Moonshot Mindset
The Moonshot Mindset
Contents
The Moonshot Mindset
Doing It
Moving the Needle
Responsibility
Good Control
The Importance of Asking Questions
Ethics
Greatest Good
Trade-Offs > Failure
The Turning Point
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We used to live in caves and fear tigers in the bushes.
We no longer live in caves and no longer fear tigers in the bushes.
Today we live in cities and fear other things.
One day we’ll live on entire other worlds and have all-new new fears, but the fact is we’ll be living on other worlds and all our troubles of the present will, in the same way, seem quaint.
Progress is part of our existence.
The Moonshot Mindset
So what are we dealing in?
Growth. Big Think. Gains. Pushing the technology envelope. Creating bold futures on all fronts.
In short, the “Moonshot Mindset”.
You’ve probably heard the term before, coined during the Space Race of the 60s, where it epitomized the thinking behind the literal slew of incredible, impossible, can’t-be-done items on the checklist to get a man on the moon.
No way was it doable.
But we did it.
It’s that sort of collective will that makes things happen.
The Moonshot Mindset very much encapsulates the purpose of Forty Suns, in that we mean to get the world thinking of things not only as possible, but as welcome challenges.
Doing It
A large group of people did it once, it can certainly be done again. The result was the introduction of a seemingly impossible thing into our everyday lives.
The more a thing is done, the less it costs, the fewer the surprises. Travel by jetliner is a perfect, and often-used, example of the progression of a moonshot mindset to an everyday thing. The idea of that was, at one time, equally out-there.
Now it’s quite routine.
Even if we ourselves hardly, if ever, take a plane, that doesn’t mean planes aren’t needed in abundance. Our future demands routine spaceflight in the same way our current civilization demands planes.
Whether we ourselves ever go to space or not.
In that sense Forty Suns is more a rallying point than anything else. A place for us to come together over a common objective:
Space.
Moving the Needle
If someone is talking Forty Suns they’re talking progress. They’re imagining a future they deem possible, and they’re out to support those who will invent and create the means to achieve it.
If they’re talking Forty Suns, they share this conviction:
“Space is the answer.”
If you’re here, we assume you believe that too.
We assume you share the Moonshot Mindset.
Responsibility
Anyone as old as us, your authors, can likely recall those Chief Seattle campaigns back in the 70s.
For a time they were pretty much everywhere.
Bumper stickers, billboards, TV commercials. The wizened Native American chief, shedding a silent tear, with the caption that the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth.
It would seem, however, the opposite is true.
The Earth is our responsibility.
Circling back to the potentially volatile nature of the world and our own fragility, let’s point out that we have a huge responsibility to ourselves and to our future selves to take charge of this planet and manage it responsibly.
The Earth does belong to us, and as soon as we forget that, as soon as we get careless with that possession, like anything …
Stuff breaks.
Good Control
When it comes to us humans, when you bring us into contact with a new thing an expected progression of mastery can be observed.
First we adapt, then, inevitably, we control.
In 1854, when that Chief Seattle quote was first made, man’s mastery of his environment was crude and generally very localized. We’re now much further along, and though the world is far from being within our full control, each year, each decade, each century we gain more understanding, developing more ways to mold our environment—even as we safeguard and improve conditions.
It’s true we’ve been mis-controlled so often at so many points in history by so many bad actors that “control” is often seen as a bad thing.
It isn’t.
Good control is how we manage our environment, which in turn is how we advance our living standards and way of life.
Good control is not destructive. With good control all factors advance.
Responsibility at each step is key.
The Importance of Asking Questions
Another responsibility we share as imaginers of the future is the responsibility to ask questions. Constant, inquisitive seeking of answers. Think of the most basic question:
Why?
Where might asking Why? lead? “Why” is a great question for just about anything. Think of any reality and ask, Why? “Why did humans choose to invent pants?” When you have that answer, ask again Why? to the answer.
Keep asking Why?
Might you reach an end to that road? Might you run out of Whys? What is the final answer?
Fascinating to think of that eventual, perhaps ultimate, truth.
