In the early 70s when I was president of the Point Foundation (money from the Whole Earth Catalog), a
physics professor from Princeton came into our office and described a project to work on designing a planet near the moon.
The Executive Director of Point, Dick Austin, knew I had started an organization called the Committee for a New Planet. My committee was a conceptual project to show that different societies around the world have different conceptions of the future.
Dick did not understand this so he sent the professor, Gerard O'Neill over to talk to me.
O'Neill described his hard work in trying to get students to a conference to design a man-made structure at Lagrange point 3 which is a stable location between the earth and moon orbit.
O'Neill had gotten nowhere with fundraising or attention. I explained to him that the $500 I was granting to Princeton to put on his conference would set the Princeton PR department in motion and he would get plenty of attention.
He got even more attention than I expected. The New York Times and the New Yorker both picked up the press release and carried the story. Both treated the issue as humorous.
I knew at the time that new ideas enter our minds first as ridicule, then as interesting and finally as conventional.
NASA hired O’Neill to work on his space colony pretty soon after the press coverage.
The Executive Director of Point, Dick Austin, knew I had started an organization called the Committee for a New Planet. My committee was a conceptual project to show that different societies around the world have different conceptions of the future.
Dick did not understand this so he sent the professor, Gerard O'Neill over to talk to me.
O'Neill described his hard work in trying to get students to a conference to design a man-made structure at Lagrange point 3 which is a stable location between the earth and moon orbit.
O'Neill had gotten nowhere with fundraising or attention. I explained to him that the $500 I was granting to Princeton to put on his conference would set the Princeton PR department in motion and he would get plenty of attention.
He got even more attention than I expected. The New York Times and the New Yorker both picked up the press release and carried the story. Both treated the issue as humorous.
I knew at the time that new ideas enter our minds first as ridicule, then as interesting and finally as conventional.
NASA hired O’Neill to work on his space colony pretty soon after the press coverage.