(((IHow great to see that the visionary spirit of the space-prophet
Tsiolkovsky is still wandering the battlements of some
medieval Italian castle.)))
Dear Co-planetaries,
First of all let me announce the First International Convention of
Technologies of the Frontier, that will be held the April 1st 2006, in the medieval castle of Moncrivello (Piedmont, North Italy).
It is a not a "conventional convention". We planned it as a fusion between Vision, Science and Art. From 9.30 am to 22:00 pm, we will have talks on philosophical themes, economics, technologies, and artistic contributes: visual artists and musicians (both jazz and classical) will present their
projects inspired by Space and Astronautic.
Some of the biggest names of the emerging Space Economy will be present.
Among others:
- Jim Benson, of Space Dev (the constructor of the engine of SpaceShipOne, winner of the X-Prize)
- Patrick Collins, of SpaceFuture, forerunner of the Space Tourism and SPS themes
- Steven Wolfe, US astronautical philosopher, member of the Congressional Space Caucus, board of directors of the National Space Society
- Aerospace Italian Industry and Research: CIRA, CGS, Blue, In and Out Space, and others
- Universities engaged in the aerospace research, like the Politecnico of Torino
- Researchers and Entrepreneurs in the fields of Astronautics and Space Tourism
Subscribe quickly!: the castle is not very big, and places are limited!
Furthermore, we need to know enough in advance the number of the
participants, in order to work with a minimum needed budget, to dimension some convention services (buffet, video recording, etc.)
Very much courage it took to organize such a convention in Italy, for people, as we are, which have all their professional engagements, and for a magazine that hasn't big sponsors, and it lives only thanks to the voluntary work of the editorial staff.
Therefore we ask you to help us, and to participate in big number!
Register on the web site web of the convention.
http://www.tdf.it/IC1/TDF_IC1_Home.htm
Follows an abstract of the newsletter, that you can read whole online
(http://www.tdf.it/2006/nws_106_eng.htm ).
At the beginning of 2003, we asked to forecast the best future and the worse future in 2033 (http://www.tdf.it/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi ).
(((This is where it starts getting really good, fellow terrocrats.)))
The 2033 that I dream of, and that all sincere humanists, I believe, dream with me, sees the philosophy of the open world in full development, the space economy soundly on its way, with a perspective of practically boundless growth, the planetary conflicts moving towards solution and the environmental problems at least lightening, thanks to a progressive decrease in pressure on the ecosystem of this planet, since we will have begun to transfer elsewhere the weight of our growth
(see A millennium of growth of
the civilization http://www.tdf.it/cgi-bin/dcforum/DCForumID17/8.html† ).
The worst 2033 is, instead, an apocalyptic scenery: the world remaining closed, economy with neither space nor resources to expand, all conflicts worsening, authoritarianism and barbarity progressively regaining their positions, and our civilization entering an irreversible, regressive vortex. (((Why wait thirty years? I
can see that in Google News right now!)))
I also wrote: in a closed world, with a human population of around 8 billion, the economic, the social, and the energy problems, (both of resources and environmental) will drown us; the economy will fail, and we will no longer have the money for space. But, also, we won't have the imagination, the necessary cultural freshness, to expand into extraterrestrial space. The time window favourable for the first footsteps of our civilization toward the stars, opened in the 50's of the last century, would be closed, perhaps irreversibly. It would be difficult even to imagine if and when this regressive process could change direction.
(see
The victory of the closed world
http://www.tdf.it/cgi-bin/dcforum/DCForumID18/4.html†† ).
Reading those lines again today, with only two years distance, brings shivers to me.
The price of oil, our main source of energy, reached very high levels, and, beyond economic fluctuations, everything makes us think that it will keep increasing on a wave of rising demand, due to Asian development (see the Alberto Cavallo's article http://www.tdf.it/2005/3/acener_eng.htm† ). In
general though, the global economy is stagnant, missing lines of strong new industrial development, and is restrained by the narrowness of the energy and material resources of our (currently) only planet. The conflicts multiply and worsen, rather than finding solutions. In the space of just one year we had: tsunamis, hurricanes, and, last, the avian influence.
Some colleagues, participants of the IAF Congress, held in Fukuoka (Japan), October 17th-21st, reported the declarations of some of NASA's exponents: that 200 billion dollars, targeted to the reconstruction of New Orleans, would be in alternative to the new US space program.
Is the worse 2033, therefore, already here? Are we already forced to choose between expansion into space, (provided such an option was really proposed as a strategic choice, and unfortunately it is not so) and a continuous
series of emergencies?
It would be more than legitimate to loose heart: our political leaders were not able - even before - to see space as more than an easy expedient to tap money from tax-payers, ready to tune up for other "responsible, reasonable and sustainable" songs, following fashion and popular emotionalism. We don't need professional pundits (((yo!))) to prophesy that space would quickly drop to the
tail of the priorities list, long before emergencies imposed any drastic choices. Anyone seeing the frequency of contractions of the pregnancy of Mother Earth, pregnant with a Baby Solar Civilization, likely near term, would very probably expect - as with many underweight childbirths (and still nowadays, in less lucky areas of the planet) -tragedy for the mother, or for the child, or for both.
