Output from this process
Some people have been asking what the output of this process should look like, so I thought I would give you the definitive answer: It is up to you!
As you will know from the background reading, there will be an invitation-only workshop during the symposium, featuring key individuals mentioned here. If two of you had a chance to speak at that workshop, armed with this survey and with the help of this team, what would you say? Answer that, and you will know what you need to do here.
Good luck!
Chris
In short, I would tell them that this survey, is a good idea of what the world's young people (and probably some older people) believe should happen in regard to space within 50 years.
They COULD ignore it, but the youth are extremely vital to the next 50 years in space. Some of the projects (if not most or all) will be in OUR hands, in OUR leadership. It sounds cliche, but we ARE the future. Ignore us and ignore our suggestions as to what needs to be done in space, and there will no doubt be problems and gaps down the line. I would definitely stress that.
Hopefully, we can get some workable solutions and ideas with this survey. I do not believe it is enough to simply run off a list of things that need to be done without addressing HOW to do them. At the conference, I would hopefully have full proposals to present to the people. I would very much like to have a full discussion with the people there as to these issues, not just making a speech.
Agreed Quantum. An active discussion would be far better than simply stating what we have found. The number calculations are useful and informative on the desires of those with an interest in space at this time. But all we have here is an opinion poll of ideas on what people believe are desirable goals. We cannot hope to accomplish all these goals in these desired timeframes even allowing for the fact that there is overlap on many of them. What we ought to do is begin working research behind each topic on the feasibility and profitability (both scientifically and economically) of these ideas. Once armed with more data on these topics we can better judge what is and is not possible due to political situations, Funding, and Current Technologies. Finally of course the we would have the weight of the vote. Since so many of these do overlap the most popular ones will have the most support and have the most public attention. Having all of that we could then open the discussion and see what would develop in the direction of a series of specific goals over the next 50 years. The milestones that we might choose to shoot for.
I know we still have some time on the schedule, but one suggestions would be to save certain "antedotes" for the presentation. A direct quote from a particularly interesting survey will humanize the report and make it more relatable to the audience.
You say 'Antedotes' but that would imply you wanted to heal or repair something and that doesn't seem to fit in the context of your post. Especially since you use the word quote in there. It it is 'Anecdotes' though I definitely agree. Including interesting quotes will be an important part of a good presentation.
Hello Everyone,
I think we have made a great headstart thanks to everyone's efforts here. Indeed, enteries to the survey would probably be useful as anecdotes in the actual presentation and document. Plus, I think these would supplement the content extremely well, if for the technological and scientific communities we had a roadmap and recommendations on bridging the gaps and how to accomplish the activities laid out in a logical order. For e.g. Currently, there are several enteries supporting a lunar base, so one of the key elements on our roadmap would be the lead up and accomplishment of say the first lunar base. But then the questions arise 'how'? and 'at who's cost?'. The recommendations in our document and presentation could be answering these two important questions. This would also be interesting for policy and congressional/agency support to put our mandate into action.
My 2 cents!
There is a freeware program I have on my system called 'Inform'. Essentially it is designed as a program for building explorable text worlds. This is most often directed toward Text Adventure games but it occurs to me that it could be used as a creative and unusual way to organize and present the project. Perhaps alongside a more standard spreadsheet layout as bee has suggested. With understanding of only a few basic commands and the cardinal directions one could wander to different 'rooms' where different events are stored. Surrounding each event in the room we can have interactive materials relevant to it in the form of items and persons. In conjunction with the previously stated organizational concepts the events could be grouped into 'zones' within the program to allow a less random exploration. There are other specifics but I think the general idea is clear enough here. What this would provide us with is a different approach that can be interesting to approach and does not require significant explanation. Im posting it here to see what the other participants make of it. If its a popular idea It wont be hard to implement even on programs other than inform as it is a portable file that can run in a number of everonments and formats.
http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html
I look forward to your responses.
