, which is like this remote desolate site, which is located in the depths of the South Pacific ocean where no human being has been, you know, so it’s kind of this thing of too extreme or limit conditions or new frontier as a waste as I call them. And it’s like really interesting, you know, actually I specifically chose to dwell on these two sites for like a couple of reasons. First is that,these two present remote, like, you know, there is, there’s this author who’s done fantastic work in this field, Steve Pine, he talks about, you know, these kinds of, he talks about extreme environments, they’re remote, they’re uninhabited and they’re unruly natural spaces. These nevertheless, are very compelling sites of human practices and politics, because these are places where human politics do play out, but we are so disconnected with so remote, we are so far away from these unruly natural spaces that we do not know about them. You know, the other interesting part about both of these kind of spaces is that it represents pieces where humans can go in a way, but you need life sustaining technologies to support you. And you can only go temporarily, like with the case, without a space or in the depths of the South Pacific ocean. So almost, you know, it’s like life doesn’t exist in these two places. It’s at a very microbial level that humans wouldn’t necessarily inhabited themselves. But it’s taking on these, that benefit and location and almost inaccessible character of these extreme environments makes your studies fundamental. You know, because just because there’s a lack of other humans, or even a biota of, you know, like to resist this kind of, you know, politics being played out out there has resulted in a lack of urgency to examine these environments. There’s a lack of urgency to examine their environmental history. There’s a lack of urgency in understanding that these are not working in isolation. They are having profound impacts on people on earth, as well as, you know, different kinds of species that are there. What is interesting is that Vaissnavi, you know, if I could dwell on them a little further, is that yeah. With these satellites is this whole concept of geography distancing in displacement. So what they do is they say to me, your distance, this kind of operations so far away, so remote from day-to-day activities that we don’t even think about them ever occurring, you know? And then you display completely out of context. Like you would never think that a space station would be occupying the depths of an ocean, you know, That’s something that would never cross my mind. So you’re basically geography, distance, something, and then you immediately displace it out of human consciousness in a lot of public consciousness in a lot of ways. And this basically, you know, not obscured their waste proceedings, which are highly radioactive and toxic for the environment, as well as other species from public purview. You also drive living in, you almost make it inconsequential the contested nature of their environment. So that for me has been very interesting, because in this race to kind of privatise our outer space to see this politics of visibility, which we as architects and specialty in are so embedded in. We look at visibility with this whole concept of visibility and how it’s been deployed to like, you know, for economic benefits and kind of evading environmental responsibility for the actions is very interesting for me, you know. This is what I often keep referring to as the Holy Trifecta, or the Holy Trinity which is like, distancing, you distance, something completely out of your lens. You make it so massive and that, you know, it’s so obvious objects are massive. You know, you’re looking at space stations, which are like massive, and then you meet them invisible. So it’s so paradoxical something which is so big something which is so huge. It’s almost invisible, you know, so this kind of constructed in visibility for me has been like, you know, something which is really an interesting way, how this new risk is optimised. Like capitalising it on in a lot of ways.

Vaissnavi Shukl
None of us have studied advertising or marketing, but my father is pretty well versed with the marketing and advertising world and he would always say that one of the biggest models of marketing is, “Out of sight out of mind”. And when you, when you in that, like when you see all these orbital infrastructures that are literally out of sight, they’re out of mind and that perhaps experienced studies and why we don’t have either proper legal frameworks or the kind of commitment from different nations towards really regulating that space that is so unregulated right now. Which is a perfect segue to really talk about the afterlives of these orbital infrastructures and their decommissioning. Cause you in pretty good length actually frame these be decommissioning processes as you know, kind of graveyards and cemeteries. And I also think of the whole process as something that deals with space waste, to be honest. For a man who doesn’t know anything about what happens to satellites after they die, you know,  this is, this is not my, any means comparable to the way we manage waste on earth, but save, if we were to start a program that would teach space waste management, you know, what would that entail? And what are the various agencies that would need to form coalitions both nationally and internationally to, to regulate outer space? What do you think?

Rajji Desai
Yeah, it’s interesting, you know, before it, well, for the, into like, what is these, afterlives like, it’s important for us to like, recognize it. Most satellites when they are built, they’re built with an expected life span of five to 10 years post which they enter defunct, you know, so what happens is this is what you.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah, so, and it was ye and all of this capital and everything that goes on to this one object is done with an expired rebate that probably lasts as long as my phone and my laptop. 

Rajji Desai
Probably and that’s what Lisa, who’s also a great lady, who’s doing work within this realm says that we live in an age in which extremely expensive machines are made and installed in opiates without public knowledge using public funds only to be spectacularly blown away and become total losses in front of overrides. Mm, no, it’s such a, it’s such an interesting concept because, you know, we think that sadly hundreds and thousands of years, it’s actually not true. You know, that is one of the first kind of contradictory things that come up, you know, with satellites and what happens is it, once the shelf life of a satellite can be rendered defunct once its operational life span comes in. Two collisions. You know, there are so many satellites being launched in our oldest space. There is a, so if, even if like a tiny speck of paint is left in our space with just really moving at exceptionally high speeds, which has happened to like, you know, hit your satellite is going to be different. Cause it would make it. And operational in a lot of ways. So in addition to these kinds of factors, what happens is that once now, like I mentioned earlier, it’s so overpopulated the space that they need to kind of do housekeeping in a larger way. They clean up their mess. So what they do is once the shelf life of the satellite is about to come to an end.

