People aren't supporting Moon Plan

>
>> I think what we may have to do is find a way to make space technology
>> development intrinsically fun -- more fun than watching Star Trek and
>> B5
>> and even kibittizing on this list. OSCOMAK (or the ideas behind it
>> presented by me at the last SSI conference) was a step in that way,
>> although it has a long ways to go.
>> http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/index.htm
>
> I most suredly agree, though I would use the word 'cool' rather than
> fun,
> because that seems to have more appeal with the masses :-) First you
> have to
> get those 'wage slaves' off their freakin couch where they are
> watching the
> motivation waster.

The problem is that technology development is intrinsically hard work
(I speak from experience here). Some people are able to take pleasure
in the rewards of hard work, which means delaying gratification in the
short term for a sense of accomplishment in the long term. Others are
simply not able or willing to do so. The pervasive culture of
marketing (creating "needs" which are little more than desires, like
the "need" for fashionable clothing), discourages deferment of
gratification, and any market oriented economy will always suffer from
this problem. There are plenty of interests pushing to manipulate the
mental/cultural environment in the direction of consumption, and too
few countervailing forces. Unfortunately all the proposed
society-level (as opposed to individual level) solutions seem to me to
be worse than the problem. At the individual level the solution is
relatively straightforward, and consists first of all of switching off
the TV. I'm getting off track here a bit...

Anyway, the need for deferred gratification rather limits the number of
people who will participate (though the self selection process tends to
prefer those who would be more useful to the project anyway). The
other problem is that there are a lot of things people could work on as
hobbies - why do the thing you prefer rather than some other cool
thing? There are plenty of cool things people can work on, from
building homebuilt aircraft (or submarines, hovercraft, bicycles,
boats, etc.) to improving their homes, writing software, whatever.
There has to be some sustainable competitive advantage for the proposed
hobby technology development over all these other options. The idea of
self sacrifice in a noble cause that one will never personally see
completed is all well and good, but in practice very few people are
willing to really stick with it, and every person who starts and quits
before really advancing the project represents a drain on project
resources.

I'm afraid I'm rambling a little bit here. I've been thinking about
these issues in depth for a couple of years, and haven't made great
progress (actually, relative to where I started I've made huge
progress, but much of that has been in understanding just how damn
difficult the problem is). Anyway, suffice to say that I think
volunteer based tech development needs to have frequent milestones
which provide concrete positive feedback to the participants.
Otherwise the venture will lose people to other more directly rewarding
activities.

......Andrew