View of Earth's biomass concentrations.
Are we or our descendants destined to explore and colonize distant planets, perhaps distant star systems, perhaps even distant galaxies?
Fifty years ago such ideas were the realm of science fiction. But 30 years ago the world watched with awe and amazement as astronauts walked on the moon.
Now we may wonder why, over the past 25 years, no one has been back to the moon. In fact, over the past 25 years, no human being has left the gravitational pull of the earth. We have sent probes to study closely our neighboring planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. We have learned a great deal about rocketry, astronautics, cosmology, and nuclear physics. We have built computers many times more powerful (and nevertheless many times smaller) than those that piloted those space ships to the moon. But the budget for space travel and space exploration has actually decreased and neither the U.S. nor any other government, neither private industry nor privately funded science have any concrete plans for exploring or colonizing space.
Why is this so? Frankly, despite the end of the Cold War and despite the technological miracles that explode around us year after year -- despite all the progress that has been made in so many areas the earth has too many problems here at home to be safe enough, strong enough, and wealthy enough to plan a future reaching for the stars.
But if humanity is to continue to expand -- not just technologically and in population and territory but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually -- we must not be short-sighted. We must have a plan that looks beyond our present problems and limitations, one that seeks to enlighten us and aliven us and bring out the best in us.
That is why the First Millennial Foundation was born. Based on the remarkable vision of Marshall Savage , the First Millennial Foundation has a plan for humanity for the next thousand years. It is an orderly plan, step by step, to solve the problems we have hear on earth -- the energy problem, the shortage of food, the pollution of our environment, and the lack of financial resources to rebuild our tattered infrastructure. And the plan proceeds, step by step, to colonize and farm the oceans, to fire human explorers into orbit and beyond, to colonize the moon and Mars, and to head off into the far reaches of space in search of new worlds.
The first stage is called Aquarius. This involves building floating colonies in the open ocean to harvest the enormous reserves of nonpolluting energy and of nutrients that now lie dormant in the ocean's depths. Aquarius will also help us develop new technologies, new personal skills, and new social systems that we will need in space.
Next will come the Bifrost Bridge, an ecologically sane and financially cheap way to send humans and their equipment and supplies into space.
That will lead to Asgard, building colonies in orbit -- colonies that are entirely self-sufficient, are safe from meteors and space debris, and are free from their mother earth, though not yet planted on alien worlds.
But such colonies can be planted on the moon, a step called Avallon. Craters on the moon's pock-marked surface will be covered with air-tight domes, some miles in diameter. And within these domes will be built a variety of earth-like environments -- forests, gardens, jungles, plains, and cities of many different kinds.
Mars will be next, a more distant and in some ways more challenging environment than the moon. But the next stage in the First Millennial Foundation's plan, the stage called Elysium, will bring water from deep in the planet to the surface, oxygen to the atmosphere, and will "terraform" the surface of Mars, that is, will make it habitable for humans.
There are other habitable zones in the solar system -- asteroids and planetoids -- and we can bulid chains of fabricated lands linked together in giant planet-like associations. This stage is called Solaria.
Finally, when we have created thousands of colonies in space -- colonies of a wide variety of sizes and kinds, with varying gravities, atmospheres, and ecological (and social) problems, we will be ready for the ultimate step, Galactia. We will send off giant spaceships, each a totally self-sufficient world unto itself with several hundred thousand or a few million inhabitants, to seek out other habitable zones and other planets around distant stars.
This is the vision and the plan of the First Millennial Foundation. We seek to heal the earth and the ecological, social, political, and spiritual crises that threaten us, and in the process to carry our precious seeds of life abroad out into the galaxy.