Veren,
This is quite a novel concept, but perhaps be better for disseminating our output to the space enthusiasts around the world. This could form a very interesting feature that people can browse through our findings from the space generation website, althought I am unaware if this causes any technical issues. However, I am unsure how this would be presented at the planning workshop itself - is this that you had in mind for your suggestion?
Hello everyone,
Thanks for the support and offer to help sorting. Seeing that much of the discussion has moved here, I believe this would be more of an appropriate forum to post for help in sorting the survey enteries we have received.
If you are unclear about the matrix and keyword sorting, please see below:
1) Keyword sorting. We need to categorize by the different keywords for the events: for e.g. Lunar base, space tourism, privatization, etc
One sheet for each keyword.
2) We do it via a category matrix. I believe this should happen in parallel with some people working on the keywords and others working on the category matrix. Once we have both, we can probably see a bird's eye view of the responses. If you haven't read my earlier post regarding this suggestion, please see here
I tried running a trial sorting, it takes quite a while. I think it may be useful if we can all see the changes - how about transfering this excel spreadsheet to something like google docs that may allow us to edit at the same times.
Need volunteers:
# Run through the excel spreadsheet and look up categories based on keywords + some that can be under a well-defined "miscellenous"
# Sort events for "happening now"
# sort events for "5 years from now"
# sort events for "10 years from now"
# sort events for "50 years from now"
(I guess with the exception of the first#, we need two volunteers for each)
Anyone?:-)
In inverse order no less
Quantum if you are unable to open the original document containing all the completed surveys you could probably go the route I did and use the freeware OpenOffice for opening the document. Itll appear a little compressed or streched at first but with a minimal amount of manual editing (which you will be doing anyhow since it will be necessary for sorting) it can be made quite legible. Also along those lines I incidentally converted the whole thing into an HTML format so if we wanted we could upload the results for access through a web browser. It might be easier for some people to view it in this manner.
The number of people we can get on each one will depend largely on activity. I'm not certain if we can get two different people on each one but two does make sense to cover mistakes. What we might end up seeing then, is a few people taking on multiple jobs. This seems even more likley looking over the spreadsheet again and noting the 20, 30, and 40 year entries. I like the google docs idea. It would simplify the coordination a great deal.
The novel method of presentation I outlined would indeed be a good way to format this for display to the larger community but there are ways to integrate such into a presentation as well with a little creative work. What I wanted to know is whether you thought such would be a good idea. If it is sufficiently useful in either or both cases in the general opinion it is probably worth doing.
Thanks Veren, You can go right ahead. Chris loaded a file sharing forum. It would be great if you could place your excel file there. Please make sure you add a worksheet and Rename it "50 years" followed by "- Your Initials". So that if we needed to merge the excel sheet, it would cause too many issues.
I shall do the 10 years from now. I started on it, but boy, theres a lot of enteries for it!
Let's make Space Happen!
Hello Everyone,
The forums have gone silent for a couple of days, so I thought I d check if there are any volunteers for other timelines. I am close to finishing the sorting of my timeline (10 years), Veren has opted to help out on the 50 years - (Thanks again!). Would anyone else like to help us? Please let us know so that we can help and don't duplicate efforts!
Also, for those who haven't had the chance to keep track of it, the World Economic forum is taking place in Davos, Switzerland from the 24-28th of January and several topics of utmost importance in today's world are being discussed. Some of these should tie up well with what we have as the key events and potentially linking these to expected solutions might help our final outcome. Also, it makes for a very interesting reading - check out some of the key discussions on http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm
For those who may find this rather capitalistic and do not like the bias to capitalism & macro /global issues, you could check out the rival event, yet just as critical - a forum of micro economic experts, socialists and poverty campaigners - the world social forum taking place in Kenya (http://wsf2007.org/)
I believe a space faring community has as much of a responsibility to be solving problems on Earth as for extending our reach to the stars. :-)
Enjoy it!
