Contributors

We need your help. We need you to contribute any way that you can. We need to harness the efforts of students, retirees, housewives or househusbands. We need people on sabbaticals. We need people loaned to the project by supportive organizations. We need people loaned to the project by supportive governments. We need people affluent enough to dedicate themselves to non-paying assignments.

At first, we don't think we'll need much money. The costs of establishing and supporting the web site are fairly nominal. And, for the first few years, everything will be done on the web, so we can just use conventional e-mail for communications and support. And, if we sell hard copies of the site from time to time for those unable to access the web, we may be able to cover those costs.

Fairly soon, we'll need more sophisticated software. We'll need collaboration software, so self-directed work teams can work together smoothly and easily. We'll need the support of organizations with super computers, so the thruster scientists can test their plans. We'll need super computer availability for the climatologists who will start exploring the effects of such things as changing the tilt, spin, eclectic, and orientation of the crust or mantle.

Legal Help

If you can help on a legal team, we need to formally organize as a non-profit organization. We need to become qualified for charitable deductions when our U.S. contributors send money or donate computer time, people, and other goods and services. And, we need to explore legal and tax issues in other nations to assure our contributors receive whatever benefits their support might earn them.

Personnel People

If you've had experience in personnel, or bringing together self directed work teams, we could use your help in sorting out and organizing all those interested in contributing.

Project Managers

If you're an experienced project manager, we need you to join self directed work teams of other project managers so you can design project team outputs, support the project teams, arrange for peer review, and participate in the selection of the project team with the most valuable outcome, or outcomes.

Rocket Scientists

Whether students, faculty, or practitioners of rocket science, we'll need your creativity, imagination, talent, and perseverance to come up with what is possible. You'll need to be able to stand up to those who say it can't be done. You'll need the courage to ask, "How can it be done?"

Climatologists and Meteorologists

We know you're pretty busy studying weather forecasting, La Nina and El Nino, and major issues like global warming on your super computers. We'd like you to get interested in the question of how we might counter the effects of global warming, or moderate our winters and summers, by various changes we might be able to make in the tilt, spin, orientation, eclectic, or orbit of the earth.

Training Experts

We need you to help our volunteer contributors learn how to work in self-directed work teams if they don't already know. We'll need you to help train the contributors in how to use collaboration software when it becomes available to the project. We'll need you to teach contributors the advanced management concepts we will use to manage the project: triple teaming, double-checking, peer reviews, outcome measurement, multiple strategies, and the value of a unified vision and highly focused missions. And, if that wasn't challenge enough, we'll need you to do it over the Internet.

Testing Specialists

We need you to form self-directed work teams and produce testing protocols that we can use to certify citizens as qualified to vote. We know that we want anyone on earth to be qualified to vote, regardless of race, gender, religion, color, language, or political orientation. And, we know that we want each potential voter to demonstrate knowledge of, and comprehension of each side of any issue upon which they will have the right to vote. And, if that wasn't challenge enough, we'll ask you to do it over the Internet, in ways that protect against multiple voting, or voter misrepresentation, while providing absolute privacy to the voter.

We can also use your help in developing the tests that we will be adding to this web site to gain feedback from readers about what they think, feel, or have opinions about in each phase of the thruster project.

Most immediately, we need your help in producing the surveys or questionnaires that we will use within and among the various project teams to determine who shall rotate off of the team, and who shall stay on.

Webmasters

We need your help in designing, monitoring, and maintaining this web site, and any others the project creates.

We also need your skills to create the firewalls that will protect the site from hacking and tampering, while still allowing access by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. "Wow"!!!

And since this initial effort is so minimal and clumsy, we need you to tell us what we need to make it work.

Translators

We need translators to oversee the translation of this site into enough languages and dialects that almost anyone with an interest in the thruster project will find it accessible. Hopefully, we will find software that can do the bulk, if not most, of the translation. We will need translators with the skill to oversee the computerized translations and make sure the ideas, information, and data are translated without distortion.

Interpreters

The project will need people who can interpret for contributors so that people of virtually any language can contribute their ideas to the project. Project managers and project teams will, from time to time, require interpreters to help them work through the projects they undertake. Some of this interpreting work will be done via the Internet and e-mails. Some of it will be via telephone conferencing. Some will be via video conferencing.

Our goal is to have project managers and project teams from many lands, many languages, and many cultures. If we fail to offer interpretive support, we take the risk that only people native to a few languages can take part in the thruster project. Or, worse yet, it may come to feel to whole populations throughout the world that this is a project run by, and only for "English speakers."

Writers

As the thruster project site stands today, the writing is hopelessly dense, excessively verbose, and totally lacking in warmth, humor, simplicity, and clarity. We need the help of those who can write simply, clearly, and convey the ideas so that anyone with a 5th grade reading level will understand.

Ambassadors

Eventually, the thruster project will need individuals or teams able to be ambassadors to governments, multi-national corporations, academia, and religious institutions.

As it exists today, the thruster project is merely hot air and conjecture. It exists only in the imagination of the author and the curiosity of the first few readers. It is no threat and little interest to the major institutions that govern various aspects of our life on earth.

If, however, the project piques the interest of enough thoughtful and creative people, it may begin to gain impetus. If it gains enough impetus to evolve a credible way to make thrusters work to protect the earth against threats and possibly improve living conditions for all mankind, then I think governments, and other major institutions will become very interested.

Once governments, corporations, and spiritual leaders become interested, the thruster project will require ambassadors to make certain the views, desires and preferences of each institution is made clear to those working on the evolution of the project.

Programmers

Programmers will be required to bring into being the visions of the project managers, the self-directed work teams, and all the other people on the list above. Perhaps each work team will include one or more people able to bring to life the outputs of that work team. Perhaps the work teams will seek programming support when they are finished. We can't know at this time.

One of the strategies of the thruster project will be to use existing programming whenever possible. It is wasteful and unnecessary to reinvent what exists already. Hopefully, our project teams will have the wisdom to work with what is available.

Financial People

The initial plan is to have the financials available at all times for review by anyone who is interested. We need a financial team that can track the money and report on it. We need an audit team who will attest to the accounting.

Board of Global Leaders

Eventually, we will need a board of global leaders. Initially, it may be difficult to attract such a board. When, and if we find out that the idea can be accomplished, I believe the kind of global leaders we need will emerge. Until then, we will use proven leaders who may not be renowned or even global. They will serve with the understanding that they will rotate off the board in the same way that self-directed work teams will rotate team members off their teams.

Ordinary People Who Are Fully-informed

When, and if we find out how we can protect the earth with thrusters (or some other means), we will call on the citizens of the earth who will be affected by the decision. If you wish to be one who votes on the critical issues, please stay informed on the changes that evolve on this web site. Before there is a vote, you will be asked to qualify yourself by demonstrating knowledge of the issues on all sides of the question. We intend to make the qualifying quiz as easy as possible, while still assuring all the voters are informed about and aware of the issues in the decision. Our intentions are to make your vote absolutely private so that no one knows how you voted. If circumstances in your place of voting are such that you do not feel your privacy is protected, we intend to provide you with a way of registering your true opinion, even with others looking on.

How to become a contributor