I was, for a time, the president of a space advocacy group known as the First Millennial Foundation, and later Living Universe Foundation. It was a group formed to pursue the space development vision outlined by the book The Millennial Project; Colonizing the galaxy in 8 easy steps written by Marshall T. Savage. The organization had been in a slump for a time and, against my better judgement, I agreed to a live phone-in interview on The Space Show hosted by Dr. Livingston that had been arranged by some new members. The problem was, I've suffered from chronic bronchitis since childhood thanks to growing up in NJ's pollution and, as a result, have low voice syndrome. But I didn't want to discourage the ideas of newcomers or give up on a chance to get a bit more attention for the group.

As I feared, things went rather badly. My voice was barely heard over the phone and the concepts I was talking about were largely incomprehensible to the audience. TMP was, and still is, very radical as space futurist visions go and space advocacy is pretty retrofuturist these days. Trying to explain concepts like space development as a cultural imperative, the need for a hundred year long view, and applying the industrial principle of tolerable yield to a space logistics paradigm to people who believe Elon Musk will deliver them airline-cheap seats to Mars any day now is an uphill battle. To make matters worse, some of my organization's members started fighting with The Space Show's IRC audience during the broadcast and had to be repeatedly reprimanded by the host himself. It was an embarrassing and disheartening experience, to say the least.