Through the development of a number of ecovillages and other land based facilities, the path towards Aquarius begins.
Space Settlement Begins at Home[]
Though the apparent development goal of the Foundation phase of TMP is the creation of seed communities through which the Aquarius phase would begin, there are plenty of reasons why other types of communities would also be developed. The original TMP assumed Foundation would be limited largely to the cultivation of ‘virtual’ communities using the Internet. But experience has demonstrated that without physical loci of activity to serve as a psychological anchor for community attention virtual communities have a great difficulty in cultivating focus, coherence, and personal trust between members. There must be a bridge between group discussion and group activity and this may demand the creation of physical facilities which, logically enough, would tend to evolve into physical communities where members may stay permanently or temporarily as they contribute their efforts and as hobbyist activities evolve into full-time jobs and careers. Certainly, the early Aquarius seed settlements would be quite capable of this, but they will not always be located in the most convenient places owing to their restriction to coastal areas. And while much activity would shift to the sea once the capability to do marine real estate development is established, much would still have to be done on the mainland since it would take some time for the fledgling marine settlements to evolve to the necessary scales needed to support infrastructures that are at-hand on the mainland.
And Foundation does not end with the beginning of Aquarius, nor would the financial interests of the Foundation CIC on land be completely abandoned. The virtues of the culture and lifestyle cultivated by Aquarius are not exclusive to a marine environment. Marine settlement may be necessary to get to space but the sensibilities and advantages of the Aquarian lifestyle need to spread to the land as well if we are to better the human condition in general, help restore the planetary environment, and stop or reverse Global Warming before planetary catastrophe results. All human civilization can, and must, benefit from this, though that may require the pursuit of planned communities on land of Aquarius scale to demonstrate and implement. Thus throughout the history of TMP a variety of non-marine communities may be developed by the CIC on Earth.
In this subsection we will examine some of the various forms of communities that may be pursued.