Yes it certainly has been very quiet. I check these at least once per day and have been lately wondering what happened. The initial excitement has ebbed a bit. I'm about halfway through the 50 year period. Its great to hear more about it.
This Economic forum sounds very interesting I shall have to take a look.
I have been wondering about greater communications outside of the forums here. Some of us have listed contact information for real time communication and I think we could coordinate in real time if we could get these into use. It would allow us to communicate in other areas aside from the forums and shared files section. Faster work can be done with lessened time delays and we can help to better encourage and remind one another. To facilitate this Id encourage anyone to contact me at the IM listed in my profile. Does anyone else think this would help?
That would be great Quantum. If you could get started on those right away all we will need are the 'now' and '40' sections. If necessary I can work on the 40s after I finish with the 50s. If no one else steps up that leaves the 'now' entries for bee if he is willing.
Given the nature in which the results have been collected my sense is that the most important thing that is conveyed in the presentation of the results is the general sentiment of "youth". In otherwords a qualitative overview rather any attempt at any kind of quantitative analysis.
To this end, I am not sure whether sorting and categorizing everyone's responses is going to add a great deal. Isn't conveying the spread of responses is the most important thing given the self selecting nature of the respondents.
Finally, whilst I think the survey has brought forward some great ideas - I think the question "youth" must also answer is how they envisage that they will come to fruition. Literally. In otherwords how are the political and economic conditions going to be brought about in order for these great ideas to occur. I think if these elements could be extracted out of the survey and brought to the forefront this survey would have more traction than most Youth Space Charter type documents that have been presented to date.
On this note - I would implore you all to visit the WEF site as suggested by Bee!!
Given the nature in which the results have been collected my sense is that the most important thing that is conveyed in the presentation of the results is the general sentiment of "youth". In otherwords a qualitative overview rather any attempt at any kind of quantitative analysis.
To this end, I am not sure whether sorting and categorizing everyone's responses is going to add a great deal. Isn't conveying the spread of responses is the most important thing given the self selecting nature of the respondents.
Finally, whilst I think the survey has brought forward some great ideas - I think the question "youth" must also answer is how they envisage that they will come to fruition. Literally. In otherwords how are the political and economic conditions going to be brought about in order for these great ideas to occur. I think if these elements could be extracted out of the survey and brought to the forefront this survey would have more traction than most Youth Space Charter type documents that have been presented to date.
On this note - I would implore you all to visit the WEF site as suggested by Bee!!
Ok, I'm done sorting the 5, 20 and 30 year responses to the survey. I want to upload the rough drafts and get some suggestions as to how to polish them as I know they aren't perfect. The question is, how do I upload?? They're in .txt format, by the way.
Hello Quantum,
That's great. Chris added a file share section, see File Share. I shall upload soon. I am having some technical difficulty (my motherboard crashed on sunday), but hopefully will retrieve all files soon...(fingers crossed!).
Great work there! :-)
Hi everyone,
I arrive a bit late, but just saw this forum! I see you've all been very active, and wondered if you still needed help on sorting... or is everything done already? Maybe the "now" still needs to be done?
Otherwise I can have a look at the result of this sorting and try to make something out of it!
mmdoery. The sorting and categorizing is designed to help us better guage the areas that are of most interest to the youth. In the 20 year category for instance Quantum points out that the largest number of responses is for a permanent moon base. Knowing this we can focus our research efforts in that direction and put together a strong presentation regarding the feasibility of such a project. On the other hand we can eliminate some of the erroneous answers. There is one in the list that did not completely fill out even one event. Another that double posted.
In addition to cleaning up and targeting for research we gain an organizational advantage for presentation. If you have them neatly laid out by topic it is much easier to put it up on a projection and point out individual entries than it is to try and muddle through the random assortment of items that we recieved as initial input.
Otherwise I agree. It would be useful to have suggestions for how to achieve the major goals. Even beyond Political and Economic aspects we will need to delve into practical technological, social and other aspects.
