Dear SSI,
I have been involved in the space colony movement since the publication of O'Neill's ideas in Physics Today, Sept. 1974, helped form the L-5 Society, still give several presentations per year on this topic, etc. A joke about being reborn is that it is easier to be reborn than to grow up. O'Neill's ideas are still exciting, but we have not been advanced much in the past few decades, perhaps because he did much of the thinking that could be done before implementation, and not much is happening in space that carries these ideas forward. I think many who join SSI are interested in new ideas, and get them when they first start thinking about orbital habitats, but soon know most of that, and so the influx of new ideas to those people's brains from SSI then nearly stops. I usually read for new ideas, and find it hard to read much of the SSI stuff, because there are few new ideas there. A lot of the e-mail traffic on the ssi-list, for example, is from people just discovering what us old-timers knew years ago. I am not sure how to keep folks interested beyond the introduction. I teach a course on this topic at the University of North Florida, and have students come to UNF just so they can take my course. That encourages me, but this term the course was cancelled to free time for me to work on a big research grant. No one else here could teach this course. If any of you have academic credentials, you might try offering such courses. But after a few years of being excited by these ideas, former students, still supporting in principle these ideas, go on to other topics. I am not offering a solution here, but hopefully an accurate statement of at least part of the problem, which I hope will be useful.
Sincerely, Jay Huebner
Jay-
been easy.
Your comments are all really insightful and I like your reborn vs. grow
up metaphor. I think people would differ on what "growing up" for space
settlement means. For quite a while "growing up" according to SSI has
meant taking a capitalist/business-oriented approach instead of hoping
NASA will lead the charge. But I wonder if it is more "growing up" to
just accept it will take volunteers and eventually charity, and to
acknowledge business just has very short time horizons and narrow focus.
Hard to say --- especially as there are so many types of behavior in
"grown ups"!
I especially found interesting your comment: "I am not sure how to keep
folks interested beyond the introduction. ... But after a few years of
being excited by these ideas, former students, still supporting in
principle these ideas, go on to other topics."
This is similar to the point made at Clark S. Lindsey at HobbySpace:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/
especially:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/About.html
From the last link:
"Even at the lowest of low points in public support for the U.S. space
program, surveys invariably show 10 to 15 percent of the respondents
checking the Increase Space Funding box. That's around 30 million people
who are really excited about space exploration. Yet, there is no 300
page weekly or monthly space magazine being snapped up by this huge
audience. Why not? On the other hand, one can find half a dozen
magazines at the newsstand on flyfishing or woodworking or even general
aviation. Why? A young bright kid comes across one of the hard-to-find
space enthusiast magazines. She finds the articles about Mars colonies
and proposed rocket designs really cool. She puts the magazine down and
never picks one up again. Why? The answer to these questions is, I
believe, the following: BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING TO DO! In most space
publications, space exploration appears to be only for a few astronauts
or cosmonauts or for scientists operating space probes from their labs.
A person can go flyfishing or build a cabinet or take a flying course.
But even if you think space exploration is exciting, What fun space
stuff can you do? Even for those who love to read about space, many
don't believe there is any fun space activity that amateurs can do. This
site is dedicated to showing that there are, in fact, Dozens of fun
space hobbies and activities! ... "
HobbySpace does supply many related activities, though most of them
don't actually advance space settlement in terms of advancing the
engineering of space systems, as opposed to involving people in an
educational or entertainment way. Maybe investing there is one way
people can get involved, but even then only second or third hand. I
haven't looked through all the activities in detail, so perhaps joining
LUF or the Mars Society etc. is in there and making a contribution
through that. Some engineering sorts of ideas are listed here:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/Future/index.html
including mentioning some groups, though no space habitat design
projects I noticed (the page does mention SSI and Artemis).
This absence of space habitat engineering advancing activities isn't
intended as a put down of HobbySpace; it does a great job of providing
many alternative things to do to keep passion for space alive. It is not
HobbySpace's intent to create alternatives, just to collect and list
them. Were the self-replicating space habitat design project I outlined
seriously ongoing (more than a few web pages), I feel sure HobbySpace
might put it right up there.
--Paul Fernhout