Joel Craig Raupe's Page

Having just joined, at the recommendation of a good friend with whom I've long planned a space venture, for over thirty years in fact, you'll pardon me if I simply lurk for a short time.

Our web-presence has only now become a priority. But opportunity has met experience and not a little hard work. Longview Space Technologies and the technically older Lunar Networks and Lunar Pioneer Cyber Symposium are joined at http://www.lunarpioneer.com and, in my name, a younger member of our spread out group has, I've only just today learned, taken some of my commentary in Emails and placed it in a newsy Blog with which I'm impressed at http://lunarnetworks.blogspot.com and I hope you will do him the favor of linking to it. If so, he promises me in turn to continue to keep it up to date. (Though I'm not certain I will continue to allow him to hack my name of this aura-picture, which doesn't suit me as much as this one...

"Longview" (which in conversation seems to be becoming a consensus name for our enterprise) is presently devoted to the humble plan of emergency medicine in low-earth-orbit and beyond. The application of robotics and "telemedicine" as incredibly advanced by East Carolina University has taken some practical advances past the planning stages.

Now, as once marked the true beginning of a successful entrepreneurship I began in Texas more than two decades ago, it's taking on a life of its own.

(I turn 51 on Monday, just 51 weeks older than Vanguard, and just as stable in my orbit, though not set in my ways...)

You've heard in traditional entrepreneur opportunities, no doubt, the admonishment to "find a hole and fill it." Well, true "holes" can be separated from cash holes, like one in your wallet, for example, from real opportunities by the vacuum pulling you in. It's may be harder to resist than to miss. This is a rare situation, but it is common.

In the case of "Longview" we are on the verge of becoming the core of a new east coast Spaceport, and perhaps even taking a previous generation's field of dreams and making it real.

And that's enough for now, by way of introduction. I'm proud of our young partner, shy though he may be, pushing us from behind to do things he should and could be doing in his own name. I hope to now take the cotton out of my ears and place it firmly in my mouth, for the moment and, taking the "Longview," hope to add more than I take away from whatever I find here.

Joel Raupe
Linked in profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/joelraupe

Guillermo and Burton, thanks so much for the welcome, and I look forward to offering as much as I gain here. "The Group," meaning Lunar Pioneer, is growing by leaps and bounds. Just today I was studying some official whitepaper on private space development, and it seems the folks down in Foggy Bottom, at the State Department, are all in favor of it. I have a natural suspicion of regulation capping us off, but it appears to be in the best interests particularly of those naturally concerned about ASATs. They seem universally in agreement that private space, the more the better, will raise political will in favor of our continued diligence.

Just wanted to share that, and a comment from a NASA official I talked with last week, predicting, in paraphrase, someone among us here is more likely to return to Earth's Moon before the U.S. or China. Frankly, I'd be satisfied with a robust rover. Lot's going on, and I've an acre of Email to process.

Best to you all!

Quote of the Day - Walt Disney - "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

Actual PPC AdSense link that manifested itself whilst searching for something earlier. Good advice, but I like what the grandson of Davy Crockett, one-eyed A.B. Crockett, publisher of the Hood County News-Tablet in Granbury, Texas for thirty years had on his masthead for over thirty years. "Be sure you're right, then go ahead."