Cause I can't really figure out how to upload. I tried to use that Title and Body form in the Edit section of the file share page, but it ended up putting my entire results on the page and I didn't think that was quite right. So I'll just put them here *shrugs*
5 Year:
New space technologies: (25)
1. Space elevator (2)
2. Affordable, resuable spacecraft design and propulsion (10)
3. Nuclear reactors in space (3)
A. public acceptance of (1)
B. Orion renewal (1)
4. Scrap the shuttle design (2)
5. space robots (1)
6. space port (1)
7. space elevator (2)
8. heavy-lifting capabilities for bases (1)
9. Use of partially-designed already SSTO vehicles (1)
10. build solar-poweres sattelites to export cheap and clean electricity to Earth by microwave transmission (1)
11. Better space engine (1)
International Cooperation: (15)
1. International space organization (5)
2. space bases in other countries (1)
3. New moon Treaty (1)
4. new space laws (1)
5. U.S. and China collaborate on space mission (1)
Moon base: (14)
1. solar base on the moon (2)
2. Moon observatory (1)
Privatize space (businesses, commerce): (14)
1. Space Tourism (6)
2. development of reusable and cost-effective space vehicles by private sector (1)
3. first private orbital mission (1)
4. Space resources tapped by private space company to aid the less-fortunate (1)
5. Bigelow Aerospace takes paying customers (1)
6. Cheaper access (3)
Space stations: (11)
1. Complete ISS (5)
2. U.S.-only space station (1)
3. space station expansion (1)
4. non-scientific (1)
5. private (1)
6. ISS will get cancelled, China will have its own space station (1)
7. for science and tourism (1)
New technologies: (7)
1. carbon nanotubes (2)
2. stronger sattelite systems for televisions (1)
3. human stasis (1)
4. warp drive or teleportation (1)
5. cots (1)
6. better particle accelerators (1)
Mars: (5)
1. Manned Mars race (1)
2. Return sample from Mars (1)
NASA: (5)
1. abandons in-house launch capabilities and sub-contracts: (1)
2. purchases tickets from the private sector for their astronauts to get a ride to low Earth orbit (1)
3. Becomes solely an exploration agency (1)
4. Overhaul bureaucrats (1)
5. Uses privately developed spacecraft to service the ISS (1)
Earth: (5)
1. Peace on Earth (1)
2. solar panels to be used on Earth (1)
3. Be more eco-friendly (1)
4. U.S. economy will crash (1)
5. world population growth will damage the environment (1)
Funding: (4)
1. diversified funding (1)
2. more funding (1)
3. less funding (2)
Space probes: (3)
1. To Europa (1)
Public outreach: (3)
1. adoption of space-specific curriculum in high school courses (1)
2. Increase public awareness (2)
Manned exploration beyond Earth: (3)
1. To Near-Earth objects (1)
Better space debris tracking: (2)
Images: (2)
1. More images of space released: (1)
2. Improve imaging technology (1)
Space medicine: (2)
1. Microgravity and Martian atmosphere with affect human biological system (1)
1. development of medicines in space: (1)
Space Garbage: (2)
1. we will dump garbage into space (1)
2. clean-up of space garbage and abolishment of satellite graveyards (1)
Adopt a sustainable, carbon neautral approach to space exploration: (1)
Renewed space interest: (1)
Space Marines: (1)
Space telescope: (1)
Send satellites to deeper areas of space: (1)
Mega death ray from space will shot hippies, commies, etc: (1)
Study of atmosphere, ionosphere, etc: (1)
Moon base: Development of a working base on the moon (51)
1. Mining (6)
A. Manufacture of H3 to fuel intra-sol explorations (3)
2. For Research (8)
3. Exploration
4. Commerce (1)
5. Spaceport (4)
A. Lunar governance (self-governance) (1)
6. And/or high orbit (1)
7. Economically sustainable (1)
8. First diversion of colliding asteroid for Planetary Defense (1)
9. Lunar Array Space Telescopes for asteroid observations and mitigation strategies (1)
