Space Renaissance Initiative – Press Release
Press conference 2009 March 31st – 16.00
British Interplanetary Society – 27/29 South Lambeth Road – London, UK

 The Space Renaissance Initiative (SRI) will present a proposal to ignite a space economic revolution on 2009 March 31st, before the G20 summit.

The proposal is a simple priority-driven agenda: to develop low-cost civilian space transportation, orbital and sub-orbital space tourism, lunar industrialization, spacebased solar power, and the use of near-Earth asteroids to build space infrastructures. These include research and industrial settlements on the Moon; orbital stations, resources utilization, space hotels, service facilities and space debris collection.

This is not speculation. All of these goals can be achieved within the first half of this century. By the second half of this century, based on the experience gained in near-Earth space, Mars and the Martian moons will be settled with the long-term goal of terraforming the red planet.

In order to help the development of the civilian space industry, we recommend governments should provide incentives in the form of tax abatements and financial help for companies working in the space industry; new investment funds for space tourism and the space industry; and special programs geared towards universities and other educational systems. These policies also extend to private organizations, individuals, space agencies, and financial institutions.

Governments can invest public money toward the new space economy through space agencies (primarily devoted to science and exploration), more commercially oriented agencies (to be chartered), and private enterprise, for the industrialization of the Moon-Earth region.

With a current population of almost seven billion people, human growth on planet Earth is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Problems stem from a shortage of raw materials and lack of inexpensive and accessible energy. This dearth of resources, which results in continuous global economic recessions, could cause our civilization to implode to one billion within the end of this century, with increasing risk of humanity falling back to pre-technological ages.

The only fundamental solution to assure continued growth of civilization is to open the high frontier and start surveying the resources of the solar system. Space contains unimaginable amounts of unexploited resources on the Moon, asteroids and other planets. Establishing a foothold off-Earth would also protect humanity from planetwide catastrophes.