Beyond Earth Policy Review, Winter 2026, Vol. 1, Issue 2

The Winter 2026 issue of the Beyond Earth Policy Review examines humanity's expansion into space through three converging lenses. Richard and Steven Höeser catalog a sociological research agenda warning that the transition to commercial spaceflight populations will arrive before the social science does. Paul Frakes argues that buried disagreements about what "human thriving" means will produce incompatible futures if left unexamined. M.C. Sungaila's COSMOSIS framework grounds the Overview Effect in governance principle, offering policymakers practical tools for matching adaptive governance to real-world complexity. All three articles arrive independently at a shared conclusion: the human questions cannot remain subordinate to the engineering questions as humanity moves beyond Earth.