The Millennial Project

June 12, 2009 2:17 PM

The Millennial Project is a comprehensive plan for space development, beginning with the terrestrial cultivation of an environmentally sustainable civilization and Post-Industrial culture and culminating, far in the future, in the colonization of our immediate stellar neighborhood. The TMP2 project is specifically a project of the Living Universe Foundation community to continually update and revise the content of the original plan as described by Marshal T. Savage in his book The Millennial Project.

Marshall Savage has been called "a worthy candidate for a modern Hari Seldon".

posted by Joe Beese (8 comments total)

Why are all the cool people named Savage? No wonder Michael Weiner changed his name. (Didn't help, though)
posted by wendell at 2:24 PM on June 12

Proposition 1: colonization of another planet will require amounts of energy that are many orders of magnitude beyond anything we've ever done in the history of the world.

Proposition 2: the technologies at the disposal of a civilization that has access to such vast amounts of energy are indistinguishable, to people of our current era, from magic.

Conclusion: I might as well start planning the various tiers of my mage's tower and undead army for New Mars, as start planning how to grow crops without much water.
posted by gurple at 2:46 PM on June 12 [2 favorites has favorites]

Unreadable.
posted by humannaire at 2:49 PM on June 12

Hari?
posted by Mblue at 3:05 PM on June 12

I might as well start planning the various tiers of my mage's tower and undead army for New Mars, as start planning how to grow crops without much water.

Dude, you haven't started yet? The deadline is in three days! I'm going with the "Metaphorical Concentric Rings encircling a huge tower of black glass" motif myself.
posted by The Whelk at 5:05 PM on June 12

I remember this book. It's a high-school or college debater's wet dream.
posted by brain_drain at 9:15 PM on June 12

I remember shelving this book at my after-school job at the public library. He proposes putting an electromagnetic tunnel inside Mt. Kilimanjaro with the launch end at the top then, to reach escape velocity, shooting multicolored lasers at a block of ice that's attached to the rear of the payload. A modern day Bifrost bridge, he calls it.

So yeah, this goes on the 'flying cars' shelf.
posted by Tacodog at 10:49 PM on June 12

A modern day Bifrost bridge, he calls it.

You've got to admit though, that's a nice image and name.
I WANT TO BELIEVE
posted by freebird at 11:11 PM on June 12