From the March 2011 issue of “Odyssey, the Newsletter of the British Interplanetary Society:”
AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE BIS
TO THE MEMBERSHIP
You will have read in the March 2011 edition of Spaceflight that
the Society has reached a turning point in its history. The
direction we take at this crossroads will decide the Society’s
future, or perhaps more aptly whether the Society has a future
at all. One direction leads to the continuation of the BIS as a
guiding force in the world of astronautics; the other leads to the
winding-up of the BIS, or at best to a scaled down and much
less influential version of the Society to which you belong.
Which direction we take very much now depends on you. It is
no longer enough just to be a member of the British
Interplanetary Society. What we need now is your active
participation and support. Without this the Society will close
within 12 months.
The BIS was there *before* the dawn of the Space Age,and presented the first technical feasible – if moderately insane – design for a manned moon rocket. It looks like the decline in interest in the future of mankind has begun to take its toll across the pond.
6 Responses to “The end of the British Interplanetary Society?”
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The main reason for the decline in space is that there is nothing exciting happening up there at the moment. No return mission to the Moon, no mission to Mars, no major discoveries, no loss of life.
Going into space and exploring it is an exciting possibility but until we can get things under control here on Earth and are able to live together on this small, insignificant world, mankind will have no future in space.
When we get a handle on our wordly affairs the future in space will be bright, otherwise it will be an abyssmal failure.
That old chestnut? Look, humans are never going to live peacefully together. And that’s for the best. The sooner we get *off* this world, and start quarrelling amongst ourselves out among the stars, the better off we’ll be. And the better off *life* in general will be, because we’ll take cats and dogs and bunnies and cows and pine trees and snail darters and Norwegian rats and bumblebees and kelp and daisies and mosquitoes and dorphins and whares with us when we go. We don’t go… they all stay here and go extinct, and all eventually go nextinct without leaving heirs. Life on Earht will shrivel up and die, and it will all have been in vain. Unless we conquer the goddamned stars.
British Interplanetary Society *1933 – 2011† ?
yes it can happen!
because over last 78 years BIS study EVREY aspect of spaceflight
1939 THE FIRST feasibility study for a Manned Lunar Landing !
1949 feasibility study for Shuttle, space station, lunar lander and Lunar Base
1960 proposed a British Manned Lunar landing with Blue Streak Hardware
1978 THE FIRST feasibility study for a Interstellar probe Daedalus
2006 feasibility study for manned Mars Base Boreas
also they made groundbreaking propoosals
like Nuclear rocketengine, Terraforming
in other words they run out of study option…
Admin, you’re right about humans will never stop fighting among each other and live peacefully together, but can we at least agree on getting Obama and Company out of office in the Election of 2012?
He wants to tap the petroleum reserve because of what’s happening in the Middle East. And I wouldn’t be surprised of they use this Japan Tsunami thing to try to further their agenda.
I have a suggestion for the president: How about if we once again become an oil-producing and exporting country? Just let enough of our oil out on the world market to cause waves in the Middle East and OPEC? How about actually winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of just keeping our troops there? Under Bush, we did win in Afghanistan and was poised to win in Iraq, what happened?
If they had put all their article archives up on the web, rather than demanding that if you want one you should contact them and they will photocopy it and send it to you via the postal service (in Britain itself of course) for a fee, they might not look like the the technical equivalent of a coelacanth – really impressive in its time, but its time is long gone.
Socialists…