Developing a City-State on Antarctica to Simulate Extra-Planetary Settlement and Create a Viable Space Earth Economy

Presently, human interplanetary settlement faces a variety of challenges, including economic constraints, insufficient preparation, and a lack of personnel to practice adaptation to extreme off-world environments. Though there have been frequent discussions regarding the use of the moon as a base for travel to Mars, such discourse has largely neglected the discussion of developing a spot on Earth to use as a base to travel to the moon and beyond. The purpose of this paper is to propose and examine the creation of a self-sufficient city-state located in Antarctica with the primary goals of 1. Simulating inhospitable extra-terrestrial settlement conditions on Earth for large-scale habitation and 2. Creating a viable space-earth economy by crowdsourcing businesses that either contribute to the R&D infrastructure or simply plan to become a part of the space ecosystem. Ideally, this would prepare for future space settlement initiatives by tackling challenges that go beyond mere survivability but also address how to create an economically viable and sustainable community that could benefit both Earth and space. The paper employs a literature review approach, exploring existing research and initiatives about extraplanetary settlement, the space economy, and analog missions. By analysing these initiatives, it evaluates the potential of an Antarctic city-state settlement to alleviate the aforementioned challenges to advanced space exploration, starting on Earth. Lastly, the paper emphasizes the use of government business-research partnerships as drivers of this economy. The analysis brings to light the potential of an Antarctic city-state to serve as a testing ground for extraplanetary settlement strategies, logistics, economics, and other relevant innovations. By using the harsh Antarctic environment as a testing ground, such a settlement could be ideal for simulation while also becoming the” hub” on Earth for space travelrelated efforts, facilitating economic prosperity and international collaboration. We find that in addition to providing a controlled yet extreme environment on Earth for testing, the proposed city-state could also align with the goals of the existing Antarctic Treaty by promoting collaborative research and development while also offering an economically feasible model for preparing humanity for space settlement that benefits all.