When, as a child, I saw Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon in 1969, on black and white television, I understood that Earth was not the only place Man could inhabit.
I marveled at the advanced technology that the US had used to get there, and wondered if I too could do something similar or be involved in such a great technological and exploratory adventure. Knowing that rocket propulsion was big business, I resolved to find some other way to get into space. Thus, several decades ago I started to toy with ideas on gravity modification.
Out of that tinkering, I realized that it was insufficient just to go to the moon. To assure some amount of success, it was necessary to have a goal that was much bigger than traveling a short distance. By short I mean to the Moon. What could be more difficult if not comparatively impossible? It was traveling to the stars in a reasonable amount of time.
Did God design the Universe so that we would always be stuck here on this planet or did He design it so that we could reach its furthest stars and return in a single life time? I believe in a generous God so the latter was the only acceptable design. Still, I wasn’t sure if this was possible, thus the name iSETI, Interstellar Space Exploration Technology Initiative. This was to be a technology initiative.
A technology initiative to reach the stars, if that was possible. The doubts remained because modern physics dictates that this is not possible. As recently as April 25th of this year, 2008, Michio Kaku said on The Space Show interview that if gravity modification was possible it would probably happen in about 300 years from now. Therefore, this technology initiative had to begin with a physics initiative.