10. Using volume-effecient Soyuz-type spacecraft, Lunar Orbit Rendevouz, and LOX/CH4 Propellants for Lunar Lander upper-stage (1)
11. Commercial trips to the moon (1)
12. NASA will fail to get to the moon, proving NASA to be inefficient (1)
13. International countries get to Mars and unseat the U.S. (1)
14. moon observatory (1)
Mars: Get To Mars (27)
1. Expeditions at every launch window (1)
2. Colonize Mars (6)
A. Humanity will evolve while living in space (1)
B. Mars base with 100+ colonists (1)
C. Totally self-sufficient colony (1)
3. Walk on Mars (2)
4. International collaboration (1)
5. From a base on the moon (1)
B.Discovery of life on Mars: (1)
Alternate propulsion: (14)
1. Nuclear Propulsion: Revive nuclear propulsion research (4)
A. Orion Spacecraft (1)
B. Develop fusion generators (1)
2. Fuel-efficient engines (1)
3. Plasma drives (1)
4. Fission-powered (1)
Privatization of space: (12)
1.Space tourism (7)
A. Vacation (2)
2. Private colonies on Mars, Titan and the moon (1)
3. Low-Earth orbit transportation for consumers (1)
4. commericla exploration of space (1)
5. Space Economy: (2)
A. Investment in space industry (1)
B. Privately-funded space hospitality businesses (1)
Space station: (8)
1. To allow easy departure and fueling of spacecraft (1)
2. International (1)
3. Near Mars (1)
4. Permanent scientific and staff teams (1)
5. L5 Space Station (1)
6. Manufacturing facilities on space stations, planets, moons, and asteroids in our solar system (1)
7. solar-powered (1)
Terrestrial Fuel Sources: (8)
1. Reduce CO2 emmissions (1)
A. Especially that of the U.S.
2. Develop Reusable/renewable fuel sources (1)
3. Commercial solar power collectors bringing solar energy to Earth by tightly-focused microwave beams (1)
4. Mining H3 for Earth use (1)
5. Develop Hydrogen fuel infrastructure (1)
6. Production of fuel to allow low-Earth orbit sattelites and to bring plutonium and helium 3 back to Earth (1)
7. Nanotechnology has the power to create energy (1)
Extraterrestrial Fuel Sources: Development of extraterrestrial energy resource exploitation (6)
1. Asteroid survey/mining (1)
2. Solar power collectors (1)
A. Full implementation of solar power collecting satellites (1)
3. Mining asteroids for Earth needs (2)
Reusable Space vehicles: Development of cost-effective, reusable space vehicles: (4)
Exploration of solar bodies by humans driven by scientific research: (4)
1. In orbit: (1)
2. To a Near-Earth Body (1)
Development of International Space Organization: (3)
1. First World Summit in Space (1)
Space Elevator: Development of the space elevator (2)
Space colonization: creation of off-world fully self-sustaining colony (2)
1. Space "emigration" (1)
Develop Space Robots: Develop robots to explore space (2)
1. Robotic presence on Moon, Mars (1)
Colonization of satellites or other planets: (2)
1. Humans born outside of Earth (1)
Small structure: We are confined to Earth (1)
Terrorist Attack: Nuclear weapons will be used (1)
First Black or Woman President: (1)
Telecommunications: (1)
1. Establishment of luna-stationary satellites for communication between space bases
Artificial Gravity: Develop practical artificial gravity (1)
Europa Ocean Probe: Develop a probe to explore Europa's ocean (1)
Human Mission to L2 to service James Webb Space Telescope: (1)
Influence of the Star on the Sun-Earth system (1)
Be able to transmit matter at light speeds: (1)
Recruitment of astronauts of broader background: (1)
Advanced Deep Space Viewing to better understand the Universe: (1)
Mushrooming space technology and industry create new interest in space exploration: (1)
Create semi-artificial Intelligence to explore space: (1)
Confirmation of extraterrestrial life: (1)
Fundamental and applid scientific studies in space: (1)
Space-based telescopes: (1)
Detailed exploration of Titan: (1)
Full science press to understand the solar system: (1)
