Gateway in Lunar Orbit: Extending Architecture Beyond Earth

Rendering of the Gateway via Flickr under license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Image Courtesy of NASA

The concept of the technosphere provides a framework for understanding the scale of human impact on Earth. The term was coined by Peter K. Haff, and it is defined as the global network of human-made artifacts: a physical layer of infrastructure, buildings, vehicles, and machinery that functions alongside the biosphere and atmosphere. Currently estimated at 30 trillion tons, this human-constructed mass is dominated by the built environment.