Hyperbola has been told that tomorrow (Tuesday 31 March) there is to be a press conference at the British Interplanetary Society in London (but its website says nothing about this) all about something called the Space Renaissance and Buzz Aldrin might be there
The press kit for this initiative can be found here – for some reason my corporate firewall blocks access
Find the press release for tomorrow’s press conference in the extended portion of this blog post
Space Renaissance Initiative – Press Release # 01 – March 30th 2009 [rel. 1.7]
1 / 2
Space Renaissance Initiative – Press Release
Press conference 2009 March 31st – 16.00
British Interplanetary Society – 27/29 South Lambeth Road – London, UK
http://www.spacerenaissance.org/
The Space Renaissance Initiative (SRI) will present a proposal to ignite a space
economic revolution on 2009 March 31st, before the G20 summit.
The proposal is a simple priority-driven agenda: to develop low-cost civilian space
transportation, orbital and sub-orbital space tourism, lunar industrialisation, spacebased
solar power, and the use of near-Earth asteroids to build space infrastructures.
These include research and industrial settlements on the Moon; orbital stations,
resources utilisation, space hotels, service facilities and space debris collection.
This is not speculation. All of these goals can be achieved within the first half of this
century. By the second half of this century, based on the experience gained in near-
Earth space, Mars and the Martian moons will be settled with the long-term goal of
terraforming the red planet.
In order to help the development of the civilian space industry, we recommend
governments should provide incentives in the form of tax abatements and financial help
for companies working in the space industry; new investment funds for space tourism
and the space industry; and special programs geared towards universities and other
educational systems. These policies also extend to private organisations, individuals,
space agencies, and financial institutions.
Governments can invest public money toward the new space economy through space
agencies (primarily devoted to science and exploration), more commercially oriented
agencies (to be chartered), and private enterprise, for the industrialisation of the Moon-
Earth region.
With a current population of almost seven billion people, human growth on planet
Earth is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Problems stem from a shortage of raw
materials and lack of inexpensive and accessible energy. This dearth of resources,
which results in continuous global economic recessions, could cause our civilisation to
implode to one billion within the end of this century, with increasing risk of humanity
falling back to pre-technological ages.
The only fundamental solution to assure continued growth of civilisation is to open the
high frontier and start surveying the resources of the solar system. Space contains
unimaginable amounts of unexploited resources on the Moon, asteroids and other
Space Renaissance Initiative – Press Release # 01 – March 30th 2009 [rel. 1.7]
2 / 2
planets. Establishing a foothold off-Earth would also protect humanity from planetwide
catastrophes.
This new space-faring civilisation would experience a true Space Renaissance and
catapult the human race toward boundless economic and cultural growth. According to
Dr. Feng Hsu (NASA expert on Integrated Risk Assessment & Management at
Goddard Space Flight Center), “Human expansion into space brings about a new
paradigm of a global view of humanity and could alter the confrontational geopolitical
realities existed throughout human history, helping to foster world peace and elevating
our earth-bound global economy into a whole new space-fairing economy. Human
expansion into space is also the stepping-stone to find solutions to our energy and
climate risk issues. It strengthens global collaboration and increases our likelihood to
work with collective human intelligence and resources.”
Our proposal includes a world-wide plan to encourage a broad collaboration on space
projects among different countries, to build Space Renaissance schools and academia,
in cooperation with the educational institutions, and to increasingly involve the younger
generations in the greatest endeavour humanity has ever faced: the development of a
new, post-Copernican, open-world philosophy.
The SRI is a collection of individuals and associate organisations determined to
increase human expansion into space. We are backed by 26 organisations so far,
including: Moon Society (US), Technologies of the Frontier (Italy), SpaceFuture (UK,
JP), InterPlanetary Ventures Corporation (USA), MarsDrive (US), Polish Astronautical
Society (PL), Sri Lanka Astronomical Association (Sri Lanka), CIRA (Italy), Coelum
Astronomia (Italy), Advanced Technology Working Group (USA).
The SRI is founded on a philosophy of deep humanist principles and has no national
interests nor ties to national space agencies, institutions, corporations, although we
would encourage them to recognize and act on our recommendations.
According to Adriano Autino (SRI President): “So far, the crisis only burned bits in
bank accounts. Real wealth is not money, but technologies and the potential for work:
with 7 billion intelligences, Humanity has never been so rich.”
Some of our founding papers:
– “What the Growth of a Space Tourism Industry Could Contribute to Employment, Economic Growth,
Environmental Protection, Education, Culture and World Peace” – Patrick Collins & Adriano Autino
(http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/what_the_growth_of_a_space_tourism_industry_could_contrib
ute_to_employment_economic_growth_environmental_protection_education_culture_and_world_pe
ace.shtml )
– “Founding a New Renaissance” – Adriano Autino
(http://www.spacerenaissance.org/papers/Founding_a_New_Renaissance.pdf )
– “A Unified Space Vision” – Feng Hsu & Ken Cox (http://www.spacerenaissance.org/papers/AUnifiedSpaceVision-
Hsu-Cox.pdf)
For more information, please contact:
– Adriano Autino – adriano.autino@tdf.it +39 335 8244435
– Charles Radley – charles@stratowave.com +1 503 579 4686
– Annie Bynum – smaojb@gmail.com +1 501 650 1405