The average kid asks 300 questions a day (that’s a scientific guesstimate). If we, as adults, did that it would get annoying fast, but you get the idea. Curiosity has gotten us killed (along with many cats, presumably), but it has also gotten us where we are today.
Without curiosity, yes, many of us would’ve lived longer than we did, but those of us around today would still be eating berries from trees and fearing those tigers in the bushes.
All hail the curious. The bold and the intrepid. The risk takers. We owe them.
So be responsible, and be curious.
Let’s put that in a short list:
Take responsibility for your immediate environment, your world, your future.
Ask questions (and get answers).
Ethics
We’ve mentioned taking responsibility, we’ve told you to live and have fun, even while reminding you your existence is fragile …
Okay if we give you one more piece of the framework?
Forty Suns supports ethics in the application of science and technology. Ethics apply to each of us. Proper ethics are seen to by each individual, always with consideration toward benefiting the greater good.
Any Bond villains out there listening?
This game, Space Age 2.0, is about making things better for all of us.
War, exclusivity, other applications of technology, as noted, are typically the drivers of innovation, and yet they don’t have to be.
Rockets were missiles first, planes got used for war before we started flying them to grandma’s for Christmas, sure—a lot of our best technologies have evolved that way.
But we can find other ways to motivate ourselves toward advancement. Other ways to compete at a high level without having to destroy.
War and conquest will always be part of human expansion. Profit in particular, the quest of, generates loads of positive advantages. All we’re saying is that at Forty Suns we’re out to embrace a bigger game, with a much bigger purpose.
Ethics being its foundation.
We might say there are two related, yet distinct, thrusts for the development of space. Overlaps exist, as always, but the two main drivers of our gains are:
Profit motivated action (vital for growth)
Future motivated action (altruistic)
As such, where either is concerned, Forty Suns is out to support and encourage the ethical development of technologies and science that push us toward our collective space future.
Greatest Good
When it comes to ethics we’ve heard it said there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
That’s certainly one way to look at it.
It’s true there are no solutions where absolutely everyone and everything wins. Does that mean there is no universal solution? Only a trade-off?
Perhaps.
Thanksgiving dinner isn’t great for the turkey. A summer stroll in the grass is bound to kill a few bugs. This is life. “Greatest Good” is the way we all win, sure, though sometimes that means a few of us lose.
In The Wrath of Khan (best Star Trek movie, not up for debate), Spock gave us his version of an old truism, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Another you’ve probably heard, less poetic but just as true: You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
Pick your saying. There are many.
In each case it’s up to us to decide what’s most important, then do that thing.
Not everything, or everyone, can win.
Trade-Offs > Failure
But that’s okay. Trade-offs may be a part of life, they don’t have to bring us down. The best solutions are when we, as a group, trade up to a brighter future.
An ultra-brief encapsulation of “Why space?” might be:
Resources
Habitat
Security
We’re nearing limits on each of those. Which means Earth, as a Final Solution, is just about used up.
These are the reasons why.
Earth will forever be our amazing, incredible home; beautiful, comforting, inspiring; but we’ve finally reached a point—not a moment too soon—where we have the capability to actually expand our horizons beyond this one world.
Now is the time to push these new capabilities to their limits.
Now is not the time to throttle back.
Technically we’ve always needed options to being stuck on one planet, we’ve just never had any until now.
Now we do, and we can’t let them slip.
Plus, to be a little more direct about it—to add a final “why” to the short list—wouldn’t it be a waste to come this far, to advance and evolve to the extreme that we have, only to call this the end? Just stop here? One planet, go no further, game over?
Are we truly done?
Seems silly, actually, when put that way.
Let’s not let this be the end.
The Turning Point
We’re at an amazing turning point in history.
Out of all the incredible turning points, going back into the mists of time, this one before us now, this fulcrum at which we sit, may be the hugest.
We’re destined for the history books. Future generations will either write of us as the most epic villains of all time, or, perhaps worse, the most epic failures, do-nothings and masters of missed opportunities, or we’ll be known as the most epic heroes in the history of man.
Let’s be that last one.
Let’s be the builders of the things that then build the catapults that send those future generations to the stars.
Let’s make our future now.
Space is the answer.
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