Author: (https://www.celestialcommons.org/team) Philip Linden, Daniel Mackisack, Molly MacEachen, Ruvimbo Samanga, Ayumi Tsuyuki, Sam Jardine Date: 2025-08-18

Abstract#

Celestial Commons is a community-driven initiative focused on building a shared future in space. The goal is to overcome public feelings of alienation from and apathy towards the benefits of space, by engaging citizens globally in the policy process, ensuring that everyone has a voice and a stake in the future of humanity beyond Earth.

• Celestial Commons on the Space Acceleration Network
• Project website: The Citizens' Space Policy Initiative
• Daniel's Town Hall presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjQyMdVXKl0
• Ideation post: https://discord.com/channels/914720248140279868/1395516209428041748

We've completed Step 1 of our plan, which was to create a point of access with no special requirements or specialized knowledge. The result is a short survey with 2 core open questions:

1. Imagine an ideal future for humanity. Where are we? Who are we? How do we live? What role does space play?
2. What should governments, businesses, international organizations and others be doing right now in order to make that future a reality?

The next step is to roll out the first round of surveys using a trust-based, network sampling approach that begins with close contacts, local communities and partner organizations, and expands outward through successive degrees of separation. While initially less representative, this approach leverages trust to improve informed consent and access to marginalized groups, while reducing bias and approaching representativeness more quickly than other methodologies over time, as it moves through successive trust circles.

Results are synthesized using purpose built AI tools, producing both a Citizens’ Vision (for space), as well as a Citizens’ Policy Platform. These form the basis for direct advocacy work and are introduced to organisations at the grassroots of policy development internationally, including political parties themselves.

This proposal accelerates this project by funding a license to the software used to collect responses, synthesize and analyze them, GoVocal. With an active license, we can confidently demo the initiative to other partners with large reach and other partnership opportunities. MoonDAO will be among the first core sponsors that make this project a reality.

Problem#

Our survey input form and response analysis tools are powered by GoVocal (https://www.govocal.com/). The GoVocal team has been very helpful showing us around the app and getting our prototype set up on a trial license. We successfully deployed the prototype survey to 30 individuals and derived policy insights from the responses (with receipts!) with their purpose-built AI tools. The survey form is robust and supports text, audio, or video responses and localization to multiple languages. The AI tools not only summarize responses but also extract themes from aggregated responses, with links back to responses that are cited, even for languages other than English. This tool allows us to effectively process many, many responses with the confidence that we are preserving the views of participants, and enables us to discover themes or policy objectives from the entire population (or subsets of the population that we choose). The AI accepts queries to the whole dataset, such as asking for specific things from specific subsets of the total, and responds in turn with citations of real responses that back up its answers.

The trial license is not enough, though. We need a full license to deploy the survey and analyze it at scale (hundreds, thousands of responses at least) early next year. So far we have been relying on our personal time, funds, and networks to prove the concept.

Solution#

A 6 month license for the software was quoted to us at around $12k, and a 1 year license has a discount for a quote of $15k or so.

Daniel has brought the idea to a number of potential partner organizations and individuals, including space exploration special interest societies, political parties in Europe and South Pacific, and nonprofits globally. All of whom have expressed strong interest in participation and are receptive to treating the resulting documents as references for their own policy work. We can boost confidence in our project and accelerate official partnerships if we can show that we have backing from MoonDAO and a long-term license to the GoVocal platform.

After the license has been purchased, this proposal seeks to compensate the authors for their efforts in rolling out the survey with the remainder of the funds.

Benefits#

MoonDAO is "the internet's space program" -- What better way to show that in action than to derive real space policy from the voices of all humans? This project is emblematic of MoonDAO's values and sponsoring this project is a statement that the DAO is serious about making change.

The primary benefits to MoonDAO would be:

• Recognition for helping to produce foundational citizens’ space vision and space policy documents.
• Recognition for supporting direct advocacy work that introduces citizen voices on humanity’s future in space directly to political parties, industry bodies and civil society organisations internationally.
• Large scale positive exposure beyond MoonDAO’s existing network and audience.
• Exposure to new membership and growth opportunities.

There is also an opportunity for MoonDAO citizens to directly accelerate the reach of this initiative in the future. I think the collective of MoonDAO citizens, in the Space Acceleration Network and otherwise, is the ideal "kernel" to seed this sampling. The MoonDAO Space Acceleration Network (SAN) is global distribution of people from many backgrounds, and especially people motivated to talk about space with their friends and family. However, to get there we need to lay the foundation! (The SAN integration would be a future proposal)

Furthermore, there are plans to create sustainable revenue streams with the project in the future, through the production and leasing of immersive engagement booths to museums, observatories and other ‘space experiences’. However this is not the immediate priority of this phase of the project.

Risks#

1. There is a risk that an unforeseen event or issue delays our survey deployment strategy. This would effectively "waste" value of the license, which is valid for a fixed 1 year period. We must capitalize on the platform between September 2025 and September 2026 to make this worth it. https://www.celestialcommons.org/our-plan
2. In order for the GoVocal platform to be worthwhile, we must deploy our survey to large audiences within 1 year. This is a risk that hinges on the team's ability to get the word out and obtain access to venues or mailing lists. We are confident that this is achievable, thanks to our team's initial marketing & rollout plans including a social media campaign.
3. There is also a risk that potential partners are less receptive than has been indicated. However this is unlikely, as there has been significant overtures, from industry, politics and civil society about the need for public input and recent political and budgetary shifts have amplified these calls.

Objectives#

Objective - Finalize Design of Citizens’ Policy Initiative

• OKR1 - Survey and methodology is submitted to a peer organisation for review.
• OKR2 - Survey and methodology is approved by a citizen participation expert.

Objective - Expand Reach of Citizens’ Space Policy Initiative

• OKR3 - Secure 5 partner organisations capable of assisting with global reach.
• OKR4 - Secure reach of 5000+ for initial survey delivery.

Objective - Launch Citizens’ Space Policy Initiative

• OKR5 - Purchase 1 year subscription to GoVocal platform
• OKR6 - Deliver survey to existing networks.

Objective - Grow MoonDAO Space Acceleration Network

• OKR7 - Project activities result in 3 additional teams
• OKR8 - Project activities result in 10 additional citizens

Team (Table A)#

Timeline (Table B)#

Deadline: End of Q4

Transactions (Table C)#

--- nance-actions
- type: Request Budget
  payload:
    budget:
      - token: ETH
        amount: "6"
        justification: GoVocal License Fee
  uuid: 0ebcf4f4a4564d50a48acd07cee2d516
  chainId: 1