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                  | WHO & WHAT WE ARE: The Lunar Reclamation Society, Inc., is an independent, non-profit, membership organization [Wisconsin] promoting "the expansion of the human economy through off-planet resources." Our stated purposes include, but are not limited to, those of the National Space Society, with whom we are freely associated for networking purposes, serving as its Milwaukee and SE Wisconsin chapter. HISTORY: LRS, Inc. was co-founded by Myles Mullikin and Peter Kokh in the fall of 1986 as "Milwaukee Lunar Reclamation Society L5", a chapter of the former L5 Society, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, and tasked with the promotion of space settlements using lunar resources according to the plan laid out by Dr. Gerard O'Neill of Princeton University in the early seventies. L5 would merge with the former National Space Institute on March 27, 1987 to form the National Space Society. But by the January preceding, a third of MLRS' membership came from the membership roster of NSI furnished us in anticipation of the merger. As a result, MLRS became the first fully merged chapter of the new society. LRS has always sought to be true to these dual roots and sources of inspiration. OUR FOCUS ON THE MOON: The group that gathered to organize the chapter in September of 1986 had diverse interests in space and different individual dreams as to what aspect of the space frontier they would each like to personally pioneer. But we all seemed to agree that an outpost on the Moon must come first as a gateway to everything else. There are those who would dispute that. But we must not overlook the psychological anchor point place of the Moon in the consciousness of people at large, whose support we will need wherever we go. Nick Gauthier sums it up well:"Luna is essentially a planet. She is Earth's daughter, and as such, draws us irresistibly. We can look up in the daytime sky and actually see her surface. At night, she is even more compelling. With a simple telescope, one can discern features that make the heart race with excitement. Sun shadows in her craters give the impression that what you are seeing up there is really another land, a real place. It is one thing to see another planet as a point of light in the sky, or to look at a fuzzy disk through a lens. But Luna is there in all her glory, showing her features to all who care to look. It is perhaps this, more than anything else, that allows us to believe that other worlds can exist, that they are real places. We can see it with our own eyes, and once we have set our sights on another world, nothing can stop us from imagining what else might lie beyond our immediate grasp." - NG READ OUR NEW POSITION PAPERS 2004.03.15 - The Moon: Why and How we Should Return LRS' VISION: "expanding the human economy through off-planet resources" - the early era of heavy reliance on Lunar materials; earliest use of Mars system and asteroidal resources; and the establishment of the permanent settlements necessary to support such an economy. LRS' MISSION: to encourage "spin-up" entrepreneurial development of the novel technologies needed and promote the economic-environmental rationale of space/lunar settlement. "RECLAMATION": the process of turning barren, sterile wasteland into something fertile and living, as in the polders of the Netherlands. The dike is the analog of the pressure hull, the polder of the modular hull complex that contains the settlement's emerging biosphere. To live is to grow is to keep reclaiming ever more wasteland and transforming it. Life always strives against entropy. Rest is fatal. Reclamation is the life of desert oases, of mountain-terrace farming villages, of surface settlements on worlds not blessed with oxygen-sweet atmospheres. Thus "reclamation" is the definitive "charter function" of the lunar outpost/settlement-to-be, and of any to follow on Mars or elsewhere. ACTIVITES: Public educational outreach (including production of original display materials for that purpose) along with newsletter production, are the chapter's primary focus. There is a general membership meeting from 1-4 pm on the second Saturday afternoon of the month (except July and August, during which months we usually have a picnic and/or field trip) at Mayfair Mall, on the city's west side, in the lower level Garden Suites area, Room G110. YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN US: You can join for many reasons LRS Officers as of 11|11|2006 (#NSS current NSS members)
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