To correctly solve a problem

Here it is a mere five days until July 20 Space Day 2012, and I have not made a blog post here in a long time.

Sure, I feel it is like what if the makers of buggy whips and conestoga wagons had teamed up to protect their immediate business territories by blocking the creation of the railroad system that opened up the interior of America to expansion from the east and then the west coast. Who knows, maybe Mexico and Canada would now own the middle part of what is now America, if we had been unable to access and protect its resources; we might have lost the WWII fracas and be experiencing that kind of world. So now humanity's access to nearby space is in much the same situation, stuck in the extremely limiting reaction engined access constraint, and thus constraints as to what can be economically built and maintained in space. And, does it really matter in the longer history of life?

So what, if we could be already utilizing significant quantities of solar power satellite solar energy from GEO orbiting facilities, built economically by KESTS to GEO? Sometimes the greedy and power-addicted folks muddle up the situation big-time like they did re that; but, at least so far, life goes on amidst unnecessary human turmoil and suffering, but it still goes on. And, we humans are apparently addicted to drama of the inter-human conflict type, and this is a way to maximize that drama.

But, maybe I will remove that grump from the above. For now I will leave it there, as I helplessly "rail" impotently against what seems to be a monster industry that ought to have been very much my friend and helper in mutual successes. Is this fine drama or what? More like yuk.

Anyway, I had some moments of insight this morning while doing my Morning Pages, and want to record it here. Not really new at all; just a welcome and hopefully useful restatement of an old principle:

To correctly solve a problem, the problem must first be correctly be observed and characterized, then potential solutions need to be designed; then utilizing those solutions to solve the problem or if they don't fully work, use their results to better define the problem and from that redefinition of the problem, design new potential solutions to the problem, and explore them.