The Millennial Project 2.0
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GreenStar Transit would be the key shipping company serving the needs of members of the GreenStar Industrial Cooperative. It would operate transportation lines for both passenger and commercial shipping relying on both conventional transportation technology and new technologies developed through TMP and by its close partners GreenStar Aerospace and GreenStar Transportation Systems.

GreenStar Transit is likely to have very humble origins as a ‘bridge-shipper’ for mail and package deliveries to early Foundation CIC communities. It will initially be difficult for early communities to coax the national postal systems and commercial package shippers like FedEx and UPS to setup facilities at their locations –even if this is in their own best interests. For environmental reasons as well as resident convenience, it’s important that these communities have their own postal and shipping depots within them. With seed settlements on water especially, it will be hard to get the conventional mail and shipping services to even acknowledge the existence of community addresses, let alone deliver to them. So it is likely to be necessary to setup mail drops that serve as a ‘bridge’ to the community and which their own transport vehicles –be it van or boat– would service daily to transfer mail and packages. This also offers an opportunity to employ alternative energy vehicles using things like electric power, biodiesel, etc. whose potential to attract media attention will not only aid the public image of these new communities but also help shame the conventional shippers into recognizing them.

Similarly, early communities are likely to employ the use of ‘buying club’ systems, again for both environmental reasons as well as simple convenience. It’s a little known fact that the US could easily meet the demands of the Kyoto Prototcol and radically reduce its overhead in fossil fuel use if simply most –not all, just most– of the population purchased most their groceries through grocery shipping services. That’s how much wastes exists in our common patterns of auto-dependent shopping. If western governments had any common sense among them, they would encourage this activity through tax incentives for both customers and the operators of these businesses… But, of course, one could grow old indeed waiting on that prospect so it’s likely that early Foundation CIC communities would want to set an example here by establishing, initially, buying clubs to serve as community shopping services along with an in-community general store.

These buying clubs would work simply by creating a UPC indexed on-line database of products initially entered by the residents themselves for the items they commonly buy. Using this as a catalog, they would then order items they need on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. The buying club would then send out its van to purchase these items on a routine circuit of local stores and would return them to the community for sorting into the individual orders for community residents to pick up at their leisure. Using records of these purchasing patterns and relying on the same club buying trips, the community could stock its general store with items people commonly run short of or which represent convenience items they might neglect to order on a routine basis. Later, this may expand to a very comprehensive in-community virtual store relying on Personal Packet Transit and centralized buying direct from producers.

As early communities grow in number, they may wish to establish exclusive passenger and cargo transportation between them that, again, can rely on the use of alternative energy vehicles the conventional infrastructure refuses to implement. Such transportation may initially be subsidized by the CIC and thus comes free to all community residents. This would be a powerful economic incentive for confining commerce to businesses within CIC communities. Later, a convenience factor would also apply through the use of this bridge transit to link PPT systems in individual communities into a larger network.

With such simple beginnings, GreenStar Transit would evolve and eventually incorporate general shipping services using the advanced vehicle systems developed through TMP, such as solar hybrid airships, alternative fuel aircraft, alternative fuel passenger and cargo ships, and eventually spacecraft. Use of these technologies requires more sophisticated management than is typical of conventional shipping because these alternative energy systems need their own specialized infrastructure independent of the conventional transit infrastructure. They will also have to deal with integration with growing PPT networks which would employ sophisticated robotic package handling systems using real-time global computerized transit and package status tracking. Ultimately, GreenStar Transit would be the primary shipper of most of the export products of the Aquarius phase, which by its volume alone could make it one of the largest shipping companies in the world and by its preferred choice of systems the most technically advanced. This would also make it the largest single customer of GreenStar Aerospace and GreenStar Transportation Systems

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d v e FOUNDATION
Phases Foundation Aquarius Bifrost Asgard Avalon Elysium Solaria Galactia
Cultural Evolution Transhumanism  •  Economics, Justice, and Government  •  Key Disruptive Technologies
References
Foundation Community Network
Foundation Promotional Effort Community OutreachTMP 2 LecturesFoundation Convention CircuitStar FestivalsFoundation Fairs
On-Line Community Program Virtual Habitat Program
Open Source Everything Project Utilimobile ProjectUtilihab ProjectOpen Energy ProjectOpen Computer ProjectOpen Space ProjectOpen Fabber ProjectFIY - Fab-It-Yourself SeriesEnclosure ProfilesOSbot
Open Courseware Network
Foundation Media
TMP Media Gallery ProjectTMP 2.0 Book ProjectTMP Film/Video Projects
M3 Game ProjectTMP Model SeriesFuture Fair/Museum of Tomorrow
Foundation CIC
Portfolio Development Project
GreenStar Properties
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GreenStar Community Cooperative CulturalEducationMedicalReliefSecurity
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GreenStar Industrial Cooperative Foundation MediaAerospaceAgroSystemsBiotechCodeworksConstructionDigiTechEnergyMaterialsModular Building ProductsPharmaTechRoboticsTelecommunicationsToolworksTransitTransportation SystemsAquarian BountyAquarian Marine ResourcesAsgard Mining CooperativeAsgard Orbital Services
GreenStar Free-Market Exchange Network
GreenStar Science Research Cooperative
Foundation Communities
Eco-Community Design Concepts eVillageOrganicaSeaBox VillageSolar CircleTectonicTerra Firma
GreenStar Resorts
Arcology Earth
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