Posted by Gav on August 6th, 2007
I’ve renewed my membership of the Planetary Society.
If you believe that the world’s States alone cannot make the best of space (or even if you do believe that they can); if you believe that we, as a species, need to leave this planet eventually to ensure our existence; if you believe that ‘progress’ is a reason enough in itself…
… then join the Planetary Society as I did a year ago, and join in that effort. See the progress that the Planetary Society’s efforts are achieving and know, in your heart, that you are part of something great, momentous and meaningful.
Posted by Gav on April 15th, 2006
Again, in response to Dave’s comments in the last post:
That’s one of the great things (at the moment) about ESA — it’s not an EU organisation and has no political aspirations. NASA has recently been stymied by Bush’s redirection of funds and policy and, while I support Bush’s new direction, it must be very frustrating and is very wasteful to change on a whim like this.
When we look at what is spent on other good causes I cannot see any arguments against slightly more funding. Personally, if I could, I’d pay more in by donation.
But the private ventures thing is the future. The X Prize had me so excited I couldn’t sleep. What has kept everything tame is the enormous start-up costs and the lack of a real short-term economic goal.
That short-term economic goal should be created. ESA, NASA and Russia, China and Japan (if they’re interested) should collaborate to target the mining of precious metals from asteroids. Once that has been achieved the technology used to achieve it should be made freely available so that companies can start mining asteroids themselves with fewer development costs.
The myriad other economic ventures that branch off of that would surprise us, I am sure.
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