Captain's Blog #5

Just because your idea is far in the future doesn't mean you should give up on the idea. Near future ideas like colonizing Mars find their constituency so why not far future ideas? Don't believe it? Consider the existence of the Mars Society and the Mars Underground and books on the Greening of Mars.

The way to do deep space projects might be as follows: Draft a business plan. Gather together the creators of ideas and concepts that further the project. Get a leader or champion. Few ideas and no projects can make it without a leader or champion. Except religions [they can survive and even thrive without a leader]. But we're talking space not religion.

Create a group, club, society, association or other organization to solidify and make progress on the deep space project. Hold fundraising events. Establish a foundation or fund or turst or even just a bank account. Identify or recognize milestones. Don't disparage baby steps or seemingly minor progress. The road to other galaxies starts with getting your act together with a group of like-minded people in somebody's living room. The moon, the planets, nearby stellar systems, nearby galaxies. You'll get there. Maybe even in your lifetime if you can combine top-notch organization, top-flight scientists and engineers, with a lot of money intelligently spent. Motivation is part of the formula too.

Brainstorm way to speed up progress. Sound vague? Think about the X-Prize, the DoD's force multipliers, and the Space Frontier Foundation's enabling test. Not so vague. They produced tangible results.

Lastly, as part of the model for thinking about deep space projects, don't laugh when someone brings out their PowerPoint presentation for a visionary project. Goal have to be visualized and the visionary isn't always (or even often) an artist. The visionary is responsible for seeing the vision. Artists are responsible for listening, understanding, and translating that vision into a form outside the visionary's mind and imagination. And don't assume that artists got it right. The artist needs to ask the visionary: "Is this what you had in mind? Did I get it right? I can try again." Even Michelangelo did sketches on paper before starting on the canvas or marble or Sistine Chapel ceiling. [Of course Michelangelo had to put up with a demanding Pope but that's another blog].