Futures 41 (2009) 569–571

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Futures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Symposium

A Virtual World Space Agency

Giulio Prisco *
Metafuturing, C/Juan Ramón Jiménez 8-1, Complejo Eurobuilding, 28036 Madrid, Spain

Available online 3 May 2009

Space development did not happen as envisaged. Futurists are often criticized for making wrong predictions, or for not
making the right predictions. In the sixties, the early 21st century portrayed by most futurists and the popular press was all
about flying cars, anti-cancer pills sold over the counter, cities on the Moon and the planets, and the beginning of humanity’s
leaving its planetary cradle and moving onward to space. Now, in 2008, we drive basically the same cars that we used to drive
in 1968, and cancer has not been conquered. Nobody has walked on the Moon since 1972, and the dream of space exploration
has been lost somewhere. Instead, we have the Internet, cell phones, genome sequencing, personal publishing and
broadcasting, and virtual reality worlds, all things that very few futurists and no popular writer imagined in the sixties.
Even futurists can forget that the evolution of technology and society at large is a product of a complex interplay of
technological, financial, political, regulatory, demographical, cultural and psychological factors, not completely understood
at the moment. Technological capability is just one of many factors. The technologies needed to build electric cars and, in
general, significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, have been in place for decades, but the decisions needed to
vigorously deploy them have not been made by either the public or the private sectors. Now after 11 September, the Iraq
War, the soaring oil prices, the recession and the ever-more-visible environmental problems, it seems that citizens want
renewable energy and electric cars. When consumers really want something, businesses and politicians must provide it, or
else.
The development and deployment cycle of mobile phone technology has been accelerated by a positive feedback loop. We
all wanted more of it, operators and regulatory authorities have taken the necessary measures, and the deployment of new
generations of cell phones with innovative features has triggered even more popular demand. Space, on the contrary, has
suffered from a negative feedback loop. The living magic of Apollo has been forgotten, and new generations of more cautious
and duller initiatives have strongly reduced the appeal of space for the public. This has resulted in reduced budgets and less
adventurous initiatives. No politician who wants to be re-elected will ever fight for an unpopular cause. And politicians know
that today’s teenagers do not want to be astronauts. They want to be movie stars or stock brokers.
Renewed space exploration would require new initiatives able to ignite the imagination of people, especially young
people, all over the planet. I have worked for many years in public space agencies, for example in ESA in the eighties and
nineties. I used to say that, despite the scientific value of robotic planetary missions, the practical value of communication,
earth observation and navigation satellites, and the pragmatism of a cautious approach to crewed space missions based on
the shuttle and the space station, their impact on the public at large was nil. In order to support spending money in space,
people need to see other people in space taking risks to do momentous things. This is the simple truth that every marketing
or advertising professional knows, but paper pushers in government and industry have forgotten.
For the same reason, aseptic orbital or planetary missions do not sufficiently stimulate young people to study science and
pursue careers in technology and space, hence also decreasing the available expertise in terms of both quantity and quality. I
used to say that the emphasis on cost-effective pragmatic missions with only a scientific return and no PR value would kill
both public and political support for space, and the facts have given me reason.
Watching the Moon knowing that other people are living and working there would be a powerful pointer to future, even
more daring cosmic journeys, that could contribute to the mental health of the zeitgeist and give us a renewed confidence in
the relevance of our lives on this little planet. Not everyone can be a space explorer, but we are all partners and stakeholders
in the cosmic future of our species and its ‘‘manifest destiny’’ among the stars. This is a powerful meme that could result not

* Tel.: +34 610 536 144.

E-mail address: giulio@gmail.com.

0016-3287/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.futures.2009.04.013
570 G. Prisco / Futures 41 (2009) 569–571

