Dear Friends,
It seems to me, we could very well be at the cusp of a real space age, you know, like the one we were supposed to live in when we were kids. This time the new space race is not from competition due to a cold war between super powers, but led and indeed driven, by free enterprise. Trump, it seems at this point, understands the fundamental limitation to any space program, that it be doable in that President who initiated its term. In that way the US government is finally perhaps going to reengage with space. China is also working on a legitimate space program. Theirs has a series of long term strategic goals that outlive any administration, in that way the Chinese totalitarian structure has an advantage in long term planning, but as with any autocratic system, in the long run it is stultifying, economically, culturally and scientifically. The European Union has neither the will, nor the vision to go into space, they are too intent on self genocide to give the future any never mind. Russia has a very capable space program being the single nation able to put a human in orbit, but they are squandering their lead, by only renting out orbital seats. In the end, all the nations on Earth now have to put up or shut up, because, whether they like it or not, private enterprise is going there.
Poor government, it has such a hard time competing with free enterprise, so much so it is unfair. Government is hobbled with cronyism, lack of consequences for failure, lack of incentives to contain costs, pernicious incentives to never finish a project, political interference, etc… Unless government shuts down the free market, it cannot compete at all. Space exploration is the same way. In the decades the US and the Soviet Union competed in space exploration, the US advantage was the private enterprise system, that the government relied on to make it happen. The USSR had no such private enterprise system and so had to run it’s entire space program through the bureaucracy. As a result the USSR couldn’t compete, bureaucracy can never out compete free enterprise, even when the government is infatuated with an idea.
Today, the glass ceiling has been broken and private enterprise is able to put material into orbit, and soon their rockets will be human rated, once that happens a universe of opportunities will open up to mankind. If the cost for both solar electric and orbiting a pound of payload becomes cheap enough, geostationary solar satellites could be built. The servicing of which would jump start human exploration of the solar system due to the infrastructure such a system would require. A hotel on the Moon would initially be only for the uber rich, like flat screen televisions were at one time, but like everything capitalism touches, the cost will be inexorably driven down until the common person can afford it. Once the common man can afford to vacation on the Moon; space travel will be common.
By the end of 2018 both NASA and Space X, (the private company) are planning to send a crewed ship around the Moon. NASA, at this point, is planning on using off the shelf space shuttle parts to build the heavy lift booster they need. Since most if not all the parts are already human rated the cost could be extremely low to get it off the ground. Government however is seldom rational like that, so I expect NASA to scrap the off the shelf plan, and instead buy a piece of expensive land, build a factory, use it to make five parts, then scrap the plant, When they need more parts, just buy more land… like they do their boosters. Meanwhile Space X has shown itself able to land it’s spent boosters to be used in the future, a huge cost savings and improvement in reliability, since the reliability of a machine is highest between the first ten percent and final eighty percent of it’s lifespan. The limiting factor for Space X is it’s ability to get government to sign off on it’s human rating.
China plans on setting up a Moon base in the next decade. You can bet, if and when they get to the Moon, their people will be armed and they will land on the South Pole. Claiming that land will ensure a monopoly on water on the Moon unless a reserve is found at the north pole. Water is conjectured to be at the north pole but is known to be at the south pole. China still has to thread their space program through the inefficiencies of bureaucracy however. That is why it has taken China decades to make a tiny amount of progress, even though their space capsule is a knock off of an old Soyuz design. Russia is still using the same orbital technology they were using during the original space race. Their plans to build yet another booster, like Energia, have been put on hold due to their desire to expand horizontally. Europe is in the throes of self genocide, so cannot be bothered with future plans, while nations like India and Japan that have ostensibly the ability to place a human in orbit, but are so underfunded they are merely a national trophy.
It is the entrance of private space ventures that has opened up the possibility, and at this point it is only a possibility, for human beings to become a space faring civilization. Governments could wreck this opportunity, as they have in the past, this time by regulating the private space industries out of business or collapsing the economy. If that doesn’t happen however, private space is poised to start a new era in human space exploration, one that will make our dreams of humanity in space come true. People living and working on the Moon, mining asteroids for precious metals, exploring Mars, Europa and Titan, learning about the origin of our solar system, and in doing so understand the mind of God a little bit better. Ideally the pragmatic capitalist mindset will become the norm off planet. Expansionist countries like China, now have to either vastly step up their plans for space exploration, else permanently fall behind. Nation states can come along, or be relegated to the dustbins of history, where quite frankly, I believe most governments belong.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
