http://brc-aviation.tribe.net/thread/f7cd4a5e-41c8-43fe-b961-7631021dae1e?format=rss Tribe.net. Local Connections http://BRC-Aviation.tribe.net/thread/f7cd4a5e-41c8-43fe-b961-7631021dae1e#a8d387bc-b2c9-459e-84f9-82296828d3d6 Greetings, I have submitted a proposal to the BRC for consideration. Take a look and tell me what you think. http://home.mountaincable.net/~mtn1248434/ I know it's not even a 'real' website yet. The whole thing is still in the development stage. What this project is: A full scale model of the solar system based on the 1,000 yard model. In this scale model, the Sun is a basketall, and the Earth is a peppercorn. Everyday ordinary objects are used instead of colored balls of the same size so that people have a more accurate basis of comparison. The impressive thing about this project is not the installations themselves, so much as the empty space that exists between the installations. For example, the planet Pluto is the size of a pin but it is almost half a mile away from the Sun! What I am looking for are: Twenty teams of people to help with this project. Each team chooses or gets assigned a 'station' to work on such as Jupiter, the Kuiper belt, the heliopause region and so forth. The project is extremely ambitious in it's aims and scope, but if I can get twenty teams of five to work on each station and transport it the whole thing becomes achievable. My intentions with this project are to entertain people and educate them at the same time. One of my objectives is to alert people to both the dangers AND the promise presented by near Earth asteroids. Another is to stimulate the stagnant economy again and create purposeful employment in high tech fields such as the Aerospace industry. This is a map of Near Earth Asteroids. The ones in red have the potential for hitting our planet. http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/ THREAT: As they are now, these Asteroids are like the sword of Damocles waiting to descend from the skies and wipe out a city, or possibly the whole human race. The potential of a terrorist organization redirecting the trajectory of an asteroid into a target of their choosing is even greater. After all, the technology to leave the planet is over fifty years old now. Any intercontinental missile is also capable of being fired into space. When the Soviet Union went bankrupt, it sold off this technology to the highest bidder. PROMISE: In order to stop an asteroid you have to intercept it. Hitting it with a missile doesn't work, since it just breaks one big problem into lots of smaller problems. Once you intercept it, you can change it's trajectory. You also have the opportunity to transform it into a colony, or mine it for metals. Presently, the United States has a deficit of about a Trillion dollars. The good news is that even one of the smaller asteroids (3554 Amun) has a mineral value confirmed to be worth =Ten Trillion dollars=. So, invest a trillion in space exploration, asteroid colonization and mining, and make yourself an 8 Trillion dollar surplus (or profit) with a space colony (or space ship) to boot. As the entire planet now enters into a Global depression, world governments are scrambling to start up 'make work' projects to keep people pacified. Why send people to paint a wall ten times a day when you could create genuine employment fulfilling mankind's greatest ambition, the colonization of space? Right now as it is, the human race has all it's eggs in one basket. If something should happen on the to affect life on the planet Earth (Nuclear war, Bio-Terrorism, Asteroids, you name it), unless we have a 'back-up' then we are all doomed. If you capture, mine, and colonize the Near Earth Asteroids you solve several problems at once. Not only have you now saved half a million years of human civilization, you have also alleviated the enviromental stress we are placing on the planet by putting the heavily polluting industries in orbit around the planet. http://lifeboat.com/ex/asteroid.shield This is a page taken from the Lifeboat foundation, a 'think tank' organization devoted to solving the exponentially increasing threats facing human civilization. 'Asteroid shield' is one of these programs. There are dozens of others. The Lifeboat foundation has a half a million dollars to invest in projects designed to save the whole human race. I think that this art project would qualify for some of that funding. Of course, the project has to go somewhere. The overall scope of the project is ambitious, but if it is broken down over twenty teams it becomes something which is achievable. Each station is no larger than a bus shelter. The most expensive part of the project are the blinky lights and the El-wire. If viewed from a plane, this project would make a spectacular scale model of our ENTIRE solar system including Sedna, Eris, The Oort cloud and so on. Arguably, each station is small enough to be easily managed, constructed and deconstructed quickly. Also even without funding, each station is well within the means of affordability. It's not what EXISTS in this piece, but all the space between the things that exist which make people think about it. Thanks for looking, James Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:26:48 GMT http://BRC-Aviation.tribe.net/thread/f7cd4a5e-41c8-43fe-b961-7631021dae1e#a8d387bc-b2c9-459e-84f9-82296828d3d6 James 2009-02-04T00:26:48Z