The Millennial Project is a classic Futurist work written by Marshall Savage which outlines a stepped plan for the colonization of the solar system starting with the colonization of the sea using large island-like marine platforms powered by Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion plants -a kind of turbogenerator driven by the difference in temperature between warm surface water and cold deep water which has been slowly developed since the 1960s. This book inspired the creation of a space development advocacy group called The First Millennial Foundation and then renamed The Living Universe Foundation which for some ten years has pursued the realization of the plan outlined in Savage's book. I found The Millennial Project very compelling, not only because of my long general interest in space development but also for one very practical reason; the Aquarius marine colonies Savage described represented the ideal non-toxic urban habitat, made of naturally non-toxic material, devoid of primitive fossil fuel vehicles and power, and located in the unpolluted environment of the equatorial ocean. As a result I joined this organization and have been working with them for many years.

Unfortunately, progress has been slow with this organization due to the complication of organizing coherent effort from a dispersed membership linked only by the Internet. From its inception a conflict has existed between those who regarded the marine development stage of The Millennial Project as vital and those who considered it a costly distraction to the goal of space development. And over the years some of the concepts described in The Millennial Project have aged in the face of new technologies and more in-depth research. The use of the electrolytic sea accretion process as the basis of marine structure construction has proven impractical because of the irreproducability of the claimed results of its eccentric and tempestuous inventor Wolf Hilbertz, the man himself proving impossible for anyone to communicate, let alone work, with. The Bifrost mountain based mass launcher concept has proven infeasible with the curved track slope necessitated by natural topography. Despite these drawbacks, progress has been made. An eco-community was founded in Texas under the name Space Environments Ecovillage and several branch groups in Europe have proven very capable, producing much research and developing key web sites.

Since Marshall Savage himself has chosen not to write an update to The Millennial Project, I have long wanted to write such an update myself in order to synchronize it to contemporary technology and to clarify the practical relationship between marine development and space development that has been hard for people to understand. Unfortunately, this would be a project of great effort and I cannot dedicate time to it when faced with the threat of impending homelessness.

My two most significant contributions to the LUF to date have been the ARcondo and MUOL concepts. The ARcondo concept presents a plan to incrementally develop an Aquarius type marine colony starting with a small near-shore housing complex operated either as an eco-village or a commercial condominium. A discussion piece I wrote detailing this concept is available at; http://www.angelfire.com/mac/docs/ARcondo.html The MUOL or Modular Un-manned Orbital Laboratory is a plan for a remotely operated space station built from small components which is intended to provide leased-space access to small businesses for on-orbit industrial research; the most important application of any space station but one that has been left low in priority by the space stations developed by government space programs. More information this can be seen on the MUOL page on this site.