Should Our Government Take Us to Space?

For anyone following space news, we've seen several advances recently which turn our focus back to the real final frontier. We've had the Ansari X Prize, which awarded a 10 million dollar prize to the non-governmental organization first able to send a reusable, manned spacecraft to orbit twice within two weeks. More recently, Europe's largest aerospace company, EADS, has announced plans to build a space plane for tourist purposes, which would take passengers to weightlessness and back down to earth for a cost of about $267,000 per ticket.

These developments make one ask the question: Where are we going with this? The space program has until this point been left in the hands of national governments, which have been the only organizations with deep enough pockets to fund the necessary research and the costs of the new materials. The space program itself grew out of technologies which were developed for warlike purposes, necessarily the province of government.

But is it necessary for the space program to stay in the government's hands? One reason companies haven't addressed space travel on a commercial scale has been because of their inherent profit motive. In other words, there hasn't yet been a good way to make money at getting to space. EADS is making a good beginning at addressing that problem, but the space plane, while interesting, is a bit superficial. There being no spacebound endpoint to those trips, suborbital flights like those of the space plane are a closed system: sell tickets, take off from earth, go weightless, return to earth, repeat. Most likely highly profitable, but there will be no port at the other end which might be a jumping-off point for other companies to use as a springboard. Even orbital flights like those proposed by Derek Webber of Spaceport Associates will eventually lose their appeal without a destination, and will in any case only be accessible to a few.

So where to go? The obvious answer is, the moon. It's the closest, and we've been there already. Next question: Why? What would we do there? The first time we arrived, we did so as an attempt to show the world it could be done. From everything I've been able to discover, we haven't been back because we haven't been able to answer that second question.

As a government, that question "why return?" would have a very different answer than it does when asked by a private company. This is because their basic goals are very different. Private enterprise has profit as its goal, at the most basic level. Regarding government, Richard Tresch says in his book "Public Finance: A Normative Theory": "The goal of any economic system is ... promoting the economic well being of a nation's citizens, ... The same goal applies to government policy as well." This being true, if there is no pressing need driving a government into space in a meaningful, committed way - such as overpopulation (producing a need for new settlement space) or lack of resources (producing a need for practical mining and refining applications) - the needs of the people, whether actual or as perceived by a congressman attempting to please his constituency, will override any huge expense he might dedicate to a concerted effort to colonize space. As long as there is public pressure to attempt to reach the stars, the government will continue to fund some kind of effort to do so; but governments being the huge, unwieldy, many-minded organizations they are, waste will be rampant and focus on the goal will be inadequate as the project changes heads, hands, and directions. In government, the answer to the question "why return?" is probably "Because the next country over might get there first," or, "Because we might get re-elected if we show the people how progressive we are." Neither answer produces the kind of singleminded dedication and innovation necessary to leapfrog off this rock.

Let us, then, look at the reasons private enterprise might have to colonize space. Colonization, or at least travel, would necessarily have to be a profit-making activity in order for a company to financially justify investment in haring off into orbit. So what might we expect a private enterprise to do in space?

One suggestion was proposed by TransOrbital, Inc, which was the first company to receive permission from the US Government to launch a mission to the moon in September, 2002. However, shortly afterward, TransOrbital faded from sight, and nothing on their website is dated later than 2004. Of more relevance to us today might be Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites, who won the Ansari X Prize with SpaceShipOne on October 4, 2004. They didn't stop that year, but instead have tripled their employees to a count of about 250 since then, giving them more projects to work on including (among others) the GlobalFlyer, which completed the fastest flight around the world without refueling in 2005. Their latest is SpaceShipTwo, which will be carried to orbit by the White Knight 2, both vehicles being an expansion on the ideas first carried out with SpaceShipOne and its carrier vehicle, White Knight.

Rutan, in partnership with Sir Richard Branson, is also working on a "tour bus" type space plane with these new vehicles, but they appear to have a larger vision. Although seat prices are expected to remain around $200,000 for their ship as well, Branson says, "Our principal aim behind this is not to make money. The principal aim is to reinvest any money we make into space exploration. We expect to double, triple, quadruple the number of astronauts in the next few years that have currently experienced space." Rutan, in a discussion with Leonard David of Space.com, referred to this regarding the growth of space flight. Says Rutan: "We need what amounts to natural selection to work. Nobody is smart enough to know ahead of time whether something is the right answer. You've got to field the good ones and bad ones for the good ones to float to the top."

So back to the question: why go to space?

To really answer, you have to look at who's asking. Who are the government? Who are the private company? (The plurals are purposeful.) They are...us. We the people make up governments and private companies. But to what purpose? What kind of people go into government, and what kind into business? What kind of "natural selection" applies when we have these different types of people addressing the same problem?

In government, the goal is to blend in. Don't stick out; don't innovate, unless it's in a way accepted by your peers; do what your constituency/congressman/director says; and if you really want something done, do it behind closed doors so you can deny you did it if it really goes wrong. Stick with what works. Don't fail. Your funding depends on assured success.

In private enterprise, the goal is to innovate in whatever way you can. Compete for the customer; try new things, because if you don't you'll stagnate and die. Work harder, faster, longer. Try it, and if it fails, try something else; cut your losses. Stand out. Follow orders, but make suggestions. If you really think you can do it better but your boss won't let you, start another company and go ahead. Your funding depends on growth, innovation, pursuit of fresh goals.

When asked that question "why," people tend to come up with different answers. When searching the web for answers people might have given, I came across a quote from the science fiction show Babylon 5, which seems to sum them all up:

"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophanes ... and all of this ... all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."

Government understands that we feel this way. They try to please us; they build rockets and satellites and maintain the space shuttles and put together a cooperative space station, so we can "maintain a presence" and "work together in harmony." But the private enterprises which have involved themselves in the new space race, people like Burt Rutan and Sir Branson, feel this way themselves - and they have the power to begin to carry it out. They build new kinds of ships, they don't just patch holes in the old ones. They invest huge fortunes in backing projects like Spaceport America, the first purpose-built spaceport on earth, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They do things like create entire new spacefaring fleets, as Howard Hughes did at the beginning of commercial air travel. They want to do more than "maintain a presence." A presence isn't enough.

When faced with the choice, if I had mine, I would give it to the enterprises. Government should regulate, as they do; but that is their place - to regulate, not innovate. The NASA of the 1960's was a far different creature than the NASA of today, which has become just another monstrous arm of the behemoth. We need to see it for what it is, so we can make our next steps go forward, instead of just running longer on the treadmill.