Search for extrasolar planets: (1)
Mars: Get to Mars (34)
1. nuclear war on Mars (1)
2. terraforming (1)
3. To build a space station (1)
Moon: Base on the moon (17)
1. radio antennaes on the far side of the moon (2)
A. (SETI) (1)
2. Lunar base for He3 (1)
3. Research (1)
4. mining (2)
New Space technology: (9)
1. Improved propulsion (2)
2. Nuclear fission (1)
3. Space elevator (4)
4. deep space transport (1)
5. antimatter production (1)
6. overhaul of shuttle design (1)
7. robots (1)
Space privatization: (8)
1. Space tourism (4)
A. Interplanetary cruise (1)
2. 100% Private orbital mission, 1st private space station, 1st private lunar mission (1)
3. space commerce (1)
4. profit
5. Lunar hotel (1)
Colonies: (6)
1. Orbiting Earth (1)
2. Agricultural colonies (1)
3. space colonies will declare themselves independent (1)
Human expansion/exploration: (4)
1. Moon or Mars (1)
2. living on other planets: (1)
Space Station: (4)
1. space habitats (1)
Ecological disaster on Earth: (4)
1. WWIII (1)
2. Nuclear disaster (1)
3. fossil fuels will be gone (1)
Discovery of extraterrestrial life: (4)
1. On Mars (1)
2. astrobiology (1)
International cooperation: (2)
All countries should be democratic: (2)
1. disappearance of dictators (1)
Manned Jupiter mission: (2)
Scientific research of the universe: (2)
Extraterrestrial Sources of Energy: (1)
1. Asteroid mining (1)
Development of a space culture: (1)
Economic development of space: (1)
Space becomes accessible to the general public: (1)
Extragalactic probes: (1)
Intestellar space mission: (1)
Exploration of solar system: (1)
Better Earth resource ultilization: (1)
Meteor defense shield: (1)
Study of how viruses/bacteria react in low-gravity: (1)
Virtual welfare net: (1)
Hey everyone!
I am unsure as to why the file upload is not working for most, but I can see the link, so have uploaded the 'now' years- please see File Share section . (Thanks Annelie!) I shall add the results you all have supplied here into one compound spreadsheet and upload today (I am in European time GMT+1). Thanks all, this is looking to shape up well!
Till soon!
P.S. If you would like to have your original excel file uploaded, please feel free to send it to me: bee(at)spacegeneration.org
I think there was a problem with the file uploads page, and that should now be fixed. There will be a blue link under the files list where you can open up the file upload options. Please make a note here if you still have problems.
Cheers,
Chris
The now+10 years are both uploaded as a merged document. I can do that for the rest tomorrow, If someone else finds the time to merge them all, please do so and upload them so we can have a good all-day long discussion so as to be clear for what the second round can have. Many interesting traits are already emerging and the questions for the next round are surfacing seeing the entire collection!
Thanks and see you here tomorrow.
Bee
Hey Dawn,
Thanks for joining. Perhaps a fresh look at the survey of all results would indeed aid to structure the next round better. If you look at the file share, some important things pop out - I made a summary, will be posting here soon. Maybe you could look at this and add to it, incase we have missed out some important pointers in analysing how the sorting of the entries helped.
Great, looking quickly at the different enteries that have been sorted (thanks again - for looking tideously at such a time consuming task and still catching all the cross-cutting themes) and previous posts, what we have here a progression of events that seems logical, but also inconsitencies. For e.g. It is well pronounced that Private sector's involvement in space is progressing as follows:
The rise of the private space tourism --> cheaper means of transporting heavier payloads --> commercial activities on the moon --> commercial moon base --> commercial interplanetary activities.
