Construction of commercial spaceports in Texas and plans for the first human settlement on Mars have University of Houston architecture faculty and students focused on the future of the nation’s space program. The critical first step for the successful commercial development of space is to lower the cost of access to space, says Larry Bell, director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, or SICSA, a research and education center in the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture.