…Reach Unprecedented Heights… Wikinomics Essay II
(bob munck warning – its not a pdf, but it is a long file. 5 page word doc, size. i could really use some comments, critiques and criticism. i want to broadcast this document, but i want it to be ‘right’ before i do. so, please respond. and then i will send it out to some other folks i know, and try to get them invovled. thanks. mjl)
…Reach Unprecedented Heights…
“Mass collaboration can empower a growing cohort of connected individuals and organizations to create extraordinary wealth and reach unprecedented heights in learning and scientific discovery. If we are wise we will harness this capability to create opportunities for everyone to carefully steward the planet’s natural resources.” Page 15.
There is a lot of meat in this paragraph; meat that is especially nourishing to me. If you have read my previous essay, you will recall that I am dedicated to building the Space Elevator. As an overview, according to our website – www.liftport.com, this is what I am talking about:
[The]…LiftPort Space Elevator, will consist of a ribbon made of a very strong and very light material, carbon nanotubes, anchored to the Earth’s surface at the LiftPort Station with the other end reaching into space. By making the ribbon long enough, and attaching a small satellite as counterweight, the Earth’s rotation will provide enough centrifugal effect to overcome the pull of gravity and keep the ribbon taut. The LiftPort Space Elevator will then provide a permanent bridge between earth and space. Elevator cars will be robotic “lifters” which will climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond.
In short, it is a revolutionary infrastructure system designed for cheap transport to and from space. When it is built, it will change everything. And I am risking a lot, on the possibility, even before it is built, that it will still change everything. Those changes are the subject of this essay
Somehow, when Tapscott and Willaims wrote the line of “reach unprecedented heights”, I rather doubt they were thinking of an Elevator climbing into Space; 62,000 miles straight up. It seems a bit unlikely, don’t ya think? They were talking in a more abstract way, with a more ‘lofty’ and inspired concept in mind. On the other hand, the far-fetched idea of our Elevator to Space has been considered for over 100 years. The concept kept surfacing then was buried, time and again – because the strength of materials simply wasn’t up to the task. Yet, if we successfully harness a “wikified approach” (my phrase) to our research, development, operations, management and construction – then that is exactly the heights we will reach.
And it is unprecedented – nothing ‘higher’ exists in the solar system. Yet, when I read this paragraph originally, I felt that it had a very (for me) prophetic ring to it. So, let’s examine this paragraph further, because I am a big fan of “extraordinary wealth”. I expect to make a bundle – whether this project ultimately succeeds or fails – due to the spin-off technology development; and this project would stop dead in its tracks without significant “scientific discovery”.
So, let’s now talk about this discovery, and about being good “steward[s of the] planet[s] natural resources”. While we are at it, let’s talk about how the Space Elevator and how a wikified approach can make a difference.
Wealth of Discovery
The core technologies that were developed for the original Apollo Era push to the Moon, are now the fundamental building blocks of modern society. I dare any of you to try to fly across an ocean, or drive around the block, or step foot into a hospital – that does not have NASA researched and developed technologies standing firmly in the background. I wouldn’t do it. I value my life.
I contend that NASA is one of the strongest economic engines our nation (or any nation) has ever created. It had a specific, timely and relevant mission: to land a man on the moon in less than 10 years. It marshaled resources that were amazing – people, technology, capital, equipment, good will – and it did ahelluva job. Let’s get beyond the ‘tang’ and ‘velcro’ analogies for a moment, and consider significant, multi-billion dollar industries that were created from, or enhanced by, our goal of getting to the moon:
• Communications (radio, television, phones systems all rely on satellites)
• Observation (agriculture, astronomy, weather, defense, personal GPS)
• BioSciences (medicines, materials for equipment, monitoring systems, physiology)
The results of their effort are everywhere. Please, take 15 seconds, to look around your room or office and think about the objects there. Where was the original, foundational, idea from? What is that objects history? Where has it been expanded upon or perfected? It is a safe bet that somewhere in the last 35+ years, NASA had something to do with it. Certainly the computer system you are on now – monitor screen, chips, communications infrastructure and mathematical software – derived some of their components from this pioneering research team. They deserve more credit than they usually get.
And now? The Space Elevator is at least as ambitious a program as the original Apollo effort. And the technology deliverables will be astonishing – material sciences, energy systems, lasers, microwaves, robotics, communications, recycling, computing systems, tracking systems. The list is actually longer than this, and the results will be globally transformational.
And we get all this during the discovery stage! We never even have to commit to building it. We get the benefits by simply doing the work to find out if it is possible… Of course, my team wants to built it, we wouldn’t be working this hard, if we didn’t have that guiding vision in the distance. Yet also, my team has always said (although the media tend to edit this part out, that) “We don’t even have all the questions, yet, let alone have all the answers…” It will take years of research and technology development before we have a good handle on all this. We don’t KNOW whether this Elevator to Space is even possible, yet. We think so. We are pretty darn sure. We have a lot of work to do, first, to find out. But even if it’s not possible, even if it ultimately does not work – we still get the societal transforming technologies anyway, as a by-product of the knowledge we seek in our initial quest.
“What If?”
As a kid, that was one of my all-time favorite questions. I would think about various scenarios all the time. My (many) ex-girlfriends would call it ‘future tripping’, and what I would be doing was imagining all the possible alternatives to a situation, and then, pick one I liked, and work toward it. That trait is pretty rough on relationships, hence, I am 39 and usually single. However it is that quality that made me a very good investment advisor, and unusually capable of tackling a project like our Elevator to Space.
