SGC 2008 discussion

Welcome to the workgroup of the 2008 SGC on Making the Case for human-based exploration beyond LEO. If you are new to this workshop, I invite you to read the posts of last year to familiarize yourself with the discussions. I will also shortly post the current status of our paper. We are tentatively working with "Agenda Wannabe", a media agency based in New Delhi that have much experience in short-film creation. Stay tuned!

Sounds like fun for another round. I'd love to make some video on this and have some fun ideas. Perhaps even bugging the Mars society for some help over here as I'm fairly close to their primary Mars Analog station.

Hey Sanjoy

I read through the report from SGC on "A global imperative- we must go!". Excellent work!!
The rationale for human based space exploration has been very well presented.

With the population explosion and insatiable consumption of resources, i do believe that man will be forced to move out of the earth some day. Preparing for that day from now itself would be very wise

Stephan Hawking also seems to be a strong supporter of "man colonizing space" idea. Here is the link to one of his interviews:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/16/nhawk16....

I'll try and post more soon

Rahul Suresh

All,
This is to let you know that our work has been accepted by the IAC for presentation in Glasgow. How exciting! Here is our chance to present our ideas in front of space professionals. Please take the time to read the paper and identify its weaknesses and post those here!

I went through the SGC-07 document. The following were the reasons presented for human-based exploration beyond LEO: (pardon me if i have missed out anything)

1. A human centered endeavor

2. Benefiting humanity

3. Technological spin-offs

4. Promoting Harmonious international relationships

All the four reasons mentioned above are well justified. But i feel there is one more thing that could be added- that is to make a strong case that the space is the only way out for humanity!

With the present rate of exponential population growth and rapid depletion of resources, earth would not be able to sustain all of us. Lack of drinking water, shelter, food, natural resources like oil etc would make earth like Atacama desert. So what are the alternatives we have? How could we save humanity? -
Space is the only way out. For that, it would become imperative for us to start human-based exploration beyond LEO immediately.

The Notion of "going to space to save humanity" may sound a little far-fetched but it is quite possible at the present rate of environmental degradation due to human activities.

If we are able to strongly convey to the people that "space would be the only way out" for the future generations and we have to prepare ourselves for that right from today, we would be making a pretty big impact on people.

But how do we do that?

Rahul Suresh

YAYYY..our paper got accepted :)
Much work to do now!
Sanj, the link you have up here is the lastest version? or do we have anything updated since OCT 07? (I thought we had one)
-KK

~!I Don't Want to be one in the crowd; I want to be One Above the crowd!~

Hi Sanjoy,

Well, i do agree that trying to sell our case by talking about far-fetched concepts like "escaping to space" or "colonizing space" may sound absurd. But the question is: Who are we trying to convince here?

If we are trying to reach out to technocrats and scientists, then we could stress on better resource management and technological spin offs.

But would it be appealing enough to the governments around the world, who allocate budgets to their national space programs? I do not know how US congress is going to see it. But at least for a country like India, which has limited annual budgets for space program, is not going to consider manned flights to moon unless it is inexorable for human survival. By this I do not mean “colonizing moon” but more like how manned flights could help solving problems like energy crisis, overpopulation etc.

While all the 4 points you guys have put forth in the above document are very valid and self-justifying, it wouldn't harm us to create some hysteria- especially among politicians, to speed up the entire process.

Rahul

Sanjoy,

In your first post, you said that you are working with a New-Delhi based media agency. If there is any work that needs to be done from India (like meeting up with the agency or some negotiation or something), i would be more than happy to pitch in.

Cheers,
Rahul