A slogan of Greenpeace comes to my mind, recently seen in the media:
"Decide. Either you defend the planet, or it will defend itself alone." A firm stigmatization of the tone, almost apologetic towards natural
disasters, and rather threatening towards the victims, it is obviously
mandatory, for us humanists. To such a slogan, sad and gloomy, I would like to oppose with another one, much more effective and that, above all, doesn't foretell death and destruction, but on the contrary life and human solidarity:
†††††††† "Decide. If you don't defend your kind, nobody will defend it."
The terrocrats seem to keep on ruling in the whole planet. As we saw there are several reasons (real or presumed) in our society, to maintain a state of fear, which induces the people to keep on supporting governments that are more and more incompatible with strategies of true development. Before the fall of the Berlin wall the terrorising function was covered by the ideological enemy, beyond the wall, and by the threat of nuclear holocaust.
Following a short period of disorientation, after the wall's fall, the void was filled by various environmental threats, by the terrorism of Al Qaeda, by immigration and by the so-called confrontation between civilizations. All such threats are anything but scientifically proved (the environmental ones), and surely not resolvable by the logic of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth (the terrorist ones). As for the avian influence, according to government experts, shoudn't it have exterminated 16 million people in Italy
last autumn? Obviously I don't mean to minimize the danger, it could be that worse has still to come, so don't stop taking reasonable precautions. However we owe to observe that, up to today, we didn't have cases in Europe: or we became suddenly very good in prevention (unlike thing), or somebody overdid.
More than ever, the expansion into the extraterrestrial space appears the only alternative the the involution of our Civilization. Such a consciousness is by now shared by a too narrow number of persons: if you share it, please help us to spread it!
In general terms we are living a situation in which some prophetic words of Pope Woytila, often repeated and written by Him in the last years of his pontificate "don't be afraid", they sound dangerously subversive! When one is afraid, he shoots before trying to understand. This is the stuff we teach to our twenty year-old boys, sent around the world, armed to the teeth: to be afraid and to inspire fear, thus feeding (and not opposing) the general
state of terror.
And if we gave attention to the old Pope, and we stopped being afraid, how many and what things could we do? A good question, for the crucial just begun year, 2006!
A tourist, exploring the unknown, can allow terror to paralyse himself if he focuses for too long on his own lonely littleness, or instead he can enjoy the wonders that he goes on discovering... to govern in a mature way his own feelings and emotions, keeping in the background his ability to get scared (as a safety system, to warn us when we are really under threat), and to enjoy the wonder, the novelties, the discoveries, the evolutionary horizons
that are progressively disclosed.
Science and technology immediately lose the devil's horns, tail and clogs if we are not afraid, so we regain trust in our abilities to experiment and to govern the risks, and to expand human civilization.
Even an asteroid that would strike our planet in a space of about 30 years could be seen as an opportunity if we are not afraid (see Stephen Ashworth's prophetic words!: A 10-km asteroid
http://www.tdf.it/cgi-bin/dcforum/DCForumID17/2.html† ). It is a challenge, sure, but thirty years is a long enough period to face it: remember we reached the Moon in less than ten years, 40 years ago! In order to divert the stone that would fall upon us, and maybe to use its raw materials to build the geo-lunar infrastructure, we need to enormously accelerate the development of Astronautics. Technologies exist, know-how and motivation also. All we need is to find ways of channelling enough capital: a problem of financial engineering, a mere banality if we had a socio-political
management able to think about development, rather than terrorising people to not leave their chairs.
Technologies of the Frontier believes greatly in the perspective of
Astronautics, and in the absolute urgency of giving birth to the space economy, thus we aim to work ceaselessly for its realization.
This summer we registered our title at the court. TDF is now fully renewed, and it will still change in the next months, to pursue a greater usability for all those who share our spirit and our goals. Among other things we have launched a strategy targeted to the enterprises of the aerospace sector, and to any enterprise or commercial subject interested in Space and Astronautics.
Yes, you understood well: we don't ask for any pedigree, or specialistic degrees, from anybody! We are interested in the relationship with whoever, firms, small enterprises or individuals, researchers or not, who see their future, in full or part, related to Space and Astronautics. We offer space is in our magazine, for your articles, description of your projects, or also your feelings and opinions about the perspective of geo-lunar space
industrialization, and on any themes connected to space tourism, be they scientific, technological or commercial. We offer to put your business logo on the TDF home page (visited by 150-300 visitors per day, for the most part belonging to the space international community), with a link to your site. We also offer to make common initiatives, specialist forums, search for collaborators and offers of collaboration, in the aerospace sector.
For the summary of this issue please see the editorial written by Jacopo D.
Cordero http://www.tdf.it/2006/edi_eng.htm , our new Managing Editor.
TDF 1 2006 includes many articlesi, but we have other ones, which we had yet no time to put online. Also, we didn't fully update the correspondance sections.
We'll do it during the next weeks, so keep on reading TDF at
http://www.tdf.it/ .
Aim high!
Adriano Autino
and the Editorial Staff of Technologies of the Frontier
