The why affects the what and how and who of it all

Just mildly pondering the thought that the “why” people do a something, affects how they do it and also the kind of results obtained, especially the lateral effects of what was done.
And also figuring out the “why” someone does something, is a bit of guessing game. It all gets quite into the “people stuff is complicated” zone. Yet it all may not be useless to contemplate all the time.

This trend of thought seems to have been triggered by the news articles about the expected launch of a lunar rover by the Chinese. Connecting human civilization with lunar resources has long been more than a casual interest in me, and I have written a lot about it during the past forty years or so. However, the responses I have gotten range from apathy to “we don’t know you” to outright hostility and undercutting. So the thought now is that it is the “why” of doing something that makes the difference.

And the “why” can be quite complex, including being variable with the situation and even self-contradictory at times.

The current articles on the Chinese launch to the Moon, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25178299 , point out that the Moon is a potential source for elements needed by industry and in short supply here on Earth, and the lunar environment be a site for man’s works including gathering solar energy to help supply civilization’s enormous need for energy.

Now, these things have been known for at least the forty years I have been making suggestions as to how to efficiently access and utilize lunar resources. Yet we here in the US, whom I have addressed over these decades, have ignored my efforts, or worse. Now the article says the Chinese are going after lunar resources, with their fledgling industrial skills. Yet America still is doing the ignoring thing re lunar resources, despite our early efforts half a century ago. It is the “why” of it that is perhaps the difference.

This blog post could get to be really long and maybe even lose the original path by doing so. I will just point to a couple of my online-avaiable writings:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/32802637/1972MooncableDocumentRev2C.pdf and in a different mode
http://www.amazon.com/Torus-City-Shields-Returning-Home/dp/144212489X/ and the
http://www.facebook.com/groups/185118771625919/ “Moon Space Escalator” group. All of these writings describe not only why the need but also offer efficient new ways to achieve them. Results: the big silent treatment. Consistently. I point out my efforts as an example of the “why” of doing something, strongly can affect the “what” that is done, which can even include giving the “big silent treatment” as what is done.

There is no change: the Moon is still there not that far away, the resources are known to be there, the resource needs of civilization’s thriving, continue as before. Yet the Chinese head for the Moon while America … does not head for the Moon.

So I now suggest that exploring the differences will provide a lot of answers to the differences in the “why” of doing it. I could get long is my conjectures about it right now, but there is only so much effort needed just to maybe get a little info into a responsible brain out there, somehow surviving amongst the suffocating “big silent treatment” blanket here in America.

Repeating, this is to urge exploration of the thought that the “why” of doing something can have major effects on the “how ” and “what” of doing it – and maybe there is a lot of the “who’ involved, too.

Jim Cline