The days of this society are numbered. Its reasons and its merits have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; its inhabitants are divided into two parties, one of which wants to build their own space ships and leave this society behind. A Five Year Plan for establishing local, community-based AAA groups around the world, dedicated to building their own space ships, is part of the AAA's independent space exploration program, launched on April 23rd 1995. The AAA released balloons into the air at 3 p.m. (GMT) in synchronisation with Autonomous Astronauts across the world doing likewise in celebration of this historic occasion. Dream time is upon us....

Inner City AAA Mission Statements include these declarations: technology is developed by the military and intelligence agencies as a means of controlling their monopoly on space exploration; economic austerity is manufactured by the state to prevent the working class building their own space ships; governments are incapable of organising successful space exploration programs.
WHAT WE NEED TODAY IS AN INDEPENDENT SPACE EXPLORATION PROGRAM, ONE THAT IS NOT RESTRICTED BY MILITARY, SCIENTIFIC OR CORPORATE INTERESTS.
An independent space exploration program represents the struggle for emancipatory applications of technology.

Whilst NASA refuse to conduct any research into sex in space, the AAA intend to openly explore the sexual possibilities in zero gravity. Already Inner City AAA are designing several experiments that we wish to conduct to test our hypothesis that sex in space will be lots more fun. However, whilst we will undertake these experiments, we want to stress that the improved quality of sex in space is not the only reason to build space ships. The media has attempted to concentrate it's gaze on this aspect of our program, but they have obviously yet to realise that we may also choose to use the promise of sexual experimentation as a promotional ploy to further our own ends. The year 2000 is right around the corner....

All too often those in opposition to the current government, military and corporate monopoly on space exploration fail to set themselves realistic goals. And all too often this failure, this lack of a structured and disciplined plan of action for obtaining independent space exploration, leads to cynicism, despair, defeatism and, in some cases, insanity. The Association of Autonomous Astronauts know that to achieve our goals we must firstly understand the terrain we are playing on. So our Five Year Plan emphasises the need for rigorous training. However, unlike our enemies at NASA we do not concentrate on physical capabilities, scientific careerism or military brainwashing.

Autonomous Astronauts must think for themselves. This is why the Association of Autonomous Astronauts research skills that use the imagination, requiring the ability to move in several directions at once, exploring the power to abolish thought constructs we are commonly socialised into believing like, for example, the concepts of space and time. Playing three-sided football has been a crucial component to training at Inner City AAA, who report that it improves competence in deception, even preparing players for learning how to change and adapt the terrain they play on.

The Five Year Plan also emphasises the need for spreading a diversity of ideas about space travel. Through a world-wide network of groups dedicated to developing their own independent space exploration programs, ideas collide with each other and new possibilities are made available. Unlike the bureaucratic structures of government space agencies, the Association of Autonomous Astronauts grows laterally, branching out in several directions at once. We understand that to achieve our goals, the form that we organise in and the way we connect to each other is as important, perhaps more important, then the propaganda we produce.

Creating a critical distance between ourselves and our space exploration projects is another important element to the Five Year Plan. Autonomous Astronauts are constantly questioning what they are doing, looking at space travel from new angles, considering other possibilities and directions to move in. Only by doing this can the Autonomous Astronaut avoid the pitfall of basing their identity on being a space explorer. We must be ourselves first and foremost, and Autonomous Astronauts only after that. If identity becomes cemented to the process of Autonomous Astronauts struggling to develop independent space exploration programs, how soon before these Autonomous Astronauts inherit a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo?

The Association of Autonomous Astronauts recognises that to fully achieve our goals we may well have to entirely re-invent current attitudes to space travel. But Inner City AAA are confident that the Five Year Plan which emphasises structured and disciplined projects, realistic short-term goals, rigorous training, a world-wide network and the constantly revised critical distance between ourselves and our space programs, will be enough to change minds.

It is an appropriate moment to consider some of the responses made so far to the Association of Autonomous Astronaut's Five Year Plan for establishing a world-wide network of independent and community-based space exploration programs.

There have been small-minded idiots working in various arms of the media industry who attempt to denigrate our efforts and pass them off as being completely ludicrous. For example, The James Whale Show rejected us at the last moment on the grounds that we would be too esoteric for their audience. These responses always dispute the possibility of us achieving our goals because of the vast amount of money that must surely be required. Our reaction to this evident lack of imagination is composed of several levels. We can patiently remind these buffoons that an evolutionary impetus cannot be prevented from fulfilling what it pursues, after-all, the dreams of those who desire to doubt everything transform the world. We can also suggest that re-inventing current attitudes to space travel may well demand a total redistribution of resources throughout society, and that, in any case, some forms of space travel may well turn out to be surprisingly cheap. The point is, of course, that only those who attempt the impossible will achieve the absurd.

There are those sad fools who proclaim their opposition to all forms of oppression but then ridicule the AAA's activities because we don't deal with 'reality'. As if they can stand in judgement over us and pronounce what is and is not to be considered as 'reality'. The AAA can show these imbeciles how we are in control of our own 'realities'; by creating independent space programs and building our own space ships, we do not need anyone to tell us what can and cannot be thought, experienced, dreamt of etc. After-all, we have learnt to travel in space.

And then comes those packs of intellectuals, the twits who consider themselves so clever just because they can detect some subliminal advertising, and who tell us in extremely patronising tones how they can appreciate our endeavours as a form of serious joke, or even worse, as a metaphor for other struggles. These twats proudly inform us, as if they've just completed another cross-word puzzle, how great it is that we are creating a living myth that anyone can participate in. Surely nothing but contempt should be spared for these slime-balls, so full of themselves they remain oblivious to the efforts of the AAA as we achieve definite results, prepared to put our theories into practice.