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This file from Adra, http://www.mhada.info.
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"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing til it gets there." -- Josh Billings
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." -- Henry Ford
"...The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions." -- N. Machiavelli
"...To boldly go and stay, where none have stayed before." -- adapted from Charles Longway at Mars Annual Con #12
Here is one more quote. I have placed it here at Adra's top to offer warning and advice to whoever seeks a career in space work. This quote serves directly or indirectly at several points thru Adra's content. It outlines one ugly, ugly detail of today's reality (several more may be found easily, but those aren't in Adra's topical area). Which reality is not improved by ignoring or denying it.
During the better Apollo years, a half century past, knowledgeable people expected humans would walk on Mars in the 1980's. Why did that not happen? This quote clearly answers why not. It illustrates the character of today's Washington, if it was first published in 2001 and certainly dates earlier than that.
"For starters, you have to understand that there never really was a space program. The term "program" denotes a sense of direction, a long-term plan if you will. There never was a long-term plan. If Congress gives you money on a yearly basis and presidents and administrators use you for whatever political gain they can garner from your existence, then long-term technical evolution is not possible. Decisions that NASA administrators make are often the direct result of political expediencies. The shuttle is an excellent example. It was what is called a sustainer program, something that will keep the troops employed. Of course we thought the shuttle would live up to its expectations; nevertheless, the decision to build it had as much to do with politics as space exploration."
I have this from Gary Harris, The Origins and Technology of the Advanced Extravehicular Space Suit, its Page 3. AAS History Series, Volume 24. By the American Astronomical Society, 2001. (Note that date.) The book is available from Univelt, see http://www.univelt.com/. (And as discussed elsewhere in Adra, your library wants a copy of it.)
(See also, Tripod, in Adra's editorial / Brass Tacks section.)
Adra's structure is a simple tree in the usual unix style. This file you are reading is its root node. To move among Adra's many nodes, use your browser's resources and the links you'll find along the way. Options throughout Adra to link to 'Top' return to here.
A topic area in Adra may be a single topic in a single node. It may be related topics in a node that starts a small sub-tree. For example, the topics Culture, Economics, and Politics, are (presently) all in one node and if you go there, you'll find options to link on to further, subtopic nodes.
In Base, note new Periodicals subtopic. It includes two weeklys and a History publication. In today's troubled and chaotic world, sitting in the eye of the storm with a complete all-around view would be good to do but that resource is not available to most of us. However, these periodicals offer meaningful support for whoever struggles to accomplish something useful in this reality.
You're in my privately operated Web project named Adra. The work here is by myself alone, except where clearly attributed to someone else. This Adra's tap-root is my frustration and disbelieving anger as, decades ago, I saw Washington kill Apollo to free-up more dollars for the then Vietnam war. Today, Adra runs on my time and my dollar solely. Here in Adra, I am nobody else's spokesperson.
Adra is about building permanent Settlements, far off Terra, with large social, industrial, and economic networks interconnecting them. I believe that of the many things we might do in space today, what we must do in space today, if we rationally respond to the social and science realities we know today, is those permanent Settlements now.
I think that of the very many good reasons for building these Settlements, two reasons stand out especially. These are,
1) Population. Our human population here on Terra has exploded beyond realizable longterm possibility but continues yet to expand. Resources returned from space, most particularly electric energy, offer us an option to continue a little farther along this course. Which offers time to correct this population growth before it crashes "naturally."
(I recognize climate change and perhaps even climate snap as one aspect of this basically population risk.)
2) Astronomical reality. Today's human-comfortable Terra comes with termination date attached, like an expectable bill for very big money. Researchers are finding records out of our Terran past of comparable termination dates: ask the dinosaurs. The foreseeable consequences to us of the next such date preclude ignoring it (if we are rational about it). It's a powerful warning to us that, in decades of work, SETI has found nobody else in our galactic local space out to several light years. We know of just ourselves alone. It's not the expectable result. We don't know why we see it, but we don't need to know that to read the warning in it. It's merely rational to believe our future includes a day when we say either "Our settlements Out There will survive this," or, speaking to all our ancestors and to all our history, "Sorry about that."
