Pioneering Space National Summit Details Emerge
Keith’s note: Something has emerged from the Pioneering Space National Summit held last week in Washington DC on Facebook (larger view) The event barred press coverage and did not include a number of space advocacy organizations – including the Planetary Society. The organizers are now playing favorites with some media outlets but not others. At one point, the leader of this activity, Rick Tumlinson, posted the following on his Facebook page: “Keith…please get a life. Then perhaps you wont have to spend your time condemning those lived by others”. He then deleted the comment and blocked me from seeing his Facebook page. Oh well. I probably do need to get a life – but this is how the leader of this new space advocacy effort responds to criticism. Not a good sign.
Tumlinson and Mary Lynne Dittmar made some additional Facebook postings (below). Note that Dittmar says that attendees are from the “human spaceflight community”. The preliminary findings state: “The long term goal of the human spaceflight and exploration program of the United States …” Apparently the space and planetary science community is not part of their proposed national space policy. Here we go again: yet another fractionated space policy – one derived behind closed doors by a subset of the larger space advocacy community – being touted as a national space policy.
Mary Lynne Dittmar Facebook post: “In advance of several press releases, Op-Eds, and additional calls to action in the weeks to come, I want to join with colleague Rick Tumlinson to thank all those who participated in, supported, and will support the outcome of the Pioneering Space National Summit of 2015. Over 100 of the nation’s top government, science, engineering, industry and NGO leadership as well as Congressional staff and advocates from across the diverse human spaceflight community came together to build bridges and advance national space policy. Together we forged a consensus statement. More to come.”
Rick Tumlinson Facebook post: “So we did it. Over 100 of the top people from across the space community. Astronauts, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, scientists and citizens – many of whom had never met, many who had been opponents of one another for years, and they sat down, rolled up there sleeves and worked together to try and forge a consensus on at least one or two simple statements.
It was tough going many times, yet the conversations were frank, honest and respectful. In the end we came up with this fairly simple sounding statement. It really seems pretty basic, it is built on existing national policy wordage in many ways, but is in fact revolutionary – as it calls out the desire of all attending for the United States to make the human settlement of space our national goal.
I was surprised at how open and supportive some were who I had thought against the idea, it was tough for some of the Hill folks to handle discussing what they call the “S” word, but they worked hard with us.
This output statement is not just a majority view. We spent two days deep into the night working on it, voting over and over, dealing with objections and challenges from some of the smartest people I know. And then in the end we got consensus. I know it pissed off some of our press friends not to be in the room. Apologies. Had to be done.
Gratitude to all who took this on, to all the orgs . signed up, the company folks who came, to our team and to the great SEDS students who worked with us and participated.
Now the Real work begins. Please take this doc and spread it around. In the next phase we will move to start adding supporters. If you want to help or donate to our org go to the NewWorldsInstitute.org or to the general effort drop a note to [email protected]. It begins. More to follow…”
– Alliance for Space Development: Yawn – Yet Another Space Group, earlier post
– Space Advocates Work Together By Not Working Together, earlier post
– Move Along. This Is Not The Space Policy You’re Looking For., earlier post
– Yet Another Plan For Outer Space, earlier post
What.
Seriously, what. He’s bragging about how he managed to get 100 people associated with spaceflight (and narrowly drawn at that) to agree on two sentences of generalistic argle-bargle that almost everyone who cares about space travel actually agrees on anyways. And they spent two days doing this?
It’s almost like something from The Onion, like a spoof piece bragging about how they managed to form a committee on whether to form a committee on how to start the process. It feels so tongue-in-cheek, except it’s not since the organizer is dead-serious and very thin-skinned in response to criticism. I hope the guests at least had some good refreshments while they wasted two days on this nonsense.
It almost makes me want to go to one of these and be That Guy. Take some contrarian position, like “space is no place for humans – robots are the future forever” and then defend it against dogpiling.
“The long term goal of human spaceflight and exploration program of the United States is to expand permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit in a way that will enable human settlement and a thriving space economy. This will be best achieved through public – private partnership and international collaboration.”
