First Millennial Foundation
The First Millennial Foundation (FMF), now called the Living Universe Foundation, is a space advocacy and futurist group established by Marshall Savage in 1987.
Beginnings
FMF was one of several semi-utopian space nonprofits that were created in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Biosphere 2, the Artemis Project, P.E.R.M.A.N.E.N.T., and The Space Studies Institute.
In North America in the early 1990s, three trends were prominent:
1. Concerns about the Earth's environment became more prevalent, and there were was a major trend towards environmentalism as a movement.
2. Continued interest in human space exploration and faith that technology would allow further humans to explore space.
3. The rise of the Internet as a social and organizing medium.
Savage's ideas seemed to solve our environmental problems by using space as our escape route, and it seemed like by organizing on the Internet, the First Millennial Foundation might be able to accomplish its ambitious aims despite not having a traditional organizational structure.
If Earth is considered a closed system, there will be less for all forever. The frontier is closed, the wilderness is gone, nature is being destroyed by human consumers, while billions are starving. The future indeed looks grim, and there are, ultimately, no really long-range, positive solutions, nor motivation for making the sacrifices and doing the hard work needed now, unless we understand that we are evolving from an Earth-only toward an Earth-space or universal species.
— Barbara Marx Hubbard [1], Distant Star (Electronic Magazine of the First Millennial Foundation), 1997
Other famous scientists of the era were saying similar things, including Carl Sagan and Robert Zubrin:
Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.
— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space, 1999
Projects
As stated in the "Foundation" chapter of TMP, Savage wanted to build a small demonstration colony, called "New Eden", demonstrating OTEC technology.
I am delighted to report that I have located the perfect site for our New Atlantis project. It is an idyllic island located approximately 90 miles southwest of Nassau in the Bahamas. It is called, with uncanny serendipity, Little San Salvador (San Salvador, of course being the island where Columbus first made landfall in the New World). ...
— Marshall T. Savage, Vol. 1 No.1 First Foundation News, July 1993 [2]
Getting this project off the ground turned out to be quite difficult, however:
By the mid-90s the group had had several false-starts with several promising ventures, (we actually had a "deal" worked out by Marshall and the board of directors around 1993 with assured backing by hotel venture capital if we could get the land for development of an "Eco-Resort" in St. Croix, but if fell apart when the land owner sold the property to someone else for cash-up-front) that fell through for various reasons. Each venture scaled back the 'scope' of effort and financing needed from the group as it was found while support and enthusiasim were high physical presence, required skills, and funding especially were actually in short supply.
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 2009
The FMF tried to implement other real ventures, but they, too, did not succeed:
The 'final' official venture of the FMF was a planned "Poly-species" aquarium and combined aquaculture set up that had been arranged with NELHA (http://www.nelha.org/) that fell through due to inability to raise financing. (Laughable in a way because part of the reason we couldn't get funding was the rumors that the lab and OTEC was going to be shut down by the Federal government, the state however took over many of the lapsed federal programs and look at the place now :o)
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 2009
Managing growth
TMP was published in 1992 and 1994, and the second printing especially served to drive huge interest towards the FMF. The book's closing words were a rallying cry to join the FMF:
Now is the ultimate moment in the history of the universe. The fate of a million million worlds hangs here in the balance. An infinity of space awaits, hushed, afraid even to breathe, anticipating the next, the crucial moment–your decision.
...
Now your course is simple–join us. Throw your shoulder to the wheel. We have far to go, much to do, and little time. Together we can bring this dead universe to life. Come with us, add your power to the energy flux of the Foundation's laser. Beam up with us. We are going to the stars.
— Marshall T. Savage, The Millennial Project, page 384
By July 1996, boyed by the reprinting of the TMP book in 1994, the foundation had hundreds of members, regular newsletters, and dozens of chapters around the United States. At the time, The First Millennial Foundation Board of Directors were:
- Marshall T. Savage
- Joan L. Savage (Marshall's mother)
- Roy E. Savage (Marshall's older brother)
- Jim Martens
- Alan K. Forbes (now President of Marshall's 2018 employer, IEPM [3])
- David Miller
- Phillip Kopitske (designer of the 1991 board game "Space Race" [4])
The fourth FMF conclave took place 2-4 August 1996 at Colorado Springs, Coloradio. It was billed in the FMF newsletter as a "joint-conclave", with "United Societies in Space" to make the conclave "bigger and better than ever". Scheduled speakers were said to include Dr. Robert Zubrin, Dr. Phil Harris, Deyong Kong, Craig Cleaveland, Scott Halbert, and "our very own" Marshall Savage.
