Also by Meyer Moldeven Military-Civilian Teamwork in Suicide Prevention Write Stories to Me, Grandpa! A Grandpa's Notebook The Preface "It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." -- Dr. Robert H. Goddard "There is no way back into the past; the choice, as H. G. Wells once said, is the universe -- or nothing. Though men and civilizations may yearn for rest, for the dream of the lotus-eaters, that is a desire that merges imperceptibly into death. 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." -- Arthur C. Clarke The Prologue The Present A conclusion in the Report to the Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth states: "...within a time span of less than 100 years with no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that have traditionally governed world development, society will run out of the nonrenewable resources on which the industrial base depends. When the resources have been depleted, a precipitous collapse of the economic system will result, manifested in massive unemployment, decreased food production, and a decline in population as the death rate soars. There is no smooth transition, no gradual slowing down of activity; rather, the economic system consumes successively larger amounts of the depletable resources until they are gone. The characteristic behavior of the system is overshoot and collapse." Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, in Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century (Crown Publishers, New York 1991) reports how industrialized and developed nations exploit the sea beds of the world for their rich deposits of industrial minerals and metals. He notes that the struggle between rich and poor nations and multinational corporations over minerals in the vast oceanic seabed is likely to be heated in the years to come, especially as reserves of land-based minerals approach exhaustion. News media reported in October 2000 that the People's Republic of China announced plans to explore Earth's moon for useful substances. On October 15, 2003 the PRC launched into Earth orbit its first manned rocket. In a speech on January 14, 2004 the President of the United States of America unveiled a new vision for space exploration. He called on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to "...gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own." "We do not know where this journey will end," said the President, "yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos." White House Press Release, January 14, 2004. ## The Future The Interstellar Mining and Teleport System