BUT for the topic of space stations
Complete the ISS (now) -->US/China or newer space station development (5 years) --> New/safer space station. this shows a large uncertainty and lack of confidence in the ISS utilization plan. 50 years is a long timescale to be planning for, but lets not do that keeping in mind the plans laid out for the 5-10 year timescale already by the agencies and industry. the 50 year outcome woudl certainly depend on how these 5-10 year activities turn out, but we should be keeping their development in mind. In the case that we do feel the lack of confidence in the ISS program - how do we solve this: is it by getting more partners to make sure ISS is utilized effectively or by convincing the partner nations more?
So, round 2 can have two approaches:
ONE: As was discussed in earlier quantum and another, our document could reflect what the 'youth' feel are important issues: give them a priority list of how we feel these events should develop
TWO: Another could be to use these 'important issues to today's youth' to answer questions regarding how these are possible to be done quicker: keeping away from the traditional approach, as the other invitees to the symposium workshop would already know the conventional ways of addressing the gaps in the current international roadmaps. for eg. until recently, inter-organizational cooperation wasn't really taken by agencies as we had not proved it to be successful in terms of science value return. Student satellites are one example of how this has now started to being supported within space agencies.
THREE: We could work on different scenarios which would result in a more 'probable' outcomes and lay recommendations for each that would help the planning workshop to include our views on a variety of issues..
In terms of execution (thinking ahead of what expected answers to questions would be), having a priority list is not enough for e.g. a question could be: Choose which order you would like the events to take place and justify? If you were to invest in the venture what would you do first? the options could be: Establishing political stability, privatizing the space industry, commercial activities in cis-lunar space and solve the space debris issue. The inputs could be reflecting something that has been a more recent topic in the news or what the individual has been involved in rather than being a product of a detailed thought. - there should be multiple ways of checking the same, so the we donot have any inconsitency and the participant is made to look at the same issue in various ways.
So, for the way forward:
We should also keep in mind that Space alone is seldom the only answer to any problems we are facing - it is best made use of when taken to complement other efforts with one single exception (which I cover in a couple of lines). For eg. utilizing space resources (sun's energy) for solar power and harnessing energy from Lunar He-3 is not the only option to end the energy crisis, as it is mainly a supply-demand management issue. Once we have such options for generating energy that meets our demand, our consumption would increase too and a constant increase over decades is hard to correct when finally we are able to recognise how finite the resources are. Space is our only and best option when it comes to moving humanity into becoming a bi or multi planetary species in order to avoid annihilation.
We need to spread out the word to more people as our mix of countries is far and wide, but still shows a stark lacking of what emerging countries would be doing in the next 50 years.
Please let me know of what you think and lets start pondering upon what exact wording we would use for the round 2 survey. We need to be padentic and thorough in thinking how the answers can still leave us with grey areas (ideally, this would be just small enough for us to be able) to bridge the current unanswered questions - and add a bit of creativity.
Personally, I would love to see how we can introduce a space role in aiding to solve EVERY BIG PROBLEM we face in our time and in the coming 50 years, worked with scenarios and dependencies and present the recommendations on how the younger generation wants these solved.
Thoughts? (sorry this is so long)
Interesting. We are making great progress people. After we edit in the Chinese results we will have a solid framework in place to build on. Bee these are some good suggestions you have and I like the first one pretty well though it might use some tweaking.
Space is sometimes not the best solution to a problem. While it may afford possible solutions to most problems it solves some far better than others. This being the case it may be desirable to target in our efforts in the areas that will have the most useful overall impact. We could base the second survey around this concept and get feedback on what the best focus for our efforts toward solving problems would be. Should we spend more time on gathering energy from space or working on a meteorite defense program? Is our money better spent on finding ways to establish permanent space settlements or building a high speed suborbital transit system? This meshes somewhat with the first idea mentioned by Bee for opinions on the Order that things should develop.
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