So, “What if?” What if it worked? What if all our effort paid off, that we were lucky, and all our research was correct? Let’s fast-forward about 24 years, and assume we were right. Then what? What does that look like for our civilization? For our planet? I don’t know for sure. What I can predict though, is that we will have the means of cheap, reliable, safe, and secure transportation to and from space. And if we have that, then we have the means of building and supplying – clean, green, limitless, cheap energy – to anywhere on the planet, at any time.
Failure.
What if we don’t succeed? At the time that I write this, there are approximately 6,000,000,000 people on the planet. And more are arriving by the second. Literally. Only about 1/3 have what I take for granted – 24 hour a day electricity. And a whole lot of them, (China, Brazil, India (CBI)) want, and have the ability to reach for, a ‘western standard of living’. (Define that however you want. I looked for a link, and didnt find any that I liked.) Let me be perfectly blunt. There is no way to accomplish this. Not with our current technology; with our current infrastructure deployment; and with our current energy requirements – all projecting forward to allow for CBI to have our N. American/European standard of living. It’s impossible. And remember, I am the guy building an Elevator to Space… I don’t use the word ‘impossible’ lightly. I believe that we will choke our planet to near-lifelessness, if we continue on our current path. I believe we will not be able to sustain a planet-wide civilization that enjoys a ‘western standard of living’. I believe we (the USA) have fought 2 wars in 10 years, and that energy was at the heart of each of those conflicts. And I believe more conflicts will come – if we don’t solve this problem. There are simply too many people that want more energy than we can reasonably supply given current methods. I believe we are in big trouble, and we need to focus on potential solutions – fast.
Optimism.
But I am an optimist, right? At the very center of your being, you have to be a pretty optimistic guy, if you are going to set down the path of constructing a project that (originally) no one believed in. If it is not a pointless quest like the search for a unicorn or Atlantis, but is an actual engineering effort; then you had better be pretty damn optimistic. I am genetically linked to Meriwether Lewis and to Daniel Boone; so that vision of ‘what’s possible’ is hard-coded into my DNA. And so I take my driving question of “what if?” and I turn it into “what if – it works?!?” This is what drives me. This is what allows me to take the risks I do, because I look at what happens if we fail, and I look at what happens if we succeed, and I know that I have to do everything in my power, risk whatever I have to risk, because the future is bright if we succeed, and dark if we fail.
Success.
What if we succeed? We can bring limitless, clean, renewable, inexpensive power to the planet… with that single gift, we can unlock 4,000,000,000 from the tyranny of darkness. We can hear the symphony of a new ‘Beethoven’ that is locked away from us, because the woman, who could compose it, isn’t connected to the grid. We can explore the mysteries of the cosmos, because the genius that could unlock it, is sitting, somewhere in the world, dying in a hospital. He is dying, because of a simple accident; he fell, and got a compound fracture. He will die, because the treatment was not up to the ‘western standard of living’. He will die, because he didn’t have electricity for an x-ray machine. And we will miss the luxury of his genius. And we will suffer for it – far worse than his single broken bone.
What if we can build this Elevator to Space? What if we succeed? I believe it is nothing short of Prometheus, bringing fire to the people. We will bring light, and advanced education, and communications, and advanced medicine. We will have more symphonies and genius, if we can connect the power grid to the brainpower of the men and women huddled around campfires, in the dark.
You think that is a little ‘woowoo’ for your tastes? A little ‘out-there’ for your sensibilities? Maybe you think I just crossed over the edge into ‘la-la-land’…
Or, just maybe, you have done your homework, and you have done your own analysis and research, and you’ve looked up my resources and credentials. And you realize that, just maybe, I might be right. Then what? What will you do, if I am?
What if it works? We could go to the Moon, Mars and anywhere else in the solar system we wanted to go. We could colonize, explore, and commercialize. We could take some of our eggs out of the basket. We could protect and keep the nest – that is our home – safe. We could know ‘what’s out there’, first had, because we lived, worked and played ‘out there’.
Wikified Approach.
So what does a wikified approach mean? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. But I know that to solve the 100,000 as yet unknown problems required to build our Elevator, it is going to take a lot more brain cells than I have. It’s going to take more cash then I have in my checkbook (especially these days!). And it is going to take a global effort to solve a global crisis of energy and ecology.
To that end, we are enlisting help. It won’t be easy, and it may not even be possible, but the risk of failure far exceeds what I am comfortable with. And if you plan to have kids that grow up in this world – or on another one – then I ask for your support. I ask that you get involved. If you don’t know how, ask; and we can figure it out together. We need every possible skill – social, political, media, legal, insurance, international relations, financiers, accountants, operational managers, sales people. (Sometimes it feels like we need sales people more than we need air…) We need scientists, and schoolteachers, and researcher in every possible field. We need coders and artists and musicians and engineers. We need environmental activist and geeks to sit down, together, and help us make and enact a plan. We need volunteers, coordinating the other volunteers.
Invitation.
We need people that can live the company/team motto:
“Change the world, every day, or go home…”
We have a plan, and like the early days of NASA, we have a timely, specific, and relevant mission: to build an Elevator to Space. And whether we succeed or fail in that, we will avert or forestall a coming environmental and energy-starved crisis.
Consider this your ‘stone-soup, open-source’, Elevator to Space invitation.
We could use a hand.
Take Care,
Mjl
Michael J. Laine
President,
LiftPort Group