Los Angeles, CA, June 2, 2002 – Space Frontier Foundation President Rick Tumlinson has releases a pre-RTM IV Conference message, which appears below. For more information on Return to the Moon IV, click here.

The year is 2020.

As you strap into your seat on the Trans-Lunar Express, you look out the window at your destination, that pale gray orb in the night sky that has inspired our imaginations and called us upwards for so long.

You look for the spot on the Moon's South Pole, the goal of your journey, and there, glimmering faintly along the bottom edge of the little world, you can see the lights of Moon Base One, humanity's first outpost beyond the Earth.

While you wait for the final safety checks to be completed, you think back to the day in Houston when you first began to realize that someday in your lifetime you might actually get a chance to go there yourself. It was 2002, and while much of the world was caught up in the wars and economic ups and downs that seem to never end, you walked into a room full of dreamers who told you that someday you could go to the Moon.

Yes, the first attempts to operate commercial space hotels had begun. A few rich guys had broken the government barrier and entered space, and it looked like there was going to be a steady stream of normal (albeit richer than normal) folks heading out into the beyond, but the Moon? In your lifetime? Right, uh huh.

Soon you started to understand that these weren't just a group of starry-eyed science fiction fans, but people who were very serious about making it happen, and not in some far distant future, but in your and their lifetimes. They were talking about real plans for Moon Bases, training bases for Mars explorers, libraries and hotels. It was the stuff of visionary fiction to be sure, but wait, they were also talking nuts and bolts ideas such as Cis-Lunar transportation systems, government policies, tax incentives, products and resources from the Moon.the kinds of things you look at when you leave the soft comfort of the SF Cons and movies and cross over into the world of "how do we make it so?" More importantly, the people doing the talking weren't starry eyed wish-upon-a-star types, they were real engineers from NASA and the corporate world, major non-fiction writers and historians, scientists, business people and even famous astronauts from the Apollo Program. And you started not just to listen, not just to get excited, but to ask yourself what can I do to help make this happen? And then life changed for you. Later, as you rolled up your sleeves and began to work on this amazing task in a world that didn't seem to care, you recalled President Kennedy's line "we choose to go to the Moon and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Then it came to you that if you could help in any way – contribute even the smallest idea or success to achieving this magnificent goal, you, and the world, would be forever changed.

And now, years later, you lie on your back and look at the Moon, your Moon, the Moon that is no longer seen as the end point of a burst of exploration and competition generations ago, but is the cross roads to the stars - the starting point for the next wave of human exploration and expansion. In the back of your mind a certain Sinatra song plays over and over again, and with a tear in your eye, you lean back and smile as over the intercom you hear those other magical words.

"Three, two, one, lift-off!"

Rick N. Tumlinson is a well-known evangelist for the space frontier. His writings and quotes appear in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Reader's Digest, Space News and dozens of other publications. He has appeared on such national television programs as ABC's World News Tonight, the CBS Morning Show, and Politically lncorrect. Tumlinson worked for noted scientist Gerard K. O'Neill at the Space Studies Institute, helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, testified before the National Commission on Space, and was a lead witness in congressional hearings on NASA in 1996 and 1997. He is a founder of the Foundation for the International Non-Govemmental Development of Space (FINDS), a multi-million dollar foundation which funds breakthrough projects and activities, and a founder of LunaCorp, a 7 year-old firm planning a commercial return to the Moon.