The Year Is Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats span the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. Each is an engineering marvel – some are works of art. Build An Asteroid Terrarium

Take An Asteroid Next

At least thirty kilometers on its long axis. Any type will do—solid rock, rock and ice, metallic,

even iceballs, although each presents different problems. Next

Attach a self-replicating excavator assembly

to one end of the asteroid, and with it hollow out your asteroid

along its long axis. Next

Ejection of the excavated material will represent

your best chance to reposition your terrarium,

if you want it in a different orbit. Store excess ejecta on the surface

for later use. Next

Beyond the forward end of the cylinder,

on the bow of your new terrarium, attach a forward unit at the point

of the long axis. Next

Eventually your terrarium will be spinning at a

rotational rate calculated to create the effect

of gravity on the inner surface of the interior

cylinder (g equivalent). Now set it spinning. Next

Biospheres need their vitamins right from the start, so be

sure to arrange for the importation of the mix that you want,

usually including molybdenum, selenium, and phosphorus. These are often applied in "puff bombs"

set off along the axis of the cylindrical space. Don't poison yourself when you do this! Next

After that, string the axis of the cylinder

with your terrarium's sunline. The lit portion of the sunline usually starts the day

in the stern of the cylinder, after a suitable

period of darkness. This is a lighting element, on which the lit portion

moves at whatever speed you choose. Next

Now you can aerate the interior to the gas mix and

pressure you desire, typically somewhere between 500

and 1100 millibars of pressure, in something like the Terran mix of gases,

with perhaps a dash more oxygen,

though the fire risk quickly rises there. Next

You will either be recreating some Terran biome,

or else mixing up something new; hybrid biomes most

people call "Ascensions," after Ascension Island on

Earth, the site of the first such hybrid. All the genomes for all the species of your particular

biome will be available for print on demand, except

for the bacteria. Next

Apply the appropriate inoculant, usually a muck or goo

made of a few tons of the bacterial suite that you want.

Luckily bacteria grow very fast in an empty ecological

niche, which is what you now have. To make it even more welcoming, scrape the interior wall of

your cylinder, then crumble the rock of the scrapings finely,

to a consistency ranging from large gravel to sand. Next

Mixed with an edible aerogel, this then becomes

the matrix for your soil. Put all of the ice gathered in your

scraping aside, except for enough when melted to make

your crumbled rock matrix moist. Then add your bacterial inoculant, and turn up the heat to

around 300 K. The matrix will rise like yeasted dough as it

becomes that most delicious and rare substance, soil. Next

When you've got a warm marsh going, either fresh

water or salt, you are already cooking good. Smells will

rise in your cylinder, also hydrological problems. Fish, amphibian, animal, and bird populations

can be introduced at this point, and should be if

you want maximum biomass growth. Next

Ultimately you will need to make many temperature, landscape,

and species adjustments. Any possible landscape is achievable;

sometimes the results are simply stunning. The look of the land

will envelope you like a work of art—a goldsworthy inscribed

on the inside of a rock, like a geode or a Fabergé egg. Next

Obviously it is also possible to make interiors that are all

liquid. Some of these aquaria or oceanaria include island

archipelagoes; others are entirely water. Some aquaria

have no air space in their middles. Next

Each terrarium functions as an island park for the animals inside

it. Ascensions cause hybridization and ultimately new species.

The more traditional biomes conserve species that on Earth are

radically endangered or extinct in the wild. Next

Some terraria even look like zoos; more are purely

wilderness refugia; and most mix parkland and human

spaces in patterned habitat corridors. As such these spaces

are already crucial to humanity and the Earth. And there are

also the heavily agricultural terraria, farmworlds devoted to

producing what has become a very large percentage of the

food feeding the people of Earth. Next

We cook up our little bubble worlds for our own pleasure,

the way you would cook a meal, or build something, or grow

a garden—but it's also a new thing in history, and the heart

of the Accelerando. I can't recommend it too highly! The

initial investment is nontrivial, but there are still many

unclaimed asteroids out there. Next