The ISA is an Aerospace DAO, whose stakeholders have collaborated to clean up low earth orbit, develop cutting edge aerospace technology, and send astronauts into space to build the first permanent human city on Mars.
Gabriel Rebane, billionaire and visionary, saw that using the nimble and democratic structure of a DAO could transcend national partisanship and unite people in the shared work of getting humans to Mars.
Rebane’s Estonian family history included world wars and regime changes. He came to believe that humans needed to go to Mars as a way to insure our survival. This way, we would not be wiped out by an asteroid hitting the Earth or nuclear war.
Rebane consulted with lawyer and diplomat Afet Yildiz, who put together a team of the best minds in the blockchain space. Together, Rebane and Yildez drafted the rules of the ISA DAO.
A chance meeting brought Davi Santos into the organization to help reach out to ordinary people and recruit stakeholders (like you). Santos grew up poor in Brazil and a chance opportunity for investment in the blockchain economy lifted Santos and his family out of poverty.
Santos saw the opportunities of the ISA DAO as ‘a tide that lifts all boats’. Blockchain economies allow people to invest and work across national borders, removing barriers and decentralizing power.
In 2022, the transnational Artemis Accord project was the best chance for humans to establish a foothold in space. But their project to build a lunar space station was blocked by problems with space suit design.
Instead of having the ISA hire a spacesuit team away from existing aerospace companies, Davi suggested launching a worldwide open call for spacesuit designs. Of course, many of the suits wouldn’t work - but the idea of casting a wider net, looking beyond just the usual suspects - that felt like the ISA way to do it. That felt right.
In 2023, Rebane and Davi - the first official employee of the ISA - launched their contest. They got applications from all over the world - from MIT and Cal-Tech, from the Ecole Polytechnique, from EHT Zurich, from Moscow and Tokyo and Beijing. But the winner was someone they could never have imagined.
Daylinda Tudtud was born in a village outside Cebu, and raised by a single mother in Manila. Daylinda grew up playing by her mother’s workbench in a Manila garment factory. As a child she was slow to talk; many assumed she was developmentally challenged. It turned out she just had better things to do than chat. From the age of three, she could take one look at a shirt or dress and sketch the pattern required to take pieces of 2D fabric and turn them into a working 3D garment. Far from being slow, Daylinda was a savant whose spatial reasoning faculty was off the charts.
When Daylinda saw the announcement of Rebane’s contest, it felt like fate. The world was full of aerospace engineers - but all they knew was unlimited budgets and gigantic ambition. Who among them could possibly know what she did about making garments - squeezing every drop of efficiency out of the manufacturing process to make them fast and cheap and reliable?
Her breakthrough design was proof of Davi’s concept that talent and intelligence existed all over the world. A DAO could find that talent better and solve problems faster than traditional corporate and national structures.
Santos had already recruited about 10,000 stakeholders from the Philippines, Brazil, India, the US, Europe, China, Japan, Nigeria and a dozen other countries. It was time for the ISA to claim its place.
In 2025 the ISA closed a deal to supply the Artemis Project and Luna Station with their spacesuit technology, with a corresponding dividend paid to every ISA stakeholder.
Inspired by the worldwide publicity - and tangible payout - people all over the world who dreamed of being part of something bigger began to flock to the ISA, building the war chest necessary to build it’s second aerospace business, supplying clean-up services for the every-mounting clouds of derelict satellites, rocket debris and assorted space junk beginning to clutter Low Earth Orbit.
Three weeks after the official opening of Luna Station, Rebane bought lunch for Artemis Project Planing Lead Aaliyah Dunbar and offered her the job of a lifetime: putting together a team to mount the first human colony on Mars.
She said yes.
The ISA made its first uncrewed landing on Mars in 2031, depositing the cargo to support the first landing of four astronauts in 2033.
Today there are 12 astronauts who have been on Mars for at least two years; Mission 4 will bring even more.
Today’s ISA has grown into a continent-spanning network of people passionate about space. As an ISA earth-based contractor, your work is essential to building what is not just a base on Mars, but a true colony: mankind’s first permanent outpost on a planet other than Earth.
The ISA takes the idea of a “citizen space program” seriously. The ISA will never hire someone who is unfit for the job, but candidates who have come through our program will always receive the respect of those coming from traditional aerospace players. Roles in the ISA are only outsourced if no members are currently willing and able to fill them.
More than half the crew at Mission Control have come up through the ranks of ISA stakeholders.
Rebane and Dunbar have worked for years to develop the “earth-based distributed management system” whereby ISA members
As an ISA Stakeholder it’s your job to ensure the maintenance and expansion of the Mars colony.
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