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| Mission |
To advance time in space,
without danger to our future. |
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| Reward |
Twenty-five million to the first
twenty-one passenger-craft space-line, fully pollution free in the air
and on land, before 2021. |
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| Judges |
The LegalLock community, those
on the ground funding the prize, will also act as judges. |
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| Realities | |
The Fire-And-Ice Prize is our
first competition. This is our second. In essence, it's for a space
craft that doesn't exhale, and that carries its own weight in
passengers daily. In theory, many possibilities already exist to
accomplish this. Practical engineering solutions are still needed. A
single virtuoso performance in a laboratory climate isn't enough. Space
travel, for the general population, and safe for Earth, is what
LegalLock wants to reward. There will be only one winner. the real promise — In time, adventuring in space will be available to many. We're at the beginning, wanting the right way, uncertain of the consequences. Present entrepreneurial plans optimistically reflect a rush of apparently easy options. However, on examination, they seem dark mirrors of deceit, dangerous to Earth in their excess. We need the new, the clear light of the new. Yet it's likely that the exploration of unseen forces will lead us to the exotic discoveries and technology we must possess for mass transit in space. Then again, zero point energy, photon propulsion, negative mass, and quantum vacuums have trouble proving their existence, let alone their usefulness. Still, bias drives, that would alter the properties of space itself, are far advanced, in theory. the false promise — Critics need to come forward, to separate the specious from the special. In the p.r. world, pigs will fly, but they still foul the air. Yes, there is the public relations race and a real space race...Then again, high science has its own awesome games to play with us. Making light flow backward, bringing it to a standstill, and molecular tele-portation are truly impressive lab tricks, but not meaningful, yet. the defeatist option — Not to try, to leave Earth, to fly freely in space. We will suffer the consequences of even the best intentions and planning, but that must not stop us. It should make us more thoughtful though. finding the right focus — Once the public imagination wraps itself around a name, it clings to it, but C02 is not the most harmful pollutant, and corn produces less ethanol than saw grass. In any case, ethanol is not a cure-all; nor is C02 harvesting a realistic possibility any time soon. Similarly, joy rides to space hotels are not in our near future, but the press, by repetitive buzz-word blessing, creates a free-standing ladder of belief, that will fall in due course. In fact, we need to leap far ahead, as well as halt unnecessary activity. We need to cut back on airlines, not increase their number and reach. We need to encourage the government to team and fund the best available scientists to the project, that best embraces our goals. an overlooked option — There are none, that we are aware of. Of course, we don't know what we don't know. Accordingly, it should be remembered that the U.S. gave up on the Hall ion thruster as impossible, and the Russians went on to perfect and use it; we now use it too. We need to continue funding any and every experiment through to its conclusion. |
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| Future
Negatives |
We're already living on a
leveraged planet, borrowing against the future. Those wanting us to to
buy into their indulgent life style are wont to put this planet deeper
in debt. Celebrity charity doesn't erase the wrong done, and low
concept solutions, fueled by fire and still more p.r., don't work. It's
common
knowledge: every medicine has side effects, every cure conditions of
risk; and, every rocket drives its exhaust at earth. No amount of
back-sweeping will solve our problems, and tampering with nature and
natural processes usually compounds the problem. The Earth will take
care of itself, if we let it. If so many of us are making it sick, we
must stop, simple as that. |
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| Future Positives | But we don't have to give up the
dream of our species, of escaping Earth to achieve immortality. It's
just better to do things right in the first place, and encourage others
in a like manner. Science fiction writers as well as government-funded
scientists have explored and achieved much in a fictional, limited or
research context. The reality is that we made the first atomic bomb in
just a few years. We can do more now, to positive effect. Simply, we
need a new winner, who hasn't yet appeared. With the support of this
prize, we hope one will. |
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Contact: |
prize@att.net mp3 of prize
announcement:
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