Um. Wow, I guess? Maybe if they met for a week next time they could come up with a whole paragraph.
January 14, 2004:
1. Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system
and beyond;
2. Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon
by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
3. Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to
support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
4. Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific,
security, and economic interests.
That is painful to read. 🙁
5. Retain as many Shuttle-era jobs and components as possible.
6. Build a Big Rocket.
7. Do everything on a reduced budget.
You are completely free to choose up to three (3) options.
Thank you for choosing NASA. America’s leading space agency since 1957.
Senate Amendment : OPTIONS 5 THROUGH 7 ARE MANDATORY.
So basically, setting the agenda for the SEA Blitz, March Storm, and presumably the ASD is doing a Capitol Hill visit as well?
How about this for a statement:
“The long term goal of human spaceflight and exploration program of the United States government is to enable the tapping of the energy and resources of the Solar System to secure the economic prosperity of our posterity. This will be best achieved through concerted effort.”
Although I’m still fond of The Moon Society’s tagline:
“That one day, humans will live and work on the Moon…”
The word “is” really stands out.
“The long term goal of the human spaceflight and exploration program of the United States IS …..”
Instead of “The long term goal …. of the United States SHOULD BE ….”
Even if I agree with their statements, so what, I don’t set the goals for the United States and neither do they. Or have they convinced themselves that they are the chosen ones to set the goals for the United States? I guess that’s why they didn’t need the press hanging around, since the press represents the rest of the country, whose opinion apparently doesn’t matter since this group of 100 or so people has empowered themselves to set the human spaceflight goals for the United States.
The implementation of the statement starts with action steps in the many organizations represented at the Summit. If ten conferences in 2015 have sessions and tracks that address implementation the combined effort will involve several thousand people and this can snowball and can lead to a national policy decision. This is how other movements have done it and how the space movement can do it.
Its funny, having worked with groups like the planetary societty and even NSS I can tell you they are very dictatorial. Look – there are some people who just kill collaboration or new, different, points of view.
Actually I am very thankful to Keith. Keith was ASD before ASD was ASD. It is all about moving the ball down the field. Very good things happened. Lots of old relationships re-enforced and many new, especially on the Hill, built.
We need em all Keith. Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, Old Space, NewSpace, and everything there in.
VR
RE327
Keith, or the rest of the commnetors … is there a bullet list or could you post one liner time themes of what each of the myriad of space groups are pushing?
You would think that of the dozen groups or better there would be some sort of constant.
The constant is they all want money from the government. The problem is if all the groups speak in one voice all they can achieve is to have money thrown at the one big group NASA, with nothing changed.
Doesn’t part of NASA need to change into NACA. Don’t expensive inefficient programs and or practices like SLS need to be dropped?
Isn’t lots of the problem having one big national space agency/program/policy in the first place?
If you want positive change, you don’t want these groups talking in one voice.
Which is it?? Change NASA or one big happy NASA competing for the publics money, you cant have both.
“The long term goal of human spaceflight and exploration program of the United States is to expand permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit in a way that will enable human settlement and a thriving space economy. This will be best achieved through public – private partnership and international collaboration.”
The statement is not particularly radical, within this (loosely defined) community. (Though I might question the “international collaboration” point; history seems to show that when national space agencies cooperate internationally, the bureaucratic inefficiencies don’t just add, they multiply.)
Two keys to whether this was actually a useful exercise: How many influential people who didn’t previously buy this view were converted, and how many of them stay converted once the revival meeting glow has faded.
On the latter point, my experience with such exercises in the past is that the evangelistic buzz fades fast – the meeting breaks up with everyone determined to go out and change the world, but a month later it’s as if it never happened.
It’d be nice if we do start to see visibly better long-term national space policy on the Hill. Here’s hoping.
” the meeting breaks up with everyone determined to go out and change the world, but a month later it’s as if it never happened.”. Yup.
Did I spot an eye in that there pyramid in the screenshot? Illuminati in Sp-a-a-a-a-ce!