Oct
31
Written by:
admin
10/31/2009 10:44 PM
At the basic level, governments will never succeed in exploring and developing space. Oh, they've done a pretty good job so far, but it's too hard to get people to agree on what the goal is and, when you do, an election or a revolution comes along and the priorities change. Even if we could overcome that problem, government is too inefficient and bloated. All it takes is one look at the way the politicians in the U.S. Congress have treated NASA as a jobs program for their districts to realize that the priorities of the people calling the shots are not the same as the priorities of the people doing the work or the people who are frustrated by the glacial pace of progress.
We used to think that non-profits like the National Space Society and the Mars Society were the answer, but it seems that they spend their time (and the money of their members and donors) lobbying Congress to try to get the government to do something. If you consider the amount that has been spent by all of the non-profits on their outreach, education, and lobbying efforts, they could probably have put a private space station in orbit by now.
So we believe that if it's going to get done, it's going to have to be private enterprise. But so far we haven't seen a private enterprise come out and state that their goal is to colonize the galaxy, or even other planets in our solar system. That's why we started Getting There From Here.
And we truly are planning to bootstrap our way to space: we are starting with absolutely no money, and this website is the first step in the long journey to colonizing the galaxy. By putting advertising on this website, we are hoping to bring in the seed money that will be used to expand our business. The money will be used to purchase stock in companies that we believe are making progress toward our goals. It will be used to add new lines of business, such as:
- a company creating space exploration and development simulation game software and/or websites
- an aerospace services firm, specializing in control systems software
- a research and development firm to create the technology that will be utilized to progress through the steps to colonizing the galaxy, technology which will be licensed or commercialized to support further ventures
- a launch systems company (assuming someone else doesn't figure out Cheap, Reliable Access to Space before we get there
- privately operated space stations
- asteroid mining ventures
- off-world commercial colonies
These are, of course, only a few examples of the many, many opportunities that will be assessed and, eventually, pursued with the money that is raised (if you have ideas you would like to contribute, go to our forums and suggest them).
And, to show you that we mean what we say, we're going to do all of this in a completely transparent manner. We will be posting regular progress reports (probably monthly, at least initially) that will detail out our business transactions in as much detail as possible, showing how much money we have raised and how we have spent it.
What you are looking at is planned to be the first of many, many steps in a very long road out into the universe. We hope you'll come along with us on this journey. But more than that, we hope you'll help.
How can you help? For now, keep coming back to this website and contributing in our forums and in comments to our blog posts. Send your friends to the site. Since our only current stream of revenue is advertising, the more eyeballs we have, the more progress we can make toward our ultimate goal of colonizing the galaxy. Contribute your ideas in our forums, because an active community can be self-growing, as more and more people start to see things they want to respond to. Most of all, call us out when we're wrong about stuff, or when you think we're spending our money the wrong way. We aren't perfect, and neither are our ideas. We need you to keep us on track.
As Lao Tzu said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." This is that single, first step in what we hope will be a continuing journey out into the universe.
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