CSTART Manifesto? | General | Forum

What do people think of the idea of a CSTART Manifesto?

Right now we have a great collection of Official Documents setting out what it is we want to do and what principles we will stick to in doing it.  But some shortcomings of these are:

• So far none of them do anything to address what is one of the biggest questions in the public's mind about space exploration: why is it worth doing?
• They are all (by necessity) kind of dry and formal.

Do we think it would be useful to have another document, a CSTART manifesto which is written as a few paragraphs of prose, rather than dot point lists of legalese, which explains why we think space exploration is worth while and why we want to be open, international, etc?  This would be something that would be perfectly well allowed to have a bit of emotion in it, as its main goal would be to motivate people.

brmj said:

My guiding idea for what ought to go in this is basically "things Carl Sagan would say".

You've got the right idea, then, that is the kind of thing I had in mind.  Something to capture the imagination and stir the heart, rather than a bunch of stilted legalese or that sort of thing.

Having thought about this a little more, I'm not so sure it makes a lot of sense to talk about the "why?" of CSTART.  There are a lot of different reasons for believing in the value of space travel, and not everybody believes in all of them.  It might seem presumptuous for CSTART to spea on behalf of all its members, who may have varying motivations (or even no real motivation beyond finding our projects fun).  Furthermore, offering an answer to "why?" legitimises the idea that we need a good reason, which I would argue we don't – government funded agencies like NASA and ESA are morally obliged to justify what they do because they are forcibly funded by taxpayers.  In contrat, CSTART is funded by donations, sponsorship and volunteer effort.  As long as the people assisting us are happy to do so, nothing else matters.

Although, convincing answers to "why?" might help in attracting funding.

Anyway, this doesn't necessarily rule out the concept of a manifesto entirely: we could still write something informal and stiring about the "how?", emphasising things like our spirit of openness and simplicity.  How space should be for everybody, how vehicles should simple and cheap, etc.