To manage the group's growing complexity, Savage introduced the concept of the "Gemstar" as an organizational unit:
The first thing to know about the First Millennial Foundation is that it's an organization intent on ACTION. The Millennial Project is based upon the premise that--scattered throughout the world's population--the necessary talent, energy, and will exist to migrate Earth's life outward into the Solar System and beyond. The Foundation is dedicated to accomplishing that goal by bringing that dispersed energy, will, and talent into focus on the WORK that needs doing--and GETTING IT DONE. The means to focus all that energy--the 'lens' if you will--is the gemstar. Gemstars are work teams; they are the Foundation's organizational building blocks. When joined in a gemstar team, Foundation members work together and apply their talents and skills toward accomplishing specific needed goals.
— Marshall T. Savage, 6 May 1996
However, the organization was unable to function using this system, according to Randy Campbell:
By that time [1994-1996] the "leadership" problems you mentioned had grown enough that the overall organization was fragmenting anyway. We never hit, (and probably really couldn't have as Marshall had overestimated the impact of the internet on organizational ability) the 'magic' number and could never have supported the "core-and-cladding" organization suggested in the book let alone the financial ability to bring about a starter Aquarius project.
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 2009
Newsletters and chapter memberships reveal such eccentric and diverse perspectives as:
- Serious engineers from the aerospace community, such a Lockheed Martin
- An east cost chapter called "Cosmic Dreamweaver" for "Wiccans in Space"
- An editorial calling for Second Amendment rights to be respected in the future Aquarius colony.
By the time the starter projects fell through in 1998, the FMF had begun to fragment:
By this time polarization had taken hold in the overall organization with various sub-groups pulling membership towards various sub-goals and positions such as (really basic descriptions here please note :o) "environmental action-now" or "space-now" or "Aquarius-now" etc, advocating that the group DO-SOMTHING now, instead of endless internet and BBS email discussions and talking sessions. Membership began to decline as various segments split off towards organizations more focused on action now and not some action in the 'fuzzy' future. Around this point we lost the tax-free status, and had to close our offices in Rifle Colorado as we couldn't afford the rent or to pay the 'staff' most of whom were living in a basement and working two "other" jobs just to make ends meet.
Probably around 1997/8 the group basically 'split' with one half arguing for the establishment of a "Land Based Colony" as an intentional community of FMF, (now the LUF due to Marshall having sold the book rights and name to a movie studio) members. The members at the LBC, (eventually named Space Environments Ecovillage or SEE)being employed in the local area or by business at the LBC and donating time and "extra" income from the figured cost-savings of living at LBC towards the "next" step of the build up to Aquarius. LBC/SEE would also show-case "green" living, along with a planned closed environment greenhouse, and other projects related to long term living both on and off Earth.
Oh and somewhere along in here the chosen location would allow people to commute to work outside of SEE and also be isolated enough to begin Marshall's idea of "re-training" people to live on a frontier.
The other 'half' of the organization never really 'gelled' into an opposition with an alternate plan, but more objected to the idea of an LBC as not being workable within the limited funds still available to the organization, nor having enough 'real-world' physical and financial support to be carried off.
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 2009
Space Environments Ecovillage
According to Randy Campbell, in this split, the "land based colony" (LBC) folks "won" by default, since William Gale died and left money to buy land for a colony to the LUF. It was established in Balstop, Texas in 1999.
The Space Environments Ecovillage (SEE) in Bastrop, Texas was a project funded and run by William Gale and Richard Crews. It issued several reports in the early 2000s and was perhaps the only concrete project to have actually been realised.
Richard Crews, (SEE-1's first and only "resident" colonist from start to end) was quoted in the Book "Rocket Dreams" on the plans and concepts behind SEE. Link here (Start at page 119) http://books.google.com/books?id=N3x1PyJmbz4C&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=Space+Environment+Ecovillage&source=bl&ots=exz6DpiLPN&sig=SpgTG52OLqPBAhEDJlCCZ39tB5I&hl=en&ei=brqJSs2TKYeosgO66qzlAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=Space%20Environment%20Ecovillage&f=false
It failed. Richard was the only resident and he couldn't go it alone. Eventually the money ran out, the effort got to be too much and the LBC was deeded back to the family of [William Gale].
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 1999
Living Universe Foundation
On 30 April 1999, it was announced that the First Millennial Foundation obtained 501(c)3 status and renamed itself as the "Living Universe Foundation" [5], by William Gale, Secretary, LUF. [6]
William Gale was involved in a related eco-village project in the early 2000s, but he died and his ownership passed to Richard Crews [7] [8]
Prominent members of LUF:
- Eric Hunting (the only substantial contributor from 2006 - 2016)
- Steve Carr [9]
- Keith Dauzat, former board member, Living Universe Foundation [10] [11]
- Charles "Chad" Lupkes, who advocates for a long-term approach and had a spirited exchange on the Space Show at the 1:00:00 mark [12]
- William Gale (died early 2000s)
- Richard Crews (1937 - 2012) [13]
- Jamal Wills, who posted board meetings in 2011 [14]
- Edward F. Nash, Jr., who appears as a director in the LUF 2011 articles of incorporation.
