One-Way Architecture: The Right to Repair as a Life-Safety Requirement for Permanent Cislunar Settlement

The United States is about to send people to live on the Moon in habitats the government will pay for, the government will supervise under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, and the inhabitants of which may not be allowed to fix. This paper makes a narrow argument. In a sealed habitat, repair is not a maintenance function. It is the only safety valve. And a crew that cannot obtain the part, cannot read the diagnostic data, and cannot get permission has no safety valve at all. The rule requiring repairability already exists in the record. NASA's own human-systems standard states that failing to plan for maintenance risks "loss of a mission or loss of life," and requires that repairs be designed to be completed within the time-to-effect margin. The data rights already exist too. Under FAR 52.227-14, the rights clause in most NASA contracts, the government gets unlimited rights in data that constitute manuals or instructional material for "installation, operation, or routine maintenance and repair." Defense contracts go further. Neither helps a crew unless the contract orders the data delivered. What does not exist is any route by which a crew member inside a habitat can invoke either one. The standard binds NASA's programs and reaches contractors only through a contract clause. The rights sit in contracts the crew is not a party to. The duty exists. The rights exist. What is missing is delivery and enforcement. That gap is a worker-safety failure, a national security problem, and a cost the taxpayer will bear twice, and it should be closed by a condition on the government's own purchases before the first crew is on the surface and the first answer is no.