Space governance you can step inside.
Read the launch brief →howdy [at] diplospace · orgSupport the work →
Support
Founding release
Atlas works. Now help us launch it.
Diplo Space built the working Atlas independently. We are now seeking a small group of founding partners to take the platform through its public institutional release: new instruments, verification, accessibility, immersive development, and public deployment.
The core message
Space is increasingly important to decisions made by people who cannot see the domain they are deciding about. Diplo Space built Atlas to change that.
Founding partnerships from $50,000. The resulting public work remains independently governed and openly available.
Become a founding partner →Request a private demonstration →
What partners get
Real things, said first.
Partners shape what gets built and see it first. What they cannot shape is what the evidence says, and that is exactly why their name is worth putting on it.
Your name on the work
On the funded instrument or scenario, on the Founding Partners page, and at the public launch. Acknowledgment, never advertising.
Your choice of what you fund
An instrument, a scenario, an annual orbital edition, or a record increment, with the scope, timeline, and milestones in writing before you commit.
The platform in your hands early
Private demonstrations and pilot participation as the release is built, in your room or remotely, on the headset or in a plain browser.
A seat at the briefing
Twice a year: the roadmap, the new edition, what is next, and your input on priorities. Advisory, and welcome.
Everything we publish, citable
Explainers, the record, scenario materials, and after-action structures, released openly the day everyone gets them, so your people can cite them the next morning.
Two ways to join
Fund the release, or bring the Atlas to your people.
Many partners will do both. They are written as separate agreements on purpose.
Fund the release
Founding partner
Underwrite the public institutional release of the working Atlas, from $50,000. You choose what your name goes on; the work stays public and independently governed.
Become a founding partner →
Bring the Atlas to your people
Institutional pilot partner
A season of facilitated exercises for your members, students, or staff, the headset build in your venue, and training so your own facilitators can run it after we leave. Scoped in writing; a founding partner can underwrite a season for an institution that cannot budget one.
Propose a pilot →
The pilot season
What an institutional pilot includes.
A pilot is a program agreement, scoped and priced in writing, separate from sponsorship. That separation is what keeps a sponsorship a sponsorship under the IRS rules, and it means a partner institution can fund its own season or a founding partner can underwrite one for an institution that cannot.
In the agreement
- A season of facilitated exercises for your audience, remote or in your room, on published subjects: GPS denial, a conjunction, a debris cascade, ASAT escalation, timing
- The headset build in your venue for the season, with an iPhone companion so your facilitator runs the room
- Facilitator training for your staff, with the situation manual, inject schedule, and after-action template they keep
- Scenario variants shaped to your audience, inside the published catalog; the evidence layer stays the same for every room
- Participation and completion data for your own reporting; we hold no personal data beyond what your institution collects
Professional associations and their chapters
A spacepower and space-governance literacy layer for members who are not engineers: a season of exercises, a headset at the chapter meeting, materials your chapters can run themselves.
Public-policy and international-affairs schools
A course module or capstone built on the instruments, a Washington teaching site with the headset in the room, and a citable scenario archive students can put in a footnote.
Conveners who already run space tabletops on paper
Your exercise, our instruments: the shared, navigable evidence layer under the discussion, and an after-action record that shows what the room saw.
Allied training and diplomatic institutions
Unclassified, multi-perspective, and neutral by design, so it can be used with mixed and international rooms without anyone asking whose side the model is on.
Why now
The working system.
The working platform is not a proposal. Six instruments, a verified public record, published Field Notes, rehearsals that run in a plain browser, and a headset build in private institutional beta exist today, built on the founder's own time and money. What is missing is the release: the verification, accessibility, and deployment work that turns a working system into one institutions can rely on.
Prototype completedonePrivate institutional betacurrentFounding fundingseekingPublic releasefunded milestoneEvaluation and expansionnext
The launch objective
$250,000 funds the release.
The launch objective, planned by function: data and verification, the spatial instruments, scenarios and accessibility, institutional pilots, and public deployment.
A stretch of $500,000 adds a second year of instruments and pilots. Three to five partners are preferred over one; every one is disclosed by name and amount.
Partnership levels
Four levels, stated in the open.
Each level is a bounded scope, timeline, and budget in writing. Acknowledgment is a name and a thank-you, never advertising.
$25,000
Atlas Instrument Sponsor
One defined instrument, dataset expansion, scenario, or annual orbital edition. Recognition: made possible with support from the sponsor, on the instrument.
$50,000
Founding Sponsor
The first serious partnership: designation, acknowledgment on Atlas and on the funded artifact, a place on this page, one private demonstration, and the launch acknowledgment.
$100,000
Founding Partner
Underwrites the platform itself: data, verification, spatial instruments, scenarios, accessibility, pilots, and the public launch.
$250,000+
Lead underwriting
By conversation, for foundations and major donors. We prefer several partners to one, so a lead is discussed privately.
Acknowledgments follow the IRS qualified-sponsorship rules. Anything a sponsor receives is valued in writing and kept under two percent of the payment, so a sponsorship stays a sponsorship and never becomes advertising.
Independence
What money cannot buy.
Every agreement says so in writing: sponsorship buys no control over findings, sources, analysis, or what publishes; no exclusive-provider terms; no comparative language anywhere the name appears; every gift disclosed to the dollar by legal name.
Sponsors receive
- The choice of what they fund: which instrument, scenario, or record increment, with the plan and milestones in writing before they commit
- Public acknowledgment on the funded artifact, the Founding Partners page, and at the launch
- Demonstrations and pilot participation as the platform is developed, in their room or remotely
- Partner briefings twice a year: the roadmap, the edition, what is next, and their input on priorities
- Everything the work produces, published openly and citable, the day everyone else gets it
Sponsors don’t receive
- Editorial influence over findings, framing, or sources
- Early or exclusive access to findings
- Advocacy on their behalf: we take no positions
- Any say over what publishes
The disclosure rule
Every founding partner is public.
Every cash or in-kind gift of $1,000 or more is disclosed to the exact dollar, by donor legal name. Anonymous gifts above that threshold are refused.
The full Funding Integrity Policy →The refusal log
What we turned down.
This is also where declined gifts are recorded, with donor category, date, and amount declined. Nothing is recorded yet.
Institutional proof
What you can check before you email.
- A Virginia 501(c)(3) public charity with Candid's Platinum Seal of Transparency; finances, leadership, goals, and metrics are public.
- A verified public record: every entry dated, tied to a primary source, and coded for how far it traveled toward a coordinated response.
- The instruments, the explainers, and at least one full rehearsal run free in a plain browser; the method is published; every claim carries its source.
- Resourced through programs built for public-interest work, named on the Support page.
Diplo Space, Inc. · Virginia 501(c)(3) · EIN 99-1402470 · Support and lab programs · The record · The Atlas
Founding partners
Positions available.
Positions available. Founding partners will be listed here by legal name and amount, as the Funding Integrity Policy requires. There are none yet.
Start the conversation
One email. A human answers.
Say what you want to fund, or ask for a private demonstration first. If we are not the right lab for it, we will say so.
Become a founding partner →Propose a pilot →Request a private demonstration →
Or write to howdy [at] diplospace · org directly.
A line we keep in writing
Diplo Space, Inc. is a nonprofit public-interest research and education lab. It uses open-source and public-domain data to translate space-governance regimes into navigable scenarios and exercises for non-specialist officials. It takes no policy positions, accepts no foreign-government funding, and is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of State, the Department of War, or any government agency.