Hunting and Dauzat were interviewed on 8 May 2011 for the Space Show [15]
Departure of the founder
At the height of the FMF in the mid-1990s, Savage was "almost canonized" by some members. Additionally, the work of administering hundreds of members with differing views was proving difficult. This led Marshall to feel quite "frazzled" and "overwhelmed" by "the amount of work and attention the book had drawn to him." [16]
Around 2000 Marshall stepped away from the organization he founded. Dauzat gave this explanation on 8 May 2011 during the Space Show podcast for why he did so:
I have a great deal of respect for him. Why did he leave? Has a personality that isn't very well-suited to celebrity, and for his own benefit, and for the privacy of his family, he decided to step away. I hear he is working on a new book on life extension technologies.
— Keith Dauzat, 8 May 2011
2009 Activity on Yahoo Groups
I don't suppose you've heard of The Living Universe Foundation? (LUF as we lovingly call it, which was the First Millennial Foundation before that or FMF, before the rights to that name were sold along with the movie rights for the book it's all based on...Gad the hoops you jump through for a tax-free status we never used :o)
It's based on the book "The Millennial Project: 8 Easy Steps to Colonizing the Galaxy" by Marshall Savage.
Sad to say the steps were soon proven to be anything BUT easy but when the book came out in 1990/91 the mix of synergism of Environmentalism in saving planet Earth while simultanously expanding mankind out into the galaxy had a huge impact on a great number of people.
While the Foundation as an actual 'movement' and organization lasted only (officially) about 5 or so years as initial enthusiasm ran smack into reality, there is still a quite on-again-off-again active internet presence that keeps people discovering both the book and the concept of environmentalism and space-colonization not being mutualy exclusive.
There is an active Yahoo! Groups forum, (recently VERY active as new folks are putting new life into trying to organize the very eclectic and rather free-spirited "old-timers" as well as others into a new organization) there is project to 're-write' the book with updated technology and a less 'over-arching' sequence of steps that are more 'do-able' on the budget of a small yet diverse organization of individuals called "TMP2" on wiki.
I'm quite sure that the group and people still involved would LOVE to hear about the Exoenvironmentalism movement if you have time to post there John. Anyway, I thought I should point the book and groups out to anyone in general and you in particular John.
(Wikipeda entry for the book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps
The TMP2 wiki page:
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
— Randy Campbell, 17 August 2009 [17]
2009 - 2013 Revival
As of early 2011, the following was posted to the About page of luf.org:
The Living Universe Foundation (LUF) was originally established as the First Millenial Foundation based on the book "The Millenial Project" by Marshall Savage. The current leadership of the LUF came together over the luf-team mailing list in early 2011 with the desire to revive and continue the vision originally presented by Mr. Savage.
Board Members (as of 2011):
- President - Open
- Vice President - Open
- Treasurer - Dmitri Donskoy [18]
- Secretary - Tom Hanson (also referred to as Hansen)
- Visionary At Large - Eric Hunting
- Executive Director - Keith Dauzat
Core Members
- Aaron Method
- Chad Lupkes [19]
- Jonas Allesson
LUFoundation is established as an educational organization to spread the word about the 8 point vision. TMP2 is published, and gathers new energy for the movement that we haven't seen since the first book was published. People want to know what they can do. We start bringing the Conclaves together again, and we start building a community.
The money from the sale of the book is enough to start a small media company, Living Universe Media, which continues to expand the TMP2 website with new graphics and content derived from the Conclaves and interested artists all around the world.
The money from the book is also used to launch Living Universe Investments, which is a financial institution dedicated to providing the means to fund Aquarius and expand the New Space movement to the next level. We come up with some new financial products that let people buy shares in the Aquarius Fund, the Bifrost Fund, etc. These funds invest in the technology companies that are in the process of developing the technology to make each step in our vision a reality. They are also dedicated to providing financing to companies and non-profits around the world that are changing our global culture and improving people's lives. The more these Funds and other financial products see success, the more people want to be part of them, leading to the construction of Aquarius in the North Pacific Gyre where the plastic is mined and recycled for reuse and for building additional platforms that go all around the ocean providing fresh water to coastal communities through desalinization and spreading the word and wealth everywhere they go.
The LU Investment Corporation invests in water purification, renewable energy, education and job creation all around the world, building itself into one of the strongest and most well respected organizations the planet has ever known. We fund scientific expeditions to the Moon, the Near Earth Asteroids and Mars, bringing back knowledge and hope. Some of our scientific expeditions transform into long term residences, and the first Avalon station is built on the Moon in the year 2069, my 100th birthday.
