John Carter McKnight has a new Spacefaring Web essay out, in which he argues that the space advocacy community needs to put away the leadership models and organizational activities of the past. We can no longer expect a great space hero or a great technical master to come along and lead the flock to the stars. Nor can we expect to get there by writing letters to Congress, holding bake sales, or the thousand and one other standard-issue fundraising and outreach strategies employed by every issue group everywhere.
What is needed, he suggests, is for the space community exploit that which makes it different: the technical abilities of its enthusiasts. What kills recruitment and retention efforts, McKnight contends, is the failure of an organization to sustain interest by giving the membership something meaningful to do, at one extreme, or pushing them too hard and expecting absolute devotion to The Cause, at the other extreme.
What is needed is to find outlets for the membership’s unique talents. Rather than demanding support for its pet Great Mission, for example, an organization could work with members in industry or academia to support numerous small-scale studies in aspects of required technology. Expanding what he calls the “Spacefaring Web” — a network of contacts throughout industries and professions, with a variety of goals in space — which over time will make settlement of space more likely to happen by increasing the technological readiness for it.
The end result of the approach is the demystification of space,in favor of a new view of space as a place for a wide variety of human undertakings.
For the most part, I agree with McKnight. I have long thought that the best aspect of the Mars Society was not its Congressional outreach efforts or its One Percent Initiative or the like, but the fact that it actually works on the technology required to get us to Mars. While some may question the usefulness of such results and hands-on experience, the fact is that the organization is actually doing something tangible, and isn’t just another space talk-shop group pushing a grandiose agenda with a trillion-dollar pricetag.