Want to do real space society research in an hour of fun?
Want to match skills with space fans from around the world?
Then SpaceSoc School’s team competition is for you!

Four times a year, beginning in March 2012, SpaceSoc School will have teams and individuals competing for fun with their realistic space society ideas.

Either online or offline, each contest will involve about 60-90 minutes of role-playing and simulating in response to questions. No special knowledge is needed. Anyone can play.

Teams will compete in small leagues based on age and skill levels. Rankings will be posted for all the world to see.

Here’s what neat: besides adding their ideas, teams will improve on – or challenge – ideas from other teams.  Plagiarism is good! Actually, it’s a competitive form of collaboration. Other teams or fans can cheer in live contests and help the teams!

There isn’t an easier way to be part of serious space society research.

In Feb 2012, we’ll have teams demonstrate how to do it. In Mar 2012, we’ll have our first league.

Ready to try? Email the names of your team (1-4 persons) and members to diffenbach@comcast.net, subject line: SpaceSoc team. Schools and clubs can have multiple teams. We’ll send details. And, if you want, go ahead and announce your teams in a post below.

Here’s what’s cool about the Zine:

1. You can write for it, articles from 150-1,500 words. Keep articles as brief as possible.
2. We’ll have about a dozen articles at a time and as new ones come in, they’ll take the place of older ones that will become part of back issues. So the Zine will be long-term like a magazine, and short-term like a newspaper as articles come online.
3. Of course you can read as well as write. You’ll have an easy way to post brief feedback of 150 words or less. Email longer feedback as a separate article. So, imagine this: John Doe submits an article; Mary Roe replies with a post or an article. Every reader can see both and interact further.

Neat! So let’s start reading and writing. To start you off, we’ve put in some short, simple articles we had written. C’mon, you can do better than these – and replace them with your articles. Post your feedback. Submit your articles to diffenbach@comcast.net.

As usual, we welcome your suggestions and comments.

Seraph Ching Tom Diffenbach

Seraph+Tom

Decades ago I met for a mere half-hour with space settlement pioneering thinker Gerard O’Neill. In those minutes I saw that he had political acumen and openness to ideas beyond his own.

I think that for scientific and political reasons, Gerard O’Neill, if he were still living, would have advanced his “High Frontier” thinking many times.

He’d likely be working with new political realities and new science related to space such as nanotechnology, current robotics, water on the moon, various singularities, etc.

He might be saying something like, “space settlements won’t happen simply with my 1970’s thinking so get real and up-to-date.”

Our space future depends on being real and up-to-date. Let’s be that at SpaceSoc.

What do you think might not be anticipated?

One participant, Kathleen Kennedy, said one thing that won’t be anticipated is that people change their minds.

What do you think of her answer? Did you think of it?

This is about more than that politicians change their minds or that public mood changes. It’s also more than that technology changes.

In part it’s about, e.g., a 35 yo single space settler who in ten years in space become 45 yo. By then, s/he might have married, had kids, and put a higher priority on family matters matters more than on space matters.

The now-45-yo space settler might seem obsolete to a just-arriving 25 yo settler with up-to-date know-how and the time and energy to work 80 hours a week.

This example shows a problem with much space settlement literature. Much of it is of a “snapshot” in time rather than a “video” that accounts for change.

At SpaceSoc, we want you to account for change, including, as the wise Kathleen Kennedy said, that people change their minds.

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To start the Zine, we’ve put in some short, simple articles like the one above. Post your feedback below. And then, write an article that is better than this article. Submit it to the Zine by emailing it to diffenbach@comcast.net.

Al Globus

Al Globus, who chairs the space settlement committee of the National Space Society, has posted on his website his ideas about “Paths to Space Settlement”.

Here’s the abstract of that article:

A number of firms are developing commercial sub-orbital launch vehicles to carry tourists into space. Let’s assume they attract many customers and become profitable. The next, much more difficult, step is to develop orbital tourist vehicles and space hotels to go with them. These hotels will require maids, cooks, waiters, concierges and so forth, some of which may decide to stay, becoming the first permanent residents in space. At some point a bright entrepreneur may notice the large numbers of wealthy elderly people in wheelchairs willing to pay well to get out of them. Add good medical facilities to an orbital hotel and those people could be living in the first zero-g retirement home.

In the meantime, we could choose to solve, once and for all, our energy and global warming problems by developing space solar power, i.e., putting up enormous satellites to gather energy in space and beam it to Earth with no atmospheric emissions at all. To supply a substantial fraction of civilization’s 15 twa energy habit would require huge numbers of launches, not to mention developing the ability to build extremely large structures in orbit, and eventually tapping the moon and asteroids for materials to avoid the environmental cost of mining, manufacturing, and launch from Earth.

The best asteroids to mine would be known if Earth’s people realize we are in a cosmic shooting gallery and build telescopes to find the thousands of deadly asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit. Most of these won’t hit us for millions of years, but there could be one heading our way at any time. Exploiting these Near Earth Objects (NEOs) could be made even easier if we take the eminently sensible step of changing the path of a few completely non-dangerous NEOs, just for practice in case one is found to be heading our way without much time to develop defection techniques.

If we do all this, each step of which is justified in its own right, we’ll have excellent launch, small orbital living facilities, the ability to build large objects in orbit, and access to extra-terrestrial materials – most of what we need to realize Gerard O’Neill’s space settlement vision. Since the first space settlement is by far the hardest to build, from there on it’s just a matter of time until we have an orbital civilization….

These are paths to space settlement.

Note from Seraph+Tom: Hey, folks! Post a 150 word max response to Al below or if you have more extensive views views on the path to space settlement, email them as a Zine article submission to diffenbach@comcast.net. Thanks.

SpaceSoc Exercise-1 is to prepare, like the coach of a team would, a “game plan” for setting up a space community of  1,000 persons.

You don’t need to deal with the engineering know-how that built the community. Consider it already built and ready to use. For this exercise, you need to tell the steps needed to organize your space settlement.

Make your game plan as simple as possible. Take only 30 minutes to brainstorm it in about 10 short steps of  no more than 15 words each.

We’re not looking for a civics essay, a political speech, a technical report, references to science fiction, or a full business plan.  No intro, no summary. Just 10 steps or less.

If it helps, think that you’re a coach whose team is waiting to hear your game plan in a minute or two.

Ok, coach, what’s your game plan for your space settlement?

If you are a team, consider yourselves a community organization doing the project. You don’t need to deal with engineering know-how.

In 300 words or less, as much as possible in bulleted or outline form points,

Define the project and its goal(s), (15%)

the key steps to implement it, (15%)

the problems you might encounter, (15%)

the realistic results you expect, (15%)

and how and why it would be
different than a similar project
on Earth. (40%)

In SpaceSoc competitions, the percentages will indicate what part of the total score each part of the answer will be.  Overall scores can be increased up to 20 points for exceptional realism and pragmatic creativity.

Your space community is well on the way to reality.

Now you’ve been asked to establish the criteria for picking the settlers.

So, to do SpaceSoc Exercise #3, you need to post in 150 words or less what kind of folks are going, and why?

Do this fast! Folks around the world are waiting to hear if they’re going to get to go!:)