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Welcome to Space Pioneers

Space Pioneers is an Australian registered organisation formed in 2011 to pursue active campaigning for a safe Earth and a sustainable human presence beyond Earth.

Virtual Worlds We are currently building a presence in three virtual worlds, Second Life, InWorldz and OSGrid, developing a form of 4-dimensional interactive web site, where we can build full-scale models of the future that we seek to describe. We are introducing a humanoid robot to our project in Second Life, called Eykona, who visitors will be able to communicate with.

Creating A Solar Civilization This document, first written in 2006 and revised in 2012, explores our vision for the future and we would be pleased to hear your views on the matters raised. The ideas explored in this document will be the basis for a longer writing project, which will be published on this web site as each chapter is completed.

Google Discussion If you would like to discuss the issues raised in Creating A Solar Civilization and other subjects that will arise, you may like to join our discussion group and have your say. We will be keenly reading all comments.

First Step The idea of First Step is the brainchild of Kim Peart, which sprang to mind beneath the stars by a campfire in 2006, as a way to remember the Moon landing at the same time it happened for the whole World in July 1969. If you would like to stop and remember First Step in July, find out the day and time when it happened in your part of the World and join us in remembering the first step by humanity onto another celestial world.

Giant Leap When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, he declared to a keenly listening world, “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” In the spirit of exploration and discovery, we invite one and all to participate in a Giant Leap discussion following First Step, where we can wonder about the next giant leap in space development and how soon this will happen? Giant Leap discussion could be over the kitchen table, in a café, at a local university, on the Internet or in the virtual worlds. If there is strong support for First Step and Giant Leap, a conference could be held to explore the best way forward for humanity among the stars.

Bifrost Campaign Ten people with a hard head for survival and a fierce heart for the stars can start a ball rolling, but we must inspire ten million people to participate in the vision to win back a safe Earth. By building a sustainable presence beyond Earth, people will see that we can survive and they will find the hope and confidence to solve any problem on Earth.

island Earth is our research branch for home planet issues.

Confidence I once asked a wise old English gentleman, whose name was Aubrey Barkeley but everyone called Bark, “What is the most important thing in life?” Ever swift with a reply, I was a little stunned to hear silence from the old white-haired man. Then he answered with a single word: “Confidence.” This was in Howrah, Tasmania, in 1972 and I still agree. Kim Peart

Enquiries

PO Box 1848

Sunshine Plaza

Qld 4558 Australia

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To join our Google discussion group

~ send us an Email and we will send you an invite ~

SPACE PIONEERS
When Apollo astronauts sailed around the Moon in 1968, they discovered the Earth rising before them, capturing an image that inspired a new environmental vision for our home planet. We could have followed the success of the Moon landings by building solar power stations in space and launching a new age for human society among the stars. Instead of making the transition to stellar energy from the Sun, we drilled ever deeper into the Earth for fossil fuel, which has now created an environmental crisis that threatens our future. We can avert disaster, by getting back to the future, building solar power stations in space and using stellar energy to win back a safe Earth. We would be investing in our cosmic survival insurance policy, which no advanced civilization should be allowed to run a planet without.

FALSE DAWN
Who can imagine the power of the Sun, which formed from a cloud of stardust 4.6 billion years ago and will one day expand to the orbit of the Earth as a red giant star. Our planet, the only home of life in the Universe that we know of, sails like a starship through the cosmic ocean, where the energy of our Sun has powered life and created a precious fuel reserve of carbon energy.

In the same year that we saw the Earth from the Moon, Dr Peter Glaser proposed that we construct solar power stations in space, to access the unlimited energy of our star where the Sun never sets. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon in July 1969, anything seemed possible and it would only be a few years before an explorer from Earth stepped onto the surface of Mars.

In the early 1970s Professor Gerard K. O'Neill presented his vision for solar power stations in space as the way to kick-start a stellar economy, supplying power for Earth, launching industry in space and constructing orbital habitats that generated gravity by rotation. Unfortunately, space budgets had been slashed and the human space effort had fallen back to low-Earth orbit.

The carbon crisis would have been entirely avoided and the Earth kept safe, if we had launched a stellar economy in the 1970s. We could now be a much more advanced society, have dispatched poverty into history, built cities in space and be entering upon a new age of stellar exploration.

STELLAR ECONOMY
By finally gaining direct access to the unlimited energy-well of our Sun, we will launch a stellar economy and finally secure our cosmic survival insurance policy. Achieving this will inspire hope in the hearts of the people of Earth and motivate many hands to work toward a better world.

To maintain security in space, where human habitats are fragile bubbles in a vacuum, the best policy is to promote a peaceful world. This is possible, if we invest in goodwill among all, by designing a stellar economy without poverty. With direct access to unlimited stellar energy in space, such an economy can be built. With a focus on the health and creative opportunities of all Earth's children, we will build peace on Earth.

With the power of the Sun, we can also win back a safe Earth, by using stellar energy to extract excess carbon from the air and sea, confronting the threats of global warming and dangerous Earth changes. The base carbon could also be processed back into a useful resource, for use on Earth and in space.

GETTING BACK
A fundamental law of Nature is expansion, observed in the birth of the cosmos and the spread of life on Earth. The momentum of the evolution of life has seen humanity emerge in Nature to step onto the Moon. For Nature, the price is very high, as we burn the planet’s fossil fuel reserves, which drives changes that threaten life. If we had made a swift transition to stellar energy, the damage would have been limited, as life from Earth gained expansion among the stars.

Instead of running with Nature beyond Earth when the time was ripe to do so, we fell back to Earth and now face the consequences. To secure our cosmic survival insurance policy and a safe Earth, we must get back to the future and reach to the Sun. By building solar power stations in space, we can finally launch our stellar economy and a new age for human society among the stars.

Astronomers have long puzzled over the silence from the stars, as they believe there should be many advanced civilizations beyond Earth. We may now wonder if this silence is due to species like us burning their planet's fossil fuel reserves too long, poisoning their world and losing the race for survival, before they learnt to fly in space. Must we wait to discover the tragic husks of failed civilizations orbiting distant stars?

Rather than run the risk of closing the book on our species, we can rise to the challenge, run with Nature and begin writing the first chapter of life from Earth among the stars.

GLOBAL CAMPAIGN
Achieving the Moon landing required an army of 500,000 workers. The society that formed to promote Professor O'Neill's vision attracted 50,000 potential space colonists, but this number was too few to open the way beyond Earth. To rise to the challenge of launching a stellar civilization may require the dedicated efforts of ten million empowered individuals. How could this happen?

There is now an extension of the Internet, called the virtual world, where people from any part of the planet can meet, communicate, arrange displays and build working models. Space Pioneers have developed a virtual space program, which allows any number of people to be directly involved, even on a daily basis, meeting globally to plan local action toward building our celestial future and winning back a safe Earth. See our article ~ The Birth of the VOSS ~ under VOSS in our website and also ~ Driving the VOSS Vision.

LOCAL ACTION
Space Pioneers invite you to join the adventure, receive our newsletter, help promote our celestial future and participate in our virtual space program. We look toward establishing a local space design centre, with a learning lab, space gallery and café.

We promote an Australian space program, where our resource bonanza could be invested in solar power stations in space and working with friendly nations like India to launch our stellar civilization. We would build a much stronger nation beneath the stars of the Southern Cross.

In July we hold First Step, to remember the Moon landing as it happened in 1969, when 600 million people stopped globally to watch and listen to those haunting words of Neil 
Armstrong from the Sea of Tranquillity ~  “That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”