It needs to be disposed of in such a way that it does not interfere with the global circulation routes. So now what happened was. And there was this kind of space disposal, convention convention, which was led by NASA, which we all know is. So like, you know, like has been instrumental in shaping the space movement. What they said is do either blast of these satellites into the zone, which I had mentioned earlier, which is a , which is 22,000 miles away from the surface of view. So we just, almost in this dark abyss in outer space. So you’ll try to basically. Design your satellite in such a way that it would start losing fuel towards the end. It will just blast itself off into outer space. This is increasingly becoming difficult because there’s a very high risk of pollution because it already exists. This. I played in that range, you know, so, and as a result, it results in like this kind of ripple effect. But keeps disintegrating into smaller parts, which would cause a very high threat to the multi-billion dollar infrastructure, which has already now for space. So what are kind of, you know, Astro entrepreneurs and my dear friends, Elon Musk, et cetera, have done this. They think that it’s better. We bring back all this junk from other space and d p it on boat. So what they do this, there has been this conscious shift, you know, where they’re disposing of all these dead space objects into this isolated ocean oceanic graveyard, which is what is called the space graph cemetery. You know, that is this point in the South Pacific ocean, which is the call point emo where no man has ever been, but it’s such a huge kind of, you know, Really of a d ping, like a d ping ground, like a d ping ocean ground within make the most sense, but like a waterscape you know, where all of this is getting done. So, you know, we would have all of these kinds of dip, which is like one 70 million track pieces of space. We scholarly orbiting. So 17,500 miles. So you have to realize this is exceptionally high. So essentially this like in the second operation, but I’m saying that they bring back all the junk foods recently, actually China has done an operation when they bought your massive space station. Backward, you know, has been doing Japan and India has been picking up this kind of pastries or Magnus too. And you know, they’ve been d ping all of these things in this large span, you know, in the South Pacific ocean. And. So like, you know, if I were to just give you like a geographical view of it, like it geographically spans around 3000 kilometers by 5,000 kilometers. So it’s a large expense, which we’re seeing, you know, and you’re seeing this dumping, but it’s actually since 1971 from 1971 to 2016, if you were to see, there were one 19 Russian space objects, which are d ped in the cemetery. Including a space as you know, rocket, which are these massive rockets that, you know, Elon Musk really operationalizes that eventually.

So this is something which is very fascinating for me. You would never think what the hell, you know, and it’s still funny, you know, like one of these space scientists said that tackling the problem of space debris, like space races, one of h ankind’s greatest environmental challenges right now, because what we’re essentially doing is silos. So this was another actually concept, which into my thesis for though. Is it like these kind of transitional zones, you know,  means we think that these zones such as outdoor spaces and this kind of space cemetery in the South Pacific ocean. These boxes are this way, so that this sacrifice into a dead zone, there is no way it can j p back or be resilient enough. So this is causing so many environmental challenges for people. If nothing is working in isolation, everything has an effect on something else. And this constant kind of, you know, d ping has resulted in so many environmental challenges.

The tax base is actually saying, this is one of humankind’s greatest challenges in the coming decades. You know, one, perhaps the ones, least known to people because, you know, raising dependency again on satellites operation.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Okay. So again,  , what do you think is, is needed to really just,  , you know, have people come together, both in terms of,  , all the CS legal framework,  , international efforts, do you know of any efforts that are kind of ongoing right now that to address this problem, or if you were to kind of. Triple was something. What would that framework look like? The space waste management program.

Rajji Desai
You know, I actually like to be really honest, like as interesting as this topic is this topic has made me realize how inconsequential I am in this bigger political choreography of changes that are happening as the student who is investigating this as someone who’s really like, you know, 400 geographies of these things.

I just realize I have almost zero agency or something like this, because these are made through very like Western political and economic interests. If you want to see the rate at which we are going and, you know, dealing with our orbital space, that would be stringent laws to deal with it. But surprisingly, we’re still using laws which were made during the space race when Russia United States during the second, during the cold war.

So you can imagine since then, these are, there has been several decades now that we’ve not even considered. Revising these laws, these laws will not meet whatever present day. So there’s almost defunct laws, which makes it a very good playing field for all these kinds of private agencies. Cause when you don’t have any laws in place to hold you accountable, for what mess you’re creating, it’s almost like, you know, the devil’s playground.

You can do whatever you want in the best days you can go. Scot-free. So obviously like from my point of view, is there any profound changes that have to be made or something which is like, you know, which had to be like in a way, instr ental to bring about any kind of accountability in terms of what legal, as well as political accountability, we need definitely a new set of space laws, which are coming in, you know, we need a new kind of revision of the, the laws of the open seas.