only in much more support for space, but also in a more positive and proactive attitude on other pressing issues, at a moment
of our history where we need positive thinking, confidence and optimism.
With the forthcoming ‘‘NBIC’’ convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive
science, we are developing capabilities that could lead to a golden future in space, or to catastrophic doom and extinction on
Earth. The decision is ours to make, and reading the daily press is sufficient to realize that our survival as a species is in
jeopardy. If 911 was horrible, a NBIC-boosted 911 could result in our extinction. But we want to solve our growth problems
and survive as a species, because we have beautiful things to do out there.
To my knowledge, nobody said this better than William Sims Bainbridge: ‘‘To become fully interplanetary, let alone
interstellar, our society would need another leap—and it needs that leap very soon before world culture ossifies into secure
uniformity. We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant
sectors of the society’’ [1]. We need grand cosmic visions and daring exploration projects to muster the drive, energy and
commitment to steadily give our best contribution in our chosen fields. Savage published a tentative space exploration and
settlement plan [2], fully compatible with this memetic engineering program and based on current (at the time of writing)
science and technology. Savage appreciated that space exploration cannot be disentangled from other industrial and social
concerns, and that space settlement will be more a political issue than an engineering problem, and dedicated considerable
space to analyzing the best organizational structures and strong criticism to the ‘‘standard model’’ based on national space
agencies and big corporations.
In today’s complex world, the obsolete nation-states are part of the problem and not part of the solution. International
organizations are, too often, paralyzed by power struggles between different national interests: ‘‘existing nation-states,
especially those with a long history, refuse to give up sovereignty and power. This difficulty is often seen in the United
Nations and in other supranational bodies such as the European Union. Few, if any, of today’s nation-states would seriously
consider allowing such organizations to have real and effective decision-making power, let alone the means to enforce the
decisions made. It appears that a gradual breakup of existing nation states into smaller entities, relatively autonomous but
co-operating when co-operation is necessary for all parties involved, will be a necessary prerequisite’’ [3]. Finally, in today’s
economy companies cannot be expected to look beyond short-term financial interests. Governments and corporations will
certainly continue to play very important roles in space, but I believe no new technology or industrial endeavor can really
prosper under the monopoly of governments and big corporations. On the contrary, it is important to give the initiative back
where it belongs, to creative individuals and innovative technology companies. I applaud the Google Lunar X PRIZE [4] as a
historic step in this direction, and look forward to more steps.
Who should take the lead? I see a clear role for global and well organized groups of citizens sharing the same
interests. In the past, concerted actions by distributed groups were made difficult by the distances involved, but today’s
information technology effectively eliminates geography as a significant limit (unless, of course, nation-states interfere
by putting artificial limits in place in order to protect their power). Information technology is also reducing the difficulty
of informed decision-making and concerted action by large groups of people. Direct global democracy and focused
action is today possible thanks to the Internet, through what Savage [2] called a ‘‘Human Laser,’’ people acting ‘‘in
synchronous harmony [. . .] creat[ing] a coherent beam of intent.’’ Many people are much closer to persons located at the
other side of the planet, who share their interests, than to their immediate neighbors. This trend can be expected to
continue and could result in a much better world. Why not form a global peer-to-peer (P2P) space agency of the people,
by the people, and for the people? Such a World Space Agency, whose members are not nation-states but individual
citizens acting as a focused P2P laser, could act in the best long-term interest of our species and prepare the way for its
journey to the stars.
We have had a growing base of tools for effective electronic collaboration for two decades. Email, instant messaging,
mailing lists, discussion boards, polling systems, VoIP voice conferencing, videoconferencing and real-time document
sharing are routinely used by geographically distributed groups to make decisions and coordinate actions. But electronic
communications are still seen by many people as too aseptic and not enough ‘‘immersive’’ to permit real interaction with
others. Virtual worlds like Second Life, which permit much more immersive interaction between participants and will evolve
into a fully video-realistic ‘‘Metaverse’’ based on virtual reality, are another important step toward empowering citizens in
global distributed organizations. More and more interest groups hold formal meetings and social events in Second Life, and
most participants report a sense of immersion and ‘‘being there’’ above the suspension of disbelief threshold. This trend can
only continue and accelerate with more and more realistic consumer VR technologies becoming available.
Besides offering advanced visual ‘‘groupware’’ tools for collaboration and organization, the Metaverse permits visually
communicating advanced scientific ideas and engineering plans, and even the sense of wonder of space exploration. The
Virtual World Space Agency could welcome members and students to accurate 3D reproductions of planned lunar and
planetary outposts in order to permit real open source, P2P participation of all members in its planning and construction
work. Our descendants will live among the stars, and see and do wonderful things. We will not be able to participate, but
virtual reality cosmic scapes designed by our best scientists, thinkers, architects and artists will give the rest of us some sense
of the cosmic destiny of our species, and encourage us to give our best contribution, be it large or small.
The people’s Virtual World Space Agency will probably be able to plan and execute space programs much more effectively
and at a much lower cost than national, let alone international, space agencies, but of course it will still need large funding. I
think the funding should come from membership fees and tax-exempt donations, but also from sales of space related
entertainment, edutainment, and advertising in multiuser videogames and virtual worlds.
 G. Prisco / Futures 41 (2009) 569–571 571

References

[1] W.S. Bainbridge, in: E.M. Emme (Ed.), Religions for a Galactic Civilization, Science Fiction and Space futures, American Astronautical Society, San Diego, 1982,
pp. 187–201.
[2] M.T. Savage, The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, Little Brown $ Co., 1994.
[3] G. Prisco, Globalization and open source nanoeconomy, Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of Ultraprecision Engineering and Nanotechnology 2 (March
(1)) (2006).
[4] Google Lunar X PRIZE, http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/.