My Input to the Space Commission


The President's Space Commission is currently seeking public input. Go to the commission's web site and select the 'Contact Us' button to submit your input. Here is what I submitted to the commission today, including my personal view on 'why' explore and open the frontier and some recommendations on how to go about it:


I am an engineer who works in the space industry and I am active in several space advocacy organizations. However, the views presented here are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of the organizations I am affiliated with.

Why explore space? Reasons commonly given are science, spin-offs or inspiration. Certainly, basic science must be a part of our space activities, as pure research can contribute future practical benefits that cannot now be imagined while provoking the deepest questions about our place in the universe. Certainly, technologies developed from earlier space efforts have found their way into many aspects of our everyday lives. And those early space activities certainly did inspire many young people, including myself, to study challenging subjects and pursue careers that contribute significantly to our society’s economic and technological advancement.

However, that inspiration was based on the expectation that those early explorers were opening the path for many to follow in our lifetime. Does the fact that that hasn’t happened indicate that the importance of opening this frontier to society is not sufficiently recognized?

I would like to propose that the opening of this expansive frontier would make a crucial difference to the economic and social/cultural future of our society.

The potential of space activity to spur new and growing industries has direct relevance to some of the down-to-earth problems that concern people today. The need to create new jobs as familiar ones migrate overseas or are replaced by automated processes is becoming increasingly evident. So, too, is the need to generate new revenue to meet the needs of an increasingly older population as the traditional Social Security and Medicare programs and private retirement plans face an uncertain future.

Looking to the longer term, does the cultural worldview tend to welcome future generations or fear them as a danger to the Earth’s environment? Population trends in America are tending toward fewer young workers supporting an increasingly older population. Populations in Western Europe are in actual decline and some would impose this dismal prospect on the rest of the world through coercive population control programs.

But isn’t there a more hopeful prospect for the future that doesn’t pit people against the planet? Professor John Lewis of the University of Arizona, in his book Mining the Sky, describes the potential abundance of resources in the Solar System, particularly in the asteroids. Might not the most compelling justification for exploration be to provide future generations with the resources to sustain their lives and the ability to live in greater freedom?

For our space exploration plans to fulfill this great potential, it is important that they be carried out in a sustainable way that truly enables the merchants and the settlers to follow the explorers. This rules out ‘business as usual’ as practiced by NASA and the aerospace industry over the past few decades.

The proposed FY2005 NASA budget offers some hopeful hints of change. The ‘Cargo and Crew Services’ (a.k.a. ‘ISS Transport’) line item to seek alternative means of accessing the International Space Station and the ‘Centennial Challenges’ prizes for innovative technology development are good starts and should be ramped up and broadened in future years. Data purchase of, for example, high-resolution lunar mapping would be another way for NASA to take more of a customer role for entrepreneurial space ventures.

The traditional Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) should not be allowed to add to the cost of the exploration effort, and Congress should look at reforming or bypassing the usual procurement labyrinth.

While the exploration program sees the Moon as a venue to test systems and practice for Mars exploration, it should also serve as a catalyst where NASA acts as a customer for commercial services provided on or near the Moon. This could jump start economic activity on the Moon utilizing local resources. A sustained industrial presence on the Moon would also enable affordable science activity to continue after the exploration program has moved on to Mars.

Congress should pass pending legislation to enable new commercial space industries. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 will codify the regulatory environment so that today’s fledgling suborbital spaceflight industry has a chance to grow into a robust orbital transportation industry that can contribute to the sustainability of the exploration effort. The Zero-G/Zero-Tax bill will provide incentives for new space industries that will follow the explorers into the Solar System.

In summary, to carry out the exploration program sustainably over decades requires challenging entrenched ways of doing business and engaging the participation of the private sector. And, once again, we need to communicate how the drive to explore connects with the fundamental social/cultural imperative to provide for the life and liberty of future generations.