Red Tape or Red Planet?

By | June 6, 2009
2 Comments

Is it time for NASA, ad for the government in general, to bow out and let the private sector take over the development of space? Some folks on the private side think so:

Private Space to the Government: “Get Out of the Way!”

As the private space industry comes of age, industry insiders say the U.S. government is stifling private money investment.

Private firms complain that the government owns too much of the space agenda and that it throws up too many roadblocks for launching communication satellites and performing important research in space.

I have mixed feelings about this debate. I think “What have you done for me lately?” is a question we can and should ask of NASA, and that, unfortunately, “lately” refers to the past 40 years or so. But you can’t argue that NASA gave us Apollo.

NASA gave us the moon.

But then, where did that get us, exactly? From the perspective of nearly half a century later, Apollo can be viewed many different ways: historical oddity, false dawn, dead end. Which was it? I tend to believe that it was a combination of the three, albeit above all a glorious achievement and one of humanity’s finest moments. That’s right: one of humanity’s finest moments, brought to you by the United States government.

But another fine moment, one that I hope is coming sooner rather than later, is when the first private expedition lands on the moon, or Mars, or takes its orbital position in the asteroid belt. When someone opens a bona fide business in space — collecting solar power in low earth orbit, manufacturing precision equipment in zero gravity, mining the moon for Helium 3 — then we’re truly on our way.

The question is: what role, if any, does the US government have to play in getting us towards those milestones? The irritated businessfolk quoted in the article linked above might argue that the government has little or no useful role to play. And maybe they’re right. But my hypothetical response to their positio is this:

How much of what is going on in space right now would be happening if Apollo had never happened?

I don’t pretend to have an authoritative answer to that question, but my suspicion is that, while Apollo didn’t lead directly to a mission to Mas or a permanent settlement on the moon, it opened up the universe for us by showing that it is possible to achieve great things in space. Yes, a program that showed us that and that ALSO led to a permanent moon settlement or mission to Mars would have been better. But opening up the universe is not a small achievement.

NASA seems to do best with a daring vision and a well-funded Big Project. Maybe 40 years in the wilderness is long enough. Maybe it’s time for NASA to take on something truly inspirational once again…though I’m not sure what that would be. But if a modern-day JFK were to declare that, before this or the next decade is out, we will send a crew on a multi-planet mission landing on Mars and several moons of Saturn and Jupiter and back again (or something of that ilk) it would get NASA out of the way of the new private developers wanting to make progress in local space, and it would open things up for generations of exploration and development yet to come.

All we need is a Big Project, an urgent driving force behind it (as the Cold War was for Apollo) and some means of funding the whole thing. (Perhaps someone will figure out how a project like that is the solution for climate change!) Failing that, the government no doubt still has a legitimate regulatory role to play vis a vis space development, but we’ll have to find our inspiration elsewhere.

  • http://wheretheresawilliam.blogspot.com Will Brown

    Given how you’ve framed this question, Phil, I don’t think we can keep discussion politics-free. Best I can do is try to keep things as generic as possible.

    Governments are creations for initiating some measure of control over a collection of individuals (hereafter “the citizenry”). Bureaucracies like NASA are simply less transitory efforts to impose same on generations of citizens. Absent some sort of existential threat to the government (however logically inconsistent, people do tend to seperate governmental entities from the general citizenry), I can’t think of any reason for said government to see it being to it’s own advantage to relax it’s efforts at achieving and maintaining control over the citizenry.

    The trick then becomes one of framing the issue as an existential threat that is best resolved by as diffuse a government regulatory environment as can be manipulated by the citizenry. This can take the form of a traditional political threat, of course, but I suspect something more along the lines of the cinematic Armageddon-type circumstance (an existential threat who’s resolution lies off planet) would actually prove to be more achievable as a practical matter.

    I have lately been thinking about the concept of linking AI development with just such an effort (extra-planetary resource development) as a mechanism to accelerate (and restrict the threat potential) of both. Needs more thought still.

  • https://blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    Will –

    Good points. It could be that once NASA turned the corner from being an agency that managed grand endeavors to one that issues space-use permits, there was no going back. Per the discussion last night, protecting infrastructure is a valid role — but not a very inspiring one.

    Regarding that last idea, those AI mining robots out in the Asteroid Belt will eventually descend on Earth will a full “liberation” Armada built from the very ore they were constructed to retrieve.

    The pitch: It’s Terminator meets Battlestar Galactica.

    I’d watch it!