currently be a massively expensive project. On the technological front, there is ongoing progress in making access to space cheaper (reusable launch systems could reach $20 per kg to orbit), and in creating automated manufacturing and construction techniques. There are yet no plans for building space settlement by any large-scale organization, either government or private. However, many proposals, speculations, and designs for space settlements have been made through the years, and a considerable number of space colonization advocates and groups are active. Several famous scientists, such as Freeman Dyson, have come out in favor of space settlement. Definition The term has been used very broadly, being applied to any permanent human presence, even robotic, particularly along with the term "settlement", being imprecisely applied to any human space habitat, from research stations to self-sustaining communities in space. The word colony and colonization are terms rooted in colonial history on Earth, making it a human geographic as well as particularly a political term. This broad use for any permanent human activity and development in space has been criticized, particularly as colonialist and undifferentiated (see below Objections). In this sense, a colony is a settlement that claims territory and exploits it for the settlers or their metropole. Therefore a human outpost, while possibly a space habitat or even a space settlement, does not automatically constitute a space colony. Though entrepôts like trade factories did often grow into colonies. History When the first space flight programs commenced they partly used and have continued to use colonial spaces on Earth, such as places of indigenous peoples at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex, Guiana Space Centre or contemporarily for astronomy at the Mauna Kea telescope. When orbital spaceflight was achieved in the 1950s colonialism was still a strong international project, e.g. easing the United States to advance its space program and space in general as part of a "New Frontier". But during the initial decades of the space age decolonization also gained again in force producing many newly independent countries. These newly independent countries confronted spacefaring countries, demanding an anti-colonial stance and regulation of space activity when space law was raised and negotiated internationally. Fears of confrontations because of land grabs and an arms race in space between the few countries with spaceflight capabilities grew and were ultimately shared by the spacefaring countries themselves. This produced the wording of the agreed on international space law, starting