It’s Time to Act for the Future

by rick tumlinson

Some have questioned if we are overselling the opening of the High Frontier. The opposite is true. We have been soft selling it too long. We have been shy about putting it out there lest others laugh at us, or “serious” space people dont take us “seriously.” Ironically those “serious” people are the ones who are not “serious” as they keep blowing it, and as they do wasting time and billions of dollars and worse, burning the bridges of dreams we built for generations.

It is time to take a stand for the future. Not in just words, but actions. It is time to step up and demand the Vision. For by its realization we all will win, and I mean us all.

This is a Serious Cause. Our goal is nothing less than the human breakout into space, the expansion of human civilization and the life of Earth beyond our world, to all worlds and all places in between.

In this year the tide will at last change for us. If those of us who can lead do so, and do so by not just talking, but making things happen. And to to those who support us we must call out for action, real tangible actions to help us turn this tide our way.

In 2013 we will see the rise of companies and projects that have the possibility of creating the first eco-industrial off planet economy. Along with the businesses needed we will need political support and folks like you, here on social media to begin to flex your muscles and build a wave for us to sail on.

The opening of the Frontier is not an engineering problem. It is not a money problem. It is a challenge to our ability to decide to make it happen, and to think and act the right way to get the results we want, we need, we Demand.

Tell your congressperson you want to see The Space Development and Settlement Act of 2013 passed this year.

Even before it arrives… and when it does go tell them again… and point out you knew it was coming!

Tell your media friends you know new companies to do amazing things in space are about to be announced, and then remind them you knew… and work to educate them as to why this is important.

Support projects that are going to make it happen. Use our judgement and your own dollars to get involved, and if you have skills bring them to. We need you!

And don’t get caught in petty arguments over engineering or destinations…they don’t matter.

If you have to say anything say this:

“I want us to open space to human settlement and development as a top priority for the human race.

“I want do it so that my future is better brighter and bigger, so that the Earth can have some relief and that life and humanity can begin to spread outwards into the stars.

“I believe it will lead to new wealth and prosperity for all of us, new ways to help save the Earth and new inspiration for generations to come.”

If they ask you who should do it say:

All of us!

I want the government to focus on the stuff we cannot yet do, like beginning to learn how we can live in space long enough to go to Mars, or how to build and operate human communities on the Moon and Mars. Let NASA go to the Far Frontier beyond the Moon. Let them learn how to do what we need to know how to do out there.

I want them to do so in such a way that includes the private sector from the beginning, and which has the goal of not just expanding scientific understanding, but creating new places for us to live and prosper.

Say: I want them not to do the same things the private sector is doing, like building Earth to space rockets or mining asteroids, but to take our tax dollars and invest them on blazing trails and buying what they need from us, the people who pay for it all.

Say: I want them to stay out of the way, to pass laws that will allow me to build a home in space that is my own, on my own ground. Because that is what it is all about. This time, we go to stay!

After all, once we make that first hundred miles….

Rick Tumlinson has been called one of the world’s top space “visionaries” and named one of the 100 most influential people in space. He was a protégé of Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill. founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, and a founding trustee of the X-PRIZE Foundation. A regular contributor to the Huffington Post, Space News and Moonandback, he has also written for the New York Times, Popular Science Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Readers Digest and other publications.

Moonandback

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