The rest is history.
— Chad Lupkes
Yahoo Group
The LUF existed as a Yahoo Groups discussion, which yielded hundreds of posts, until the group died around September 2013. [20]
The successor site, sea2space.org, no longer exists, so the historical record ends at this point:
The Living Universe Foundation is moving away from Yahoo Groups. Please be aware that posting on luf-team will close on September 9th, 2013. Please feel free to post on our new forums at http://sea2space.org
— Living Universe Foundation website
Legal Status of LUF
The Living Universe Foundation experienced a very gradual decline in activity over a period of about a decade. Around 2003 the Executive Board determined that the nonprofit status of the foundation was no longer economically worth maintaining. The charter was permitted to lapse and the foundation reverted to the default status in the state of Colorado which is an "unicorporated association."
The group continues to maintain several legacy communications portals, especially the Yahoo! Group LUF Team where former members and occassional new parties collaborate on projects such as CELSS, Mars Society, 1000 Planets Inc, OTEC news, and others.
The LufWiki fell into disarray when the primary administrator became unable to devote sufficient time to maintaining things server side. A corrupted file or table somewhere led to edits being lost rendering most of the wiki unreadable. The revision files were largely intact so the entire set of 7 webs in LufWiki universe were downloaded and burned to CD and otherwise backed up on the private server space of long time members. The wiki remains suspended in the ether until it can be properly archived allowing the content to be put back into use. Several content management systems are being explored for use in a new website for the LUF Phoenix Project but it is unlikely that a TWiki platform will be chosen again.
There is also talk of a "new book" [TMP2] to refresh the now outdated technology that spawned the first iteration of the foundation.
— Keith Dauzat, on the LUF Wikipedia Talk page, 9 April 2005, 20:43 UTC
TMP2
From 2006, Eric Hunting pioneered the second version of the TMP book (TMP2). This resulted in the TMP2 site: [21]
History of the Foundation
The history of the name change from FMF to LUF goes like this.
In about 1997 or 1998 we decided to have the First Millennial Foundation (FMF, which was a not-for-profit Colorado corporation) apply to the IRS for tax-exempt status. This would allow people who made donations to not pay income taxes on the donation. More importantly, it would make the FMF acceptable to grant-making foundations.
As executive director I worked with a tax lawyer to prepare the application to the IRS. This took several months and cost $1,000 (of my money). And it involved personal, one-to-one negotiations between our lawyer and the IRS examiner (which was the main reason for paying the lawyer $1,000--we found a lawyer who knew the system and the IRS people and had worked with them many times before).
The IRS examiner finally ruled that the FMF needed to own all rights to the book, TMP, because it looked too much like the corporation could serve as a front for making a profit on the book.
I was jubilant at our success. But when I asked Marshall, he refused to assign all rights to (and future profits from) his book to the FMF because he still hoped to make money on a Hollywood movie and a board game based on the book.
This surprised me because he and I had previously talked about this (this had been part of the negotiations between our lawyer and the IRS examiner) and he had agreed that rights to the book probably weren't worth anything without the FMF.
In fact he got pissed off at me because he considered it a betrayal for me to ask him this. (This, by the way, is the same route that led to Jack Reynold's leaving the FMF--he was running the Rifle office and Marshall got unreasonably and unrealistically angry at him.)
I thought Marshall was wrong, but I resigned as executive director and member of the FMF because I had told Marshall when I "joined up" in the early 1990s that I recognized him as founder and spiritual father of the FMF and that I would always and only function in line with his interests as he saw them.
Tami Savage, Marshall's wife, felt bad about all this (and I think pretty much agreed with me--she had been aware of the developing negotiations with the IRS examiner as they were going on). A few months later she contacted me that she had incorporated a new not-for-profit organization (also in Colorado) under the name Living Universe Foundation (LUF) and had had a lawyer rewrite the IRS application without any mention of the FMF or the TMP book (but otherwise using the same application materials I had laboriously--and expensively--prepared), and the renewed application had been approved by the IRS examiner for tax-exempt status. And would I please come back on board and get back to all the good work I was doing developing the Foundation.
So I re-upped, became executive director of the new organization (actually the same organization but renamed LUF rather than FMF).
That was a couple of years before I went to Texas to try to get SEE going.
We (the LUF) never were successful getting any donations bigger than a few tens of thousands of dollars (there were four such donors--me, William Gale, Phil Kopitski, and Marshall--many people, probably hundreds, made lesser donations of either money or services).
We did not get positive responses from any of the couple of hundred grant-making foundations I contacted.
— Richard Crews, 13 August 2011 [22]
Other sites
6 Billion, a board game, was inspired by TMP [23]
Sources
Facebook page [24]
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/luf-team/info?guccounter=1