What's happened to the ssi ??

I was afraid that this would eventually happen. It doesn't seem that SSI has been a viable organization for quite some months (maybe over a year). I got a fund-raising letter a few months back, but I guess that wouldbe correctly interpreted asa last gasp. There's been no response to the ssi@... email address in well over a year. The fact that the website stayed up seemed at least slightly encouraging, but I guess they had paid the bill through to end of 2004, and Webspan communications has finally pulled the plug due to non-payment for 2005. In a very really sense I suppose it is the end of an era. But I want everyone on the list to know a few things: 1. It is my intention to keep this maillist going as a resource for discussion of High Frontier-related topics. 2. I took the precaution of backing up all of the files on the SSI website quite somemonths back due to precisely this concern. I havea plan to get at least some small portion of that information back on the web, perhaps as an adjunct to my existing space settlement website at http:/members.aol.com/oscarcombs/settle.htm (and I supposed I'll name it "SSI Archive"). How muchmaterial I can get back upwill depend on how much web space I can round up. I may need to use Yahoo Geocities. I don't know when I'll be able to start on this project (flu season is hitting my household pretty hard), but I'll try to get something started on this. 3. Shortly before O'Neill's death, Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation promised him that for as long as the SFF remained in operation, "The High Frontier" would remain in publication. Yes, it's very sad that SSI is no longer around to champion this particular view of our future in space that has yet to become majority thinking even among space advocates. But "The High Frontier" is not going to go away, and several of us are trying to keep a web presenceup in an effort to keep these ideas out there in the public consciousness. We all just need to keep doing our part, and not lose faith in both the spiritual power and logical strengthof this vision.

Regards,
Mike Combs
Moderator

Does anybody know what has happened to the SSI? I recently tried to
look at their web site and it appears to have gone away - there is
just a web host holding page there.

http://www.ssi.org/

Mark