The Mission of NSS is to promote social, economic, technological, and political change in order to expand civilization beyond Earth, to settle space and to use the resulting resources to build a hopeful and prosperous future for humanity.
Accordingly, we support steps toward this goal, including human spaceflight, commercial space development, space exploration, space applications, space resource utilization, robotic precursors, defense against asteroids, relevant science, and space settlement oriented education.
The National Space Society (NSS) is an independent, educational, grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Founded as the National Space Institute (1974) and L5 Society (1975), which merged to form NSS in 1987 (see merger proclamation), NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen’s voice on space. NSS has over 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The society also publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space.
Survival — Of Human Species and Earth’s Biosphere: It is the nature of every form of life, whether animal or plant, to strive to survive.
Growth — Unlimited Room for Expansion: It is the nature of every form of life, whether animal or plant, to grow and multiply.
Prosperity — Unlimited Resources: It is the nature of the human species to strive to improve the quality of its many lives and to provide a better future for its children.
Curiosity — The Quest for Knowledge: It is the nature of the human species to learn more about its origins, its past, its fellow life forms, its environment, its limitations, and its possibilities for the future. Earth is but a tiny container of knowledge compared to the entire incredibly vast universe. “We are part of the universe, through our eyes, ears and minds, the universe may know itself.”