From Society President Peter Kokh
August 16, 2008
At the August 6th Management Council meeting in the moon-leaders room of the ASI-MOO online chat-room environment, in discussing recent major member-ship growth, the effect of aggressively pursued carefully thought out projects took center stage.
In the past two years, two projects in particular absorbed the lion’s share of Society leaders’ attention:
1) The production of the “Moon Colony Videos” suggested by director James Gholston and led by former Hollywood videographer and screen writer Chip Proser
2) The production of a working demo model of the current favored design of a solar power satellite, suggested by Major Peter Garretson, USAF, with teram leaders vice-president Charles Radley and Chairman of the Board, R. Scotty Gammenthaler
Both these projects have been highly successful, and are continuing! Chip, with assistance at recent ISDCs from James Gholston and David Dunlop, continue to produce more excellent videos. Our Solar Power Beaming Demo team, now under Peter Kokh, is following through with production of two additional units requested by Space Adventures and the National Space Society.
Online “Kits” that will help other groups produce their own units comes next and will be based not on the original but on the improved “next generation” design for the two additional units.
But this is not all that’s going on in your Society!
We have also committed to aggressive pursuit of the goal of advancing the viability of production of real solar power satellites from Lunar Materials. This team is led by Dr. Peter Schroeter and Peter Kokh. This project goes to the heart of our long term strategy to advance the day when there will be civilian settlements on the Moon producing things that will help people on Earth better handle our environmental and energy problems and challenges.
The same duo is behind an effort to commence a relevant conversation between the space and environment communities on a more comprehensive plan to save and heal our home planet’s environment. Dr. Peter Schroeter had called our attention to an opportunity to get funds from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, for innovative conferences on addressing environ-mental problems. In collaboration with the National Space Society, we put forth a proposal for a “Mother Earth-Father Sky” conference, later renamed the Planet Earth & Space Conference/ Our proposal did not make the first cut, but is stil alive, and worth pursuing with or without EPA support. The editorial and essay in this issue address the need.
Other active Team Projects include Lunar Surface Logistics. It makes no sense to put up scattered moon bases without equal thought given to transportation and commerce between them, absolutely necessary for our vision of the Moon’s role in Earth’s future. This area includes our Google Group: Railroading on Moon & Mars, but also the mapping of logical transportation corridors, road making, road vehicles and support, cableway systems and more. This effort is not yet at the stage we need it to be, identifying specific doable projects.
Finally, Director David Dunlop is in the early stages of resurrecting a Lunar Reclamation Society effort from the early 1990s focused on Experimental Lunar Agriculture, and has identified a number of new doable projects. We will not be able to live long term on the Moon without autonomous agriculture and biosphere life support. Our efforts will address the agricultural aspect.
Different from the “ASI Discussion Teams”
Society old timers who came aboard in the mid-late 1990s in the Artemis Society years will remember the lengthy list of Artemis Society Teams. Is this Moon Society effort just a revival of older ASI-? The answer is a resounding “No!”
While the intention was for the many ASI Teams to come up with concrete projects that would further the cause, in reality, these teams for the most part never got beyond the “discussions” stage. Each Team has/had a discussion list, predictably with a high noise to signal ratio, and again for the most part, never identifying concrete projects within the team’s area of attention.
Moon Society “Project Teams”
Our recent measured successes have been the result of identifying specific projects with defined goals and achievement levels. Each new team has a Team Leader who aggressively moves the effort on towards the defined goal. Looking at the successes of the past two years, your President would like to add one more key person to each team, the project manager, whose role will be to identify action items and recruit volunteers to address each of them, in order to aggressively move each identified project forward. It would be misleading to say that we are there yet. Are these two roles in conflict? They need not be.
The Team Leader is in charge of keeping us focused on the vision and mission of each team, and identifying new projects within the Team’s focus area.
The various Project Managers, one for each identified concrete project of each team, is in charge of moving forward a specific project within the team’s area of focus,
Project Focus Moves to Front Center Stage
We have redone the Registration Page, and our Welcome Packet & Vistors’ pages to give the opportunity to join Project Teams front center priority visibility.
Presenting our (current list of) Project Teams
- Promotional Video Team
Chip Proser
James Gholston - Public Relations Team
James Rogers - Solar Power Beaming Demonstration Team
Peter Kokh
R. Scotty Gammenthaler - Lunar Materials for SPS Construction Team
Peter J. Schubert
Peter Kokh - Space and Environment Conversation Team
Peter J. Schubert
Peter Kokh - Experimental Lunar Agriculture Team
David Dunlop - Lunar Surface Logistics Team
(including Lunar Railroads)
David Dunlop
Peter Kokh - Lunar Analog Research Team
Peter Kokh
Dave Dunlop
Paul Graham
Growing our Society
Obviously, to advance the work of all these teams, we need more members, the more the better, new members ready to roll up their sleeves, more total dues money to fund our growing list of concrete projects. We are gaining a reputation among space groups as “the little engine that could!” We need your help!