SSI Activity (and its rebirth?)

> But the
> current problem is that this person doesn't seem to be around anymore,
> and I have yet to have someone else at SSI make contact with me on this
> matter.

Mike-

I'm curious, no longer being a member or Senior Associate, is SSI still
putting out mailings? Is it still actually doing anything, given the
last conference disappeared?

And of course, if it has gone into hibernation and key people have moved
on to other things (which happens all the time with non-profits, so no
shame there), would it be possible for someone with crazy new ideas
(like I presented at the 2001 conference on volunteers collaborating to
design things) to work with the board and redirect SSI?
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html

Here is some part of something I wrote on that idea, for a reborn SSI.

Anyway, any opinions from people on the list would be appreciated (even
if this may not represent SSI membership).

======

What other alternative approach could help settle the High Frontier?

I propose fostering a community which designs a self-replicating seed
factory, which will ultimately be built and launched with funding from a
billionaire space hobbyist. I guess you might call this approach "design
it and they will come". :-) This has two bootstrapping levels.

In the first level, "it" is a core of free knowledge about how to make
or do things related to space (or terrestrial) settlement. The "they" is
a community of interested enthusiasts working collaboratively on the
internet to extend that free manufacturing and procedure knowledge.

In the second level, the "it" involves a seed self-replicating space
factory designed by part of that first community in painstaking
technical detail perhaps way beyond the level a new commercial aircraft
is designed at (and involving detailed simulations, sometimes down to
the quantum level, intended to replace expensive laboratory testing).
And the "they" is billionaires with lots of cash to blow on a space
hobby, once they can be convinced the design will really work.

The SSI web site says, "SSI: Opening the energy and material resources
of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links
to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space".
I would suggest some key missing links at this point revolve more
around building groups of cooperating people working together on free
design artifacts related to space settlement than any other specific
technological advance. In this sense, the missing technological link
could be seen as in a sense the shared free license. This may be hard
for most non-profits to understand, as they routinely make some money by
selling books, newsletters, and so forth. Author James P. Hogan taps
into this ideal in a few of his sci-fi novels, such as _Voyage from
Yesteryear_.

Imagine if some loose collective of space settlement designers ever
produces a complete design for an entire seed factory (perhaps inspired
by the 1980 NASA Advanced Automation for Space Missions summer
conference work:)
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
which upon reaching an asteroid unfolds to produce a self-replicating
space habitat which can further duplicate itself from asteroidal ore and
sunlight. The seed factory would be detailed to the last nut and bolt.
It could be tested in simulation to the greatest extent feasible using
the spare time on computer networks, like many modern aircraft are
before being built. If that design was created, I feel confident that I,
or someone else, could find the billionaire to fund this seed's actual
construction and launch (or at least, fund some more serious benchtop
testing of the ideas as a precursor to that). But we don't have that
design, because we don't have that group collaborating under free
licenses. That free license is in my opinion the missing social link,
which is perhaps more important than the specific technical issues. With
the social framework, those technical issues will ultimately will be
solved by all the wonderfully smart people who would want to work on
such projects if they only had a chance to make a meaningful permanent
contribution in a semi-organized way.

SSI has always had a unique approach of involving Senior Associates in
various activities, leveraging committed volunteers to make a
difference. It is true that past attempts, like the Matrix, have
faltered for various reasons, including being ahead of its time (as well
as being somewhat proprietary). Still, the Internet and the increasing
power of computers to do simulation make that approach all the more
possible now. Consider, for comparison, the growing role simulation
(even down to the quantum level) is playing in pharmaceutical
development, such as with IBM's ongoing Blue Gene approach (which does
some quantum level simulation). Volunteers on the internet can capture
some of that potential, although it may take a critical mass of design
effort to reach that point, and one or more full time people to recruit
and coordinate all the part-time volunteers. It won't be easy, but it
may just barely be possible with a lot of effort over some number of years.

So, I would suggest SSI pursue the new model of on-line collaboration by
volunteers to create complex space settlement related artifacts under
free licenses, like for GNU/Linux, described in the above paper. I think
SSI could lead in this new area, and I would hope the SSI board could
give some thought to having SSI commit some resources to moving in that
direction. One place to start might be simply to add space and
manufacturing knowledge to Wikipedia related to this project.
http://www.wikipedia.org/

I don't have the personal resources to devote my time as a volunteer to
do this for SSI at the level it needs, but I would be happy to work with
SSI to pursue a grant where I could do this as a paid employee (or
fiscally sponsored separate organization), leveraging my interests and
SSI's membership network, as long as the results were made available
under free licenses to all users. I had hoped to do this in my spare
time, but that has proved vanishingly small with a new baby, so
essentially either I work for pay or my wife works for pay (although
things seem to be improving for little spare time again). I think it
would still take a lot of work on my part to reach a critical mass of
free information specifically on something like a self-replicating space
habitat network, and then further involvement by others (like, say, Al
Globus at NASA who runs one of the K-12 Space Settlement Contests), but
at some point we might then have enough to sustain a processes of many
interested people all contributing a little to keep the system growing,
like Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, Python, or any other of several successful
freely licensed efforts. Potentially, this project might someday even
grow to the point where all other SSI activities become subsumed by it,
and if the SSI Board wanted to make a really bold move, they could
commit the organization entirely in this new direction and I would be
more than happy to lead such an initiative in some capacity at SSI.

=======

I think the weakest part of the idea is that this list and the SSI
membership is somewhat self-selecting for a desire to move in other
directions (like SSPS) and so maybe all the members and the Board would
jump ship if this new agenda came into play. So in that sense, it might
be better if this was just a new non-profit. And if so, anyone here want
to be on the board if that was its mission statement, or, alternatively
it had the broader agenda of:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/index.htm

Such a new group can also still always still work in parallel with SSI
if SSI decides its mission is to remain just mainly funding small but
crucially important laboratory and space-launched scientific studies and
running a related conference. There will always remain a need for those
hands-on research studies, although they may IMHO reach a point of
diminishing returns absent a large detailed design framework in which to
put the results.

(Just asking at this point, I'm not sure I personally have the free time
right now to carry this out given other commitments.)

--Paul Fernhout