Like, which is something which is where like you would see, or the concert where those pay cemeteries are located. The laws of European speeds and the open skies. These are kind of two realms where we definitely need more stringent policy frameworks. But for me, I believe like I do understand that, you know, I don’t have so much agency in this field.

But as an artist to just rendering these vendors pieces, visible to the common public so that you can build up certain traction is a sense of awareness among these kinds of things. And also building up on political debate, public debate about these issues is something which I think would be a good step towards understanding a domain, which we all I think is so far away and doesn’t affect us, but it actually has really profound implications on n ber like, you know, just simply just being aware of it will also help, you know, They kind of try to keep pace with the kind of changes that are happening in the space right now.

So for me, in terms of like what ineffective space management program, I would definitely think that, you know, a lot more accountability by nation States and modern nation States. I really feel there needs to be very, very stringent laws, you know, which we’re also seeing, like with, you know, The ER, the internet and how Google and other companies are kind of, you know, extracting all this, like using artificial intelligence, et cetera, is really neat.

Good. Kind of like similar to these antitrust laws we need like, you know, these anti exploitation laws in some ways to deal with outer space, as well as the oceans, because these are the two most heavily unregulated spaces that occupying the world, you know, In a way you knew us to be honest. So this kind of strategic media regulation needs to be nipped in the bud in a lot of ways.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Well, Brazee. If it is of any concession, I don’t think you are an inconsequential actor at all. I in fact, feel like maybe, maybe that agency that you’re talking about, maybe I, well, first I don’t think agencies can be quantified, but, but, but let me just say you put in a lot of time,  , in your masters program, really just.

Giving so much of honestly, just critical and sensitive thought towards this thing that at least we, as architects, you know, don’t really think about. And so it makes you really aware about just one design as a profession. And Julie kind of brings to light this entire scale. That is. So different and so kind of ginormous in scale because it doesn’t look, look at environment as in the environment we deal with.

In terms of buildings, but,  , as you said, right from the depth of the seas through the highs of the sky is, and this is something that we don’t think about enough. So I think it’s a beginning and who knows, maybe, I don’t know, five, 10 years down the line you choose to run for office. You’re probably working as a consultant for NASA.

No,  , space X, maybe you write policy for them, but Hey, it’s possible. I think what’s important is that, you know, it’s a, it’s a beginning and it’s a project that I think has been given so much of thought and has just kind of so much curiosity from so many other people that even if. You know, that sequence of change has started.

I think you just need to influence maybe one other person who’s just at et cetera, and then it can go on. So it’s been, it’s been some time since you, since you wrote the thesis,  , what have you been up to since then? And what do you plan on doing with this incredible piece of research? So what’s next for this side?

Rajji Desai
Oh, my God. You’re too kind. And I love that you believe in me so much because I really don’t believe in me so much. So this is really, really sweet and misleading. This is crazy, but yeah, go ahead. But yeah, I, you know, it’s when I use, since I graduated and to be really honest, you know, I really want to give credit to Neil Brenner.

You know, he has been like one of the most instr ental kind of people in my life in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to this topic, because he literally just let me, you know, lose with it. He’s like, Let you in your wildest imaginations run wild. Cause you know, there was, there was no kind of like drawings or maps of outer space.

So that kind of critical investigation, both theoretically via text as well as, you know, like, you know, since I’ve been also developing a lot of like maps, cetera, which we’re doing without a space and illustrations, that was really good. Cause you know, That. So that for me was very profound. So I just wanted to give you times to Neil and like, you know, Abby Spinak as well as ed.

I, these would really instr ental people in shaping my thesis in a lot of ways. And you know, it’s, like I said, it’s been a year I’ve been working in Boston still, quite surprisingly, and still stuck around in Cambridge as an open researcher. Now, you know, at CBT architects where there is.  , Kishore Varanasi with whose team I work with.

He’s terrific. You know, he does a lot of, he’s been embedded within the Boston’s fabric for really long, you know, the OB planning and urban design realm. And it’s really interesting cause now I’ve kind of switched from technological objects to building as objects and their nature in their processes of, you know, mitigating climate change.

So, you know, that’s been really interesting cause we’ve been doing like a lot of work in the middle East where we were looking at how cities can be better adapted to climate change. And extreme heat. Cause this is something that is a very big concern for, you know, people out there. So yeah. I don’t know what seems like what’s next that we really don’t know, you know, but I hope it’s something interesting that keeps my brain says, you know, I’m excited in a lot of ways.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So I expect nothing less from you. Thank you so much for being here today. And again, for showing up, I think you have, you have a fan in me for forever. And your thesis is that shell,  , live on in the racks, off the GSP library for decades to come. So thank you so much. This was a pleasure.

Rajji Desai
Thank you so much for having me really. It’s very, very nice. Like I’m very honoured to see it pleased. So thank you so much.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.