Post-gravity Design: Approaches to Orientation in Design for Spaceflight

Barbara Brownie

2026.079.0137

DOI https://doi.org/10.59332/jbis-079-04-0137

In the commercial space age there are new opportunities for designers to develop products for use during spaceflight, and it is becoming increasingly urgent for design sectors to prepare for direct engagement with the environment of space by engaging in post-gravity design. Design for space must derive from entirely different foundations to design for Earth, as a result of the need to consider the effects of weightlessness on those objects and their users. This paper identifies the need for designers to reconsider approaches to orientation in the microgravity environment, where there is no fixed paradigm of verticality; no fixed up/down or top/bottom. It argues for the value of post-gravity thinking, proposing three specific approaches to orientation in microgravity.

Keywords: Keywords: Spaceflight, Microgravity, Affordance, Design, Human Factors