I’m working on plans to start publishing on this site again, with a renewed focus on the development of new frontiers. This will include resuming the No Fear Pioneer podcast and adding to the post series I titled “The Way Out”.
Development of commercial space capability has accelerated rapidly in recent years, and the resultant advances have been thrilling to watch, thanks in no small part to SpaceX’s relentless achievements and bold, inspiring, and impatient vision for our off-Earth future. I’ve been following developments in this area with tremendous interest and enthusiasm, and will aim do so some useful thinking and writing about the implications here — focusing on the great and exciting potentials for space colonization, but also exploring novel opportunities to open new frontiers, physical or virtual, here on Earth.
We live in an amazing time full of immense possibilities — greater, I think, than most realize. I’m particularly energized by the potential that new places and the challenges that go with them hold to rekindle our resilience and our hunger for adventure. I foresee places where, out of great difficulty, our long-lost sense of fun and playfulness will get to emerge again. Places where those who are willing to embrace risk will have the chance to know what an easy-going, free-wheeling approach to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness feels like, and where humanity’s tremendous potentials can be set free to great benefit.
The month alone featured a successful second Crew Dragon launch to the ISS, and a couple of textbook satellite launches with beautiful first-stage landings, and it now looks like next week will hold possibly the most exciting development yet: the first 15km test flight and re-landing of a Starship prototype. Elon Musk Tweeted yesterday:
Good Starship SN8 static fire! Aiming for first 15km / ~50k ft altitude flight next week. Goals are to test 3 engine ascent, body flaps, transition from main to header tanks & landing flip.
I’ll be watching for sure, and cannot wait to see it.
Meanwhile, for your inspiration and enjoyment and a reminder of the amazing future that I believe lies ahead of us, I’ll just leave these here for now:
It’s been on my mind to do some more writing and podcasting — a thought that has me pondering both the content I want to get down in words, and the potential purpose of completing and publishing that work. I’ve gained a lot of valuable and life-improving perspective in recent years, that I think could be of help to others who may be journeying down similar paths. It interests me to distill my observations — partly for my own use in developing my thinking further, but I also wonder to what extent it may be a worthwhile endeavor to publish the results, either here or elsewhere.
With time being in short supply relative to my many projects, I'm driven to weigh the value of this endeavor as realistically as I can. To what extent will it matter? I think of all the superb writing that's already out there on the subjects that preoccupy me, by writers whose wonderfully articulate insight both inspires and humbles me (see my links page for some of my favorites), and I have to wonder whether the most useful thing I can do is direct people to their work. Twitter is an apt and effective tool for that, and a substantial part of my use of it (as well as this blog) has been for that purpose. Where others have said with great clarity of thought what I have lacked the talent and time to articulate, it makes every bit of sense to direct people to their articles, podcast episodes, and videos with due enthusiasm.
Time is in understandably short supply for potential readers, too. In a world where Twitter's brevity connects people with ideas, and with one another, with undeniable effectiveness, I make the time to read my own favorite writers far less often than I'd like to. What are the chances that others will find the time to read my own humble work, or can be reasonably expected to? At the point of that thought, I fall back on the knowledge that putting my thoughts together in writing is of great benefit to me, independent of how many or few others may read or benefit from the results. But if I'm going to take the time to craft work that I'm happy enough with to publish, and because I harbor hope of helping others and building friendships with people on similar journeys, I feel driven to figure out what I can do that would be most effective and worthwhile.
They say to write about what you know, and maybe therein lies the answer. More specifically, I think I need to figure out what I can contribute that's relatively unique — what's a novel result of my own perspective that might not be found elsewhere. My thinking about the frontier cycle and the development of new frontiers seems likely to be part of that, and I may redouble my focus on that pursuit both here and on the No Fear Pioneer podcast. I'll be interested to see where that goes, and I hope others will find some value in the results of these pursuits too.
A rare day off presented itself, and I’ve seized it: recording a new, 10-minute episode of The No Fear Pioneer that I’ve been wanting to get to for a long while now.
Related to today’s discussion: Natan Sharansky’s Fear No Evil — the uplifting account of a man whose faithfulness to his principles, integrity, and inner compass enabled him to endure trials few of us could imagine.
Whatever short-term mitigation of circumstances may fall out of the election results (I am not counting on anything, and expect very little), my long-term view of what we should working on hasn’t changed. There remains a strong and determined movement in the culture toward people wanting the State to provide for them and shelter them from freedom’s inherent risks, and I don’t see that shift abating — either in terms of people’s desires, or the state mechanisms they put in place to fulfill them. Progressivism operates like a ratcheting mechanism (credit to Bill Whittle for that apt analogy): It advances persistently, by gradual increments, and is only rarely reversed in small and temporary ways. Those of us who yearn to live the joyful and free-wheeling life that America’s founding generation envisioned, and that their own risks and sacrifices made possible, need to make ready to head to a new frontier, for only by going where others fear to tread will we be able to build and enjoy a thriving freedom-loving Civilization again.
“The Way Out” remains my guiding compass in this endeavor. It’s a series I continue to ponder and will add to — along with the No Fear Pioneer podcast — as new ideas arise.
I’m also looking forward to hearing what Bill has been working on and hinting at on his Stratosphere Lounge podcast, as I’ve often found myself thinking along similar lines.
Apropos our burning need for a way out to a new frontier: This is exactly the kind of thing we need to be working toward.
For the gist of why, the first “Interstellar” trailer articulated the answer in a beautifully profound two minutes:
For the logistical nuts and bolts of how, see Elon Musk’s milestone talk at the 2016 International Astronautical Congress last Tuesday:
According to the plan Musk outlined, SpaceX proposes to deliver an unmanned cargo shipment to Mars in 2018, more to follow in subsequent years, and a first wave of settlers — not a mere handful of astronauts, but a colonizing force of 100 — a mere eight years from now.
center cluster gimbals for steering capability; most on periphery will be fixed orientation
7% of propellant needed for boostback & landing
up to 450T cargo to Mars
at least 100 passengers per ship, eventually up to 200 or 300
The key thing to emphasize is that this is not just some back-of-the-envelope daydreaming and a few artist sketches. Musk and SpaceX have concrete plans to build and do all of this, very soon now. Nothing in space endeavors is easy or guaranteed to stay on schedule, but with persistence it can be done, and thanks to Musk’s and SpaceX’s persistence and vision to date, we are now much closer than we have ever been to achieving the long dream of “humans as a multi-planetary species.”
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
