We need your help to stay alive! For $10 a month, become a member and keep the dream alive! American Antigravity is supported by non-profit donations, and without your help we'll have to close up shop. If you use the site and like what we publish, then help keep us in business for less than price of your morning cup of coffee. Tell a friend, tell your colleagues and help us with a fund drive to afford the cost of cutting-edge breakthrough information.
Click here to become a member
Bill Mehess writes, "Like thousands of other readers of Tim's site I feel it is a highly worthwhile endeavor and UNDER NO CONDITIONS should it be shut down. American Antigravity has grown over the years to be a voice in the wilderness on subjects that tens of thousands of people world wide appreciate. We use this service by logging on (in my case daily) to read the articles that Tim and others contribute. Tim is asking for our help to allow him to continue his work and it's time for us to step up to the plate. He is suggesting a membership program of 1000 member contributing $10/month for a total of $10,000 /month. This is a vary fair amount Tim needs to be compensated for his good works, staff writers need to be paid, when Tim takes his trips to cover events this has to be paid for. We all know how expensive travel is.
I am pledging $100/month immed. I have just sent this in via paypal. See, already 1% has been contributed - only 99% more to go!!! NO EXCUSES , LETS DO IT!!!!"
Dean McGowan writes, "I cannot complete this letter without aknowledging the great work of Tim and all associated members of the groups we are members of and subscibers to, however and I direct this comment to Tims letter - it is my opinion that attempting to close the gates on sites like AAG and Hoaglands hence building a fence around the information and charging a fee to access it will only bring about the demise of all progress thus far - so much sooner. The hits these sites get are from the community we need most to support the future research, the young minds that will be inspired to take this to the next level, the dreams of people with the resources and opportunities that will inevitably make our dreams a reality."
Why We Need Funding: First and foremost, we need funding to stay in business. That means stabilizing my own situation to be able to keep adding new stories, interviews, and video to the website without having my home forclosed-on, or having my wife leave me because my job doesn't generate any income. I made a commitment to American Antigravity, but part of that commitment is to survive long enough to make it work, and without donations by our visitors, it's just not going to happen.
Secondly, over the last couple of years, a lot of the really great alternative-science venues out there have been closing their doors, including even the venerable NASA BPP Project. When I incorporated in 2005, Richard C. Hoagland and I began talking about reversing this trend through a process of consolidation - in essence, by onboarding smaller venues to help them stay alive as well.
For instance, a good case-example is Dr. David Livingston, who runs "The Space Show". He's done over 300 excellent interviews across the space industry, but since he's so focused on the space business, he doesn't have the resources to effectively promote or manage his website. Our thought was to consolidate his website into American Antigravity, giving him access to both a larger audience as well as letting us manage his online presence.
Additionally, we talked about archiving conference papers on BPP, which I've already started doing for the STAIF and HFGW conferences. Again, this helps the community by increasing ease of access & raising the online visibility of this material, and it helps AAG by raising our search engine relevance, which means more traffic.
Our final goal was to begin building a solid media operation to support the space industry. My thought had been to capitalize on the "proof of concept" TV-webcast that I'd done with Matthew Carson in January to create a "morning show webcast" that aerospace industry employees could watch in the office. A great idea, but like the consolidation concept, it requires funding.
Associated with all of this is infrastructure: simply put, it's expensive. For instance, migrating from the remote host that I use now to a dedicated hosting solution might cost several thousand dollars, but to effectively host all of this new web-content, the direction to go in is a real "Content Management System", which can cost upwards of a million dollars (when you factor in servers, backups, load-sharing, bandwidth, etc). Matthew Carson was able to do a professional job putting his site together for only about $600,000, so while we are able to find a workable model, it's still expensive.
Also, based on the OSEN model, consolidation has some real advantages. For one thing, most people stink at web-design, and even if they don't, it's easier for them to get the message out by publishing it on a site like AAG. There's an existing audience, and that makes it easier for people to get the message out. Also, publishing on AAG means that you reach an audience that cares, unlike publishing on Slashdot, which ends up getting you a few million flame-emails from self-righteous computer-geeks surfing the site for stuff to trash-talk.
Finally, this model builds credibility for new ideas in general by putting them on a dedicated forum alongside other comparable ideas. We have a non-political, non-religious format, which keeps authors from becoming their own worst enemy by trash-talking the president or the war in Iraq when they really should be focusing on talking about their ideas for propulsion. Also, by using a polished online format for presentation, it helps to present the material in a more professional manner than a lot of the other sites out there - and of course, with the funding to refine the website over time, there's no limit to where it can go.
Click here to become a member
