The Space Progress Initiative

There is no maintained, reproducible measure of expansion capability. Energy-based scales such as Kardashev's rate a civilisation by the power it commands at home, and say nothing about its ability to operate anywhere else. The Expansion Report is an attempt to make that second question answerable, and to keep answering it on a fixed schedule.

Public opinion data illustrates the gap the report addresses. Roughly three quarters of Americans view NASA favourably, while two thirds have told Pew Research since 2018 that permanent off-world settlement will not happen within fifty years — a figure that has not moved. Support and expectation have diverged, and there is no published measure against which either can be tested.

The report takes no position on whether settlement should be pursued. It measures capability, publishes the method, and leaves the conclusions to the reader.

The Initiative publishes measurements. It does not conduct advocacy, produce policy recommendations or run education programmes, and it is not affiliated with any space agency, contractor or membership organisation.

Two metrics are maintained. The Expansion Stage measures electrical power operating beyond Earth orbit without ground in the decision loop. The price of a world measures how many missions are required to establish presence at a new body. Both are computed from public mission data and are reproducible from the published arithmetic.

Neither metric assesses scientific return, funding, mission reliability or human spaceflight, and Earth orbit is excluded throughout. A full statement of what falls outside the measurement is published with each edition.

Corrections are welcome. The most useful ones name the figure, cite a source and state what the value should be.

Open an issue at github.com/R1S7/Space-Progress-Initiative-Report/issues, which keeps the discussion alongside the data, or write to corrections@example.org.

Accepted corrections are recorded in the corrections log with the date, the change made and attribution to whoever identified it, unless anonymity is requested. Published editions are not edited after the fact; corrections are appended.