Hello

I propose we get all the amateur support groups such as SSI and Mars
Society, plus the various commercial companies such as Space Island
Group and Powersat, to come together for a single project that
promotes all their agendas simultaneously.

I call it Project Promontory Point.

It would be a program to build a series of manned habitats, plus
unmanned solar powersats in a series from LEO, to lunar orbit, to L2
to Martian orbit to Amor orbit. The goal being a 'railroad to the
solar system". These stations would allow manned and robotic mining
of asteroidal uranium to power huge deep space vessels. The solar
power sats would beam energy to the manned habs and ion-pulse vessels
in tthe Earth-Moon-Mars loop. While it is being built the exploration
of Mars and the Moon is aided by orital habs where landes can
originate. Cheap launchers would get enough business to get started.
Powersats could be used for Earth, too.
The posibilities are numerous.
What do you think?

It would be useful to have a united space effort with a well-defined agenda, supported
by all groups. It would be also useful to have this program endorsed internationally.
Maybe a key point is to have governments acknowledge the fact that fossil energy will
run out, and that SSPS (Satellite Solar Power Stations) is the solution. The program
that you describe sounds reasonable. How do we get such a global agreement and
cooperation? Maybe we could lobby the UN to appoint a committee to investigate the
energy future and the future of space.

Michael Mautner

Michael N. Mautner
Senior Research Fellow
Soil, Plant and Ecological Sciences Division
Lincoln University
Lincoln, New Zealand
Telephone (64) (3) 325-2811 ext 8352
Fax (64) (3) 325-3844
E-mail mautnerm@...

Senior Fellow
Department of Chemistry
University of Canterbury
Christchurch 8001
New Zealand
E-mail m.mautner@...

The problem I see with this is that each group vastly
differs in its goals. Mars Society wants humans at
mars, ssi is more into o'niel type colonies, planetary
society is into science and is happy sending more
probes w/o humans, space frontier is all about
ocmmercial space and the list goes on.

Point of the matter is, for all these groups, none of
em agree on most issues. There really is only one
thing all groups agree on and one thing only. Cheap
Access to Space. And on this issue, there already is
alot of people working on it (ala x-prize and a few
startups and the like).

That is what my idea is meant to deal with. Within it are elements of
all those agendas. It requires space habititaion, it requires a human
presence on Mars and the Moon, it requires low=cost launchers, it
requires pure research, it requires commerce.

I think it is something all those groups could support without
compromise.

Don't forget the National Space Society (formerly L5 society
and NSI) which has about 40,000 members - I believe second
only to the planetary society. NSS may have difficulty internally
agreeing on an agenda, but they did put together a roadmap
recently: http://www.nss.org/community/roadmap/index.html
which goes beyond cheap access to space to provide a common
(if perhaps obvious) agenda with milestones and barriers to
their development. The different groups may still disagree
on which milestones should be reached for first, but the
existence of an agreed set of milestones is at least a first
step to a common agenda...

Worth more discussion, at any rate.

Arthur