Starship

• The great success of Fifty Shades has turned publishers’ attention to the wealth of stories found in online fan fiction archives.
• Fan fiction uses the characters or world from an established, usually copyrighted work of fiction.
• Romance stories that pair up characters who are not romantically involved, like Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger in Manacled, are probably the best known type of fan fiction.

A legal grey area

• These laws determine who has the legal right to publish work using certain characters (such as Hermione), places (such as Hogwarts), objects (such as lightsabers) and other elements of a story.
• Fan fiction is written by people – fans – who don’t own the copyright for the stories they rework, and don’t have such a legal right.
• But because works of fan fiction are “transformative” works, that don’t simply reproduce the original but build on and alter it, they fall in a legal grey area.

A challenge to fan fiction’s “gift economy”

• The website Archive of Our Own, on which Manacled was originally published, is run and maintained by fan volunteers and donations from many such communities.
• The amateur, nonprofit and community-based nature of fan fiction had made fandom into what scholars of fandom such as Karen Hellekson call a gift economy.
• The practice of rewriting a fanfic to be published as an original, known in fan communities as “filing off the serial numbers”, is hotly debated.
• But as the trend demonstrated by Alchemised develops, it continues to challenge the cultures of fan and other amateur creative communities.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Leora Hadas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• It is also an interesting place to research – a legitimate candidate for us to find some form of alien life.
• Since the 1960s, Mars has been a popular destination for space missions.
• Now, for the first time, NASA has invited the private sector to submit proposals on commercial Mars missions.

Modern exploration of Mars

Since 1960, there have been 50 missions with scientific and technical objectives related to Mars. Thirty-one of these have been deemed successful, which is not a bad strike rate. There have also been plenty of spectacular failures, like the crash of the Schiaparelli lander in 2016.

• These missions have returned a wealth of information about Mars – its atmosphere, orbit, geology and more.
• But such public interest shows that Mars truly occupies our imaginations.

Read more:
Our long fascination with the journey to Mars

A better way to do business?

• For decades, NASA and other space agencies around the world have spent large sums on in-house planning, development, prototyping and production for space missions.
• In the 2020s, the technologies that enable and support space exploration are increasingly being developed in the commercial world.
• Read more:
  All-UK astronaut mission shows that private enterprise is vital to the future of space exploration

Pros and cons

• Likely the bigger positive effect will be the substantial stimulus to the commercial sector.
• There is a good history of this from the development of technologies for space and from mega-science projects more generally.
• Read more:
  Humans are going back to the Moon to stay, but when that will be is becoming less clear

But should humans go to Mars?

• The number of books, songs, TV shows and movies about Mars is enormous, containing some great (and not so great) art.
• Should humans go to Mars?
• There will always be some cross-section of society wanting to live on Mars.
• Some will argue that before humans become interplanetary and start to “mess up” another planet, we should make sure Earth is looked after.

Steven Tingay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Starlab Space LLC (Starlab Space), the transatlantic joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus, today announced the selection of SpaceX to launch the Starlab commercial space station to low-Earth orbit (LEO).
• Starship, SpaceX's fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond, will launch Starlab in a single mission prior to the decommissioning of the International Space Station.
• "SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," said Dylan Taylor, Chairman and CEO, Voyager Space.
• Starlab Space recently announced a teaming agreement with Northrop Grumman and plans to collaborate with the European Space Agency .

• Three more customers are contracted with Astrolab but intend to release details of their payloads at a future date, closer to launch.
• Collectively, these eight contracts are valued at more than $160 million.
• “Our entire Astrolab team is excited to welcome these businesses to Mission 1,” said Jaret Matthews, CEO and Founder, Astrolab.
• "We are very excited to team up with Astrolab for our mission LITTLE PRINCE,” said Barbara Belvisi, founder and CEO, Interstellar Lab.