Welcome to the new Space Option website
As you will discover in the information that is being posted here, it is our belief that the Space Option offers humanity its most optimistic path for its future sustainability and well-being.
In this context the word “option” implies that there is a choice available to humanity that may have much relevance to its future. Information about such an important opportunity and the resulting decision about how this opportunity is understood and appreciated should be made available, discussed in detail and compared with other competing “options” that may or may not be available. That is the purpose of this website.
We are the only species on the planet that has developed a technological capability and how we master that capability will surely determine our future success and our eventual fate. In the vast universe one can imagine that other technological civilizations have appeared and ultimately faced a similar situation. Were they wise enough to use their technological capability to insure their future or did they misunderstand its significance and let it be misused in a way that led to their demise? The answer to this question can be called the “Cosmic Choice” which conceivably is a choice that all potential spacefaring civilizations throughout the universe must confront at the appropriate moment in their particular history or, as in the words of Arthur C. Clarke:
“The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one;
but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close.”
My name is Arthur Woods and I have been involved in space activities for most of my life. In 1959 my father, sensing opportunity, moved our family to be close to Cape Canaveral, Florida where America’s space program was beginning to unfold. While growing up there, I had the fortunate experience to witness the initial stages of America’s space program from my front yard from our house on Merritt Island, Florida (1959 -1970) and to personally be involved during the Apollo program where I held summer jobs in 1967 & 1968 at the Kennedy Space Center.
During these formative years, early on I became aware of the “choice” for humanity that was inherent to the development of space technologies. In the image above, the left photo is of the Redstone mobile guided ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead and in the right photo we see the lift-off of the Mercury-Redstone carrying the Alan Shepard, the first American, to the edge of space. These two images are very personal to me because my father worked with the Redstone as part of the mobile liquid oxygen team and later, at Cape Canaveral, he worked for Air Products, Inc. which supplied the liquid propellants for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo rockets.
After completing university in 1970 and serving my military obligations in 1972, I embarked on a career as an artist in California and then moved to Switzerland in 1974 to be with my future wife. My early experience with space had an impact on my art and in the mid-1980’s I introduced a number of art-in-space projects beginning with the O.U.R.S. – Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite project.
The primary goal of the O.U.R.S. project was to place a large sculpture in orbit by the year 2000 which would be visible to the entire world as “a circle in the sky” as a way to celebrate our passage into the new millennium with a symbol of global unity, hope and peace. To be visible to anyone on Earth the O.U.R.S. sculpture would have to be approximately 1 kilometer in diameter. It was based on an inflatable technology for large space structures that was under development by the European Space Agency (ESA) with the main contractor Contraves AG, located in Zurich, Switzerland.
Having established contact with Contraves in 1986, I had the fortunate experience to develop a relationship with Dr. Marco C. Bernasconi who was in the head researcher in this technology development at Contraves. We began a close collaboration and in 1990 set up the OURS Foundation as vehicle for the development of this and other art-in-space projects as well other broader cultural activities related to space development which we referred to as the “Cultural Dimension” of space.
From the OURS Foundation charter:
STATEMENT
The exploration and development of outer space are contributing to a new awareness of humanity’s place and purpose in the cosmos as well as creating new opportunities for its advancement and enrichment, both on and beyond its home planet Earth. It is considered essential that a cultural aspect becomes integrated into these astronautical endeavors in order to insure their success and benefit to all present and future generations.
PURPOSE
The primary purpose of the OURS Foundation is to introduce, nurture and expand a cultural dimension to humanity’s astronautical endeavors. This task will be manifested through the identification, investigation, support and realization of related cultural, astronautical, humanitarian, environmental and educational activities which may take place both on and off planet Earth, and which are deemed as beneficial to the development and advancement of human civilization in this new environment.
In the course of developing the O.U.R.S. projects – which included two successful art missions to the Russian Mir space station – the Cosmic Dancer in 1993 and Ars Ad Astra in 1995 – we often ran into critics who questioned the relevance and importance of making art for space and even space development itself. Even though the message of O.U.R.S. projects was about “peace and hope” and adding a cultural dimension to human space activities, for most people, space exploration and development was considered too expensive and, likewise, any “art-in-space” adventure would be a waste of money that would be better spent on “down to Earth” humanitarian or environmental projects if we were serious about our idealistic intentions.
30 or 40 years after Apollo the dream of personal space exploration had faded into the reality that the space experience was reserved for a very few highly trained and specially selected elite individuals, most of whom had gotten their training in a military program. Many people felt that space technology was mostly the domain of the military and of the science community in addition to the few commercial companies that were providing communication and weather satellites.
In order to find the required technical and financial support for the further development of our projects, it therefore became necessary for us to come up with some reasonable and viable arguments justifying our activities in this environment. Fortunately, Marco had been a long time student of the history of Astronautics as well as an avid reader of science fiction. We had numerous discussions how the thoughts and writings of space visionaries such as Krafft A. Ehricke and Gerard O’Neill and those of science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein addressed the future of space development. We merged these ideas with our shared optimism and idealism about the importance of the “Cultural Dimension” of space activities and, based on this historical background came up the concept that we called the Space Option. In the early 1990’s and in subsequent years we began including the argument that “humanity’s future on Earth was irrevocably connected to its future in space” in the OURS Foundation’s activities, presentations and publications.
The obvious “choice” illustrated in the Redstone photos above is about whether space technology will be used for the destruction of human civilization or will it be used for human expansion beyond our the home planet. Today, this is not the only choice we need to examine concerning space development because many areas of society are under stress and space technologies and space development offer many viable and optimistic “space” solutions which address some of Earth’s most serious environmental, economic and geopolitical problems.
This website is a statement that the Space Option concept needs further elaboration and distribution beyond the space community because the choice that humanity must make about its space program and, indeed, about its future, is more urgent than ever. I hope that you will examine the information that is being posted here and follow the discussion by offering your insights, suggestions and, if you are in agreement, your support.
Arthur R. Woods
Editor & Publisher – 2019