At several points in Adra, I mention why I personally believe what I say in Adra. There are those among us who advocate for more wars and indefinitely more people here. Some among us work to return us, by force of religion, politics, rhetoric, ignorance and law, to one or another past that in fact, never existed. Some among us would distract us to games and competitions locally as if these had some meaning to our Universe at large. Some among us of darkest premedieval outlook say a supernatural Daddy made our world recently and that humans in space amounts to a terrible wrong against His natural order.
All these noisy (and authoritarian) people make a serious fundamental error. That error, if this goes on, can kill all our past, all we do, all our hope and future. I think we have yet a choice today, still accessible to us. If we ignore that choice (more wars, for example), then we risk that all our history and our ancestors best work, comes to less than chaotic and silent rubble. But if we choose reality-based rational action, if we care for ourselves appropriately in a dangerous and uncertain Universe, we may do very much better than that. We're grownups now, responsible to ourselves only. There are no supernatural guarantees; also no others. It's up to us.
That's what I believe, and here in my Adra, you can learn why I believe it. Here I speak of a few options of the many I see Out There for appropriate constructive change. Adra is about what I think we can and should be doing -- now.
Adra is not an archive or a record. It is a linked collection of computer files (mostly ascii) around its central topic and these files are all malleable. Reality changes; the news changes; my perception of things changes; Adra changes. I don't make new editions of Adra. Rather, I update it. What you find here today is ...what you find here today. It was the best I saw to do when I did it.
On 2009 Aug 04 I'm recently back from a very interesting and stimulating few days at the Mars Society Annual #12. I returned with a strong perception I can make Adra better by making it simpler. I'm working now at that. If you know where to look for something that interests you, its location in Adra will seem about the same when I have finished this work, but you'll get there faster.
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[] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization, and its end resources.
[] Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, eds., Skylife. Harcourt Inc., 2000. The several stories collected here offer a brief survey of rich possibilities for humans in space. Be reminded science fiction is visionary, not predictive.
[] Robert Zubrin with Richard Wagner, The Case For Mars. Paperback. Simon & Schuster Touchstone, 1996. ISBN 0-684-83550-9. LC QB641.Z83.
In today's world of multiple browsers running in operating systems based upon diametrically opposed philosophies (Linux vs Microsoft), simplicity is hard to make. It turns out, different browsers render my pages source a little differently. For best Adra readability, you may want to tinker with your browser parameters. Here are some suggestions:
Browser = Firefox 3: Click 'View', check 'Zoom' --> 'Zoom Text Only'; try 'Ctrl +' x4 for larger text.
Browser = Internet Explorer: Click 'View', click 'Text Size'; try 'Larger' or 'Largest'.
Browser = Opera: If you install it in your machine, it wants to own the place. I was about a half hour after 'installation' unhooking all its tentacles. It serves in my workspace to see what my Adra looks like thru this software.
Re Opera font. If you think Opera's font for Adra's text is too small. Click on Tools, goto Preferences, goto Advanced, goto Fonts. See 'Minimum font size (pixels)'. My default was 12, I changed it to 16 and that works here.
Adra's pages may read easier, if after you have a text size you like, you set the page width on your screen to about the width of the bar above the title at the top of this page.
The following is written with an eye to good scholarly practice ...what is good scholarly practice? I've looked into that. I found no brief concise "...for Dummies" introduction, but interesting history. Used to be, if you wanted a book you hired a scribe to copy one by hand for you. From someone else's existing copy. After a few such copy cycles, one authoritative copy of a work could be strikingly different from another authoritative copy of it. Hence, detailed attribution was a common practice. Thus we begin a whole new topic, this matter of scholarly practice; but that's too far from what Adra is about. Rather, at my age, I'd best tend to my work so I say,
You may take out and use blocks of my work from Adra that you place into your own hardcopy or Web publication, subject to the following conditions which I believe are simple common-sense and courtesy:
Top and end. Clearly mark where my original material that you use begins and ends in your use of it.
