A Tribute to Ken Cox

One of the great leaders of the space exploration movement died recently. Ken Cox worked on the Apollo program and he founded the Advanced Technology Working Group as a part of NASA.

Ken brought together an eclectic group of thinkers at ATWG, and a number of books and ideas emerged from their deliberations. On a very personal note, the key was that Ken invited me to a number of the meetings and I participated enthusiastically. Even more important, though, he played a critical role in keeping the idea of the Overview Effect alive.

The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution had been published in 1987 by Houghton-Mifflin, a leading mainline publisher. I had harbored high hopes for its success, and held a vision that it would start a revolution in thinking about space exploration and the human future.

Instead, we had what is called a "critical success" but a "financial failure." The first edition of about 7500 copies sold out, and the book was translated into German. However, this was not enough to justify a second edition or going into paperback. I suppose that would have been the end of the Overview Effect as a book if Ken hadn't stepped in.

A friend of mine suggested I get in touch with Ken because he was pulling together a group of people to talk about the softer side of space exploration: politics, economics, philosophy, and so on. When I did contact him, I received a warm welcome from Ken and an invitation to a gathering in Washington, DC.

It turned out that Ken admired my work and wanted the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) to publish a second edition of the book.

He was on the board of AIAA, and he contacted their publishing team about taking on the second edition. The Overview Effect was somewhat outside their area of interest, which focused more on the engineering/technical aspects of spaceflight, but they agreed to take on the book, and we published the second edition in 1998.

AIAA is still the publisher of The Overview Effect, and the third edition came out in 2014. To my surprise and delight, my editor has now approved a fourth edition!

Robbie Davis-Floyd, another ATWG member, Ken, and I also worked together on a book called Space Stories, which is a great compendium of stories from the early pioneers of the Space Age. It is now on Kindle.

Ken played a major role in bringing us to where we are today in space exploration and development, and he kept the flame of the Overview Effect alive during its darkest days. Most of all, though, he was a smart, kind, and funny colleague.

Thank you, Ken, for all you did for me and for humanity!

Copyright, Frank White, 2017, All Rights Reserved

The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution is available at aiaa.org and amazon.com 

The New Camelot: the Quest for the Overview Effect is available at Apogee Prime
http://www.cgpublishing.com/prime/bookpages/9781926837383.html

A Breakthrough

Recently, I have been exploring a few ideas that have come together to produce something of a breakthrough.

The first has been thinking about how it took thousands of years for people to let go of the geocentric view of the solar system and adopt a heliocentric view, as proposed by Copernicus. It took a long time to make that simple change, but it made a huge difference when it happened.

The second has been writing my book, The Cosma Hypothesis, which presents the argument that as we explore the universe, we need to give as much to the universe as we take from it. I felt that there was something going on here that was analogous to the Copernican Revolution, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

The third has been a review of the book Space Abundance for Humankind's Needs, by Bob Krone and members of his family. I wanted to bring the Hypothesis into the review and note that we should consider what we can give to the universe in tapping its abundance, as well as what we can take for ourselves.

All of this coalesced recently with the notion that we need to move from an anthropocentric view of space exploration and development to a cosmocentric view. Perhaps that might be analogous to the shift that Copernicus started back in the 16th century. Only time will tell if it is that significant.

I am not sure, at this moment, what this idea means in practical terms, but understanding it is the next step.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me get to this point!

Copyright, Frank White, 2017, All Rights Reserved

The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution is available at aiaa.org and amazon.com 

The New Camelot: the Quest for the Overview Effect is available at Apogee Prime
http://www.cgpublishing.com/prime/bookpages/9781926837383.html

Correction

In a recent post, I said that 2017 marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. In fact, this year is the 330th anniversary of that monumental work being made available to the world. My apologies for the error: math has never been my strong point, and this is why I can never compare my work to that of Newton!