Musing about what went wrong

Imagine a Ford salesman showing up at a General Motors car show and trying to tell about the Ford way.

The result is pretty much about the way I was treated at the space conferences at which I presented papers on my space transportation concepts, where I went naively thinking they were people with the same goal as mine, that of finding transportation means for large scale very economical transportation into Earth orbit, to quickly enable the large-scale expansion of civilization into orbital space so as to provide clean energy etc. for civilization's needs. I sought their help, and what I got was reaction as if I were a rival in their midst, trying to crash their party and make them look bad.

Nursing my wounds from such encounters over the past decade - two papers at SSI at Princeton, three at ASCE in Albuquerque and Houston, and one at Space Exploration 2005 in Albuquerque - attempting to learn from my mistakes, that kind of thing is what seems most likely what happened. I had a great gift for them, and went seeking their help in making it happen for the benefit of all of us, expecting grateful welcome. Instead, I got tossed out like someone from another fraternity trying to crash their frat party. It was egos and business games happening there, technology merely the facade. They made no attempt to rationally discuss with me what I had proposed that were potential ways to greatly facilitate the expansion into space in the near future. Sure, I clearly was not of their rank and class; my concepts were what I brought to the table, not my attire. But it was me that they sized up, not my proposals; dispose of me and my proposals would be abandoned property for their sport next go around.

I could not imagine such unethical behavior. Such mentality has since then also put us as a nation into bankruptcy through wasteful warring, instead of compassionate understanding of the aggression hurting us a bit, giving excuse for our violence far beyond the measure of our mysterious wounds that supposedly excused it. Now I understand. All is not what it seems. Monkeywrench in the brains has us skittering out of control.

We, mankind, could have created by just one next development step from existing corporate technologies, to create each of the concepts that I proposed, making them reality for use by civilization to reach out in a huge expansion of civilization. But my conceptual designs were "NIH" (Not Invented Here) to each of the corporations that could have built them, and the academics similarly as were the space enthusiast group leadership -- amazing. I believed surely intelligent people could have gotten past their egos enough to "go for the gold" together, but I was wrong about that. Perhaps they will suddenly do that when I am out of the picture; apparently I am unacceptable by them as a partner of any function.

Or maybe it is the same click that happens among the proverbial lemmings, and so they then head for the deadly ocean cliffs. No longer able to rationally process, just being absorbed in the excitement of the group run, following the dazzling leaders as always. How powerful, what fun!