The next decades will bring planetary-scale shifts: climate transformation, artificial intelligence, generational transitions of power and knowledge. New worlds need new systems, new ways of organizing, governing, and thriving together.

But who gets to design those systems? Right now, it's mostly the same people who've always held that power. The generation who will inherit these systems are asked to comment or adapt but rarely given the canvas to build from first principles.. If we want systems that are more inclusive, more resilient, more aligned with the futures we actually want, then those who will live in those futures must design them.

That's why we're building the Lunar University: a learning entity where young people globally co-create the systems humanity needs. LunARC is creating this foundational architecture through two core initiatives: the First Principles Series and NEXUS. Together, they form a global system for learning, imagination, and knowledge synthesis.

Youth Designing Systems From First Principles

We begin with a set of pilot design labs where small, diverse cohorts of young people prototype the systems humanity will need to thrive on Earth and beyond — not by extending what exists, but by reimagining from first principles. In these early experiments, a jazz musician explores how improvisation might inform collective decision-making; an Indigenous student reframes resource management through ecological cycles; and a Buddhist scholar translates interdependence into models for ethical stewardship.

These are not metaphors. They are working prototypes that offer early insight into how humans might organize, govern, and care for one another in radically new contexts.Across each pilot, students translate the deep logics of their disciplines into frameworks for societal systems. Their prototypes are reviewed with academic partners and policy circles, and refined collectively as they move through each stage of the lab.We begin with governance because the decisions being made today about space will shape centuries — and because governance frameworks designed for the constraints of space often illuminate solutions urgently needed on Earth.

As we learn from these pilots, we will expand to other foundational systems humanity must reimagine: resource distribution, cultural protocols, conflict resolution, health and wellbeing, and more.

Turning Distributed Wisdom Into Shared Insight
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NEXUS is an open-source knowledge platform that brings together student prototypes, indigenous knowledge traditions, academic research, and community wisdom into a single space where ideas can be linked, compared, stress-tested, and evolved. It reveals patterns and connections no single discipline or region could uncover alone, becoming a living map of systems thinking emerging across cultures.

The 2026 NEXUS Demonstrator will connect the first three design labs — in Bolivia (regenerative systems), India (Buddhist principles), and Cuba (jazz improvisation). If successful, this demonstrator becomes the foundation for the full platform: the knowledge layer of the Lunar University, a living curriculum shaped by thousands of contributors across the world.

From Pilots to Platform to Planetary

The First Principles pilots and NEXUS Demonstrator are not standalone programs - they're the first tests of a methodology that could fundamentally change how humanity learns and governs together. If these early experiments succeed, they prove that youth from diverse knowledge traditions can design viable systems for our shared future.

The methodology scales: more disciplines, more countries, more of the systems we urgently need to reimagine. NEXUS grows from a demonstrator into the full knowledge platform - the living curriculum of the Lunar University. By 2035, when the first classroom opens on the Moon, it won't mark a beginning. It will be the culmination of a decade of curriculum co-created by thousands of young people across continents - proof that humanity can build learning infrastructure worthy of our multiplanetary future.

Your support now helps establish whether this vision is possible.

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