Space Renaissance Initiative - Press Conference 2009 March 31st - 16.00

The proposal is a simple priority-driven agenda: to develop low-cost civilian space transportation, orbital and sub-orbital space tourism, lunar industrialization, spacebased solar power, and the use of near-Earth asteroids to build space infrastructures. These include research and industrial settlements on the Moon; orbital stations, resources utilization, space hotels, service facilities and space debris collection.

This is not speculation. All of these goals can be achieved within the first half of this century. By the second half of this century, based on the experience gained in near- Earth space, Mars and the Martian moons will be settled with the long-term goal of terraforming the red planet.

In order to help the development of the civilian space industry, we recommend governments should provide incentives in the form of tax abatements and financial help for companies working in the space industry; new investment funds for space tourism and the space industry; and special programs geared towards universities and other educational systems. These policies also extend to private organizations, individuals, space agencies, and financial institutions.

Governments can invest public money toward the new space economy through space agencies (primarily devoted to science and exploration), more commercially oriented agencies (to be chartered), and private enterprise, for the industrialization of the Moon- Earth region.

With a current population of almost seven billion people, human growth on planet Earth is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Problems stem from a shortage of raw materials and lack of inexpensive and accessible energy. This dearth of resources, which results in continuous global economic recessions, could cause our civilization to implode to one billion within the end of this century, with increasing risk of humanity falling back to pre-technological ages.

The only fundamental solution to assure continued growth of civilization is to open the high frontier and start surveying the resources of the solar system. Space contains unimaginable amounts of unexploited resources on the Moon, asteroids and other planets. Establishing a foothold off-Earth would also protect humanity from planetwide catastrophes.

This new space-faring civilization would experience a true Space Renaissance and catapult the human race toward boundless economic and cultural growth. According to Dr. Feng Hsu (NASA expert on Integrated Risk Assessment & Management at Goddard Space Flight Center), “Human expansion into space brings about a new paradigm of a global view of humanity and could alter the confrontational geopolitical realities existed throughout human history, helping to foster world peace and elevating our earth-bound global economy into a whole new space-fairing economy. Human expansion into space is also the stepping-stone to find solutions to our energy and climate risk issues. It strengthens global collaboration and increases our likelihood to work with collective human intelligence and resources.” Our proposal includes a world-wide plan to encourage a broad collaboration on space projects among different countries, to build Space Renaissance schools and academia, in cooperation with the educational institutions, and to increasingly involve the younger generations in the greatest endeavour humanity has ever faced: the development of a new, post-Copernican, open-world philosophy.

The SRI is a collection of individuals and associate organizations determined to increase human expansion into space. We are backed by 26 organizations so far, including: Moon Society (US), Technologies of the Frontier (Italy), SpaceFuture (UK, JP), InterPlanetary Ventures Corporation (USA), MarsDrive (US), Polish Astronautical Society (PL), Sri Lanka Astronomical Association (Sri Lanka), CIRA (Italy), Coelum Astronomia (Italy).

The SRI is founded on a philosophy of deep humanist principles and has no national interests nor ties to national space agencies, institutions, corporations, although we would encourage them to recognize and act on our recommendations. According to Adriano Autino (SRI President): “So far, the crisis only burned bits in bank accounts. Real wealth is not money, but technologies and the potential for work: with 7 billion intelligences, Humanity has never been so rich.”

For more information, please contact:
- Adriano Autino – adriano.autino@tdf.it +39 335 8244435
- Charles Radley – charles@stratowave.com +1 503 579 4686
- Annie Bynum – smaojb

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