Attribution. Tell your reader where my material that you use came from. That information should include my Web site's name, "Adra"; its author's name, "Martha Adams"; its URL, "http://www.mhada.info"; and (remembering Adra's content is malleable and I change it over time) the date when you acquired it into your own work.
Accuracy. Don't tinker with my words. I've tried to get them right. If you think I failed, let's talk by email about it. But in the mean time, my text is my text and let's leave it that way.
Courtesy. I'd like to know what my work meant to you and what you did with it. Email to me about it, with your own accessible address, ascii only to mhada snail verizon point net.
Thanks! -- Martha Adams
Until I find out some practical details, Adra won't take emails. I hope to have this caught up "real soon now," namely, when I deduce from my host's "support" information, what I have to do to make emails work here. This emails topic is not transparent for a semi-techie like myself. For now,
Be reminded: emails are useful in their place when directed to getting something needed, done. Brief messages to effect that, Hi, I'm here, fill an important role in communication -- to see this, review stories and legends out of early short-wave communications, especially between isolated outposts. Like "small talk" between people. Today, brief communications are usually best communications.
You are welcome to respond back to me concerning what you see here. Email ascii only to mhada snail verizon point net. Ascii. Namely, plain generic ascii text, please.
Your message may appear here, somewhat edited and responded to. If I do this with your email and you don't like the result, email to me and expect appropriate changes shortly. However, I do not promise to reply to every single email that comes in here, nor even to read it.
============================================================= << Some Topics Table Links Point to Here >> =============================================================
Some Top entries point to text sections here. In 2009 August, I am removing most of the text that I originally placed here. I'm putting it into the topic sections it refers to, which simplifies my Adra. If the label is blue, that's a link to somewhere related to the text there.
A very few exceptional people do succeed in working alone and in making major contributions to their fields. I won't spend a lot of time on this topic because the odds are so strong against my saying anything useful to anyone who both needs and is able to understand this topic of Loners vs Groups. I'll sum it up with this brief statement, which I believe you can rely upon:
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Who nobody knows, nobody is.
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This is not a matter the (voluntary or involuntary) Loner needs to solve immediately, but over the long run it's going to make an immense difference in what the person accomplishes over a few decades or over a lifetime. The history of science is full of immediately relevant examples.
Some people are just plain lucky in their social connections. Others must work at it. A few just can't (see the movie, "Rain Man"). Adra is not a clinical and social support so we now move on.
My standards for "relevant" and for "group" are very loose. The resources listed here are placed here because at some time, each one looked good to me. If you happen to think as you look at some one of them, "I see no relevance at all in that," well, someone else did. Work on it.
Return to the Topics list.
To find more on topic of 'space settlement,' you can invoke Google and other search engines, which will return hundreds to thousands of hits. This may lead you to think about a more selective search. Where do you start?
Try starting here! Here are links to Web sites I've reviewed. Of course these few aren't all you need to know of, if you're into serious study and work. But here is a starting point, and after you've seen these, then you can move along to the further search your work wants. These links are interesting in themselves.
Return to the Topics list.
Here is a place for items which I think are relevant somehow, or interesting, which don't find a place in my overall topics list.
Return to the Topics list.
The alternative heading "Travel Notes" doesn't fit all the entries here because I haven't been to all of these. I have visited some of them; but all of them have caught my eye and attention for some reason; and they might interest you.
Return to the Topics list.
You may have not noticed the following, and when I say it maybe you don't like it. Well, welcome to reality: "Space" means "political." "Political" means you've got to do political action. Whoever this reality surprises (for instance, myself in years far gone) or who feels "That can't be so...," wants to attend to the recent history and politics around the topic of space. And there is more to this topic.
No amount of good intention nor wishing and hope, will move any real-world politics toward anything good. Politics doesn't work that way. Politics is participant conflict and work, a hard-contact and gritty challenge. It is not nice. If you're an idealist, an everyday mundane in some aspects of yourself, then your transition into politics will be difficult. But if you're serious about space settlements then that transition is something you must do to make things happen that must happen. That's why these Web pages on a basically engineering topic, include this Political topic, and connect it to political action.
Return to the Topics list.