17 thoughts on “A Space-Exploration Program”

  1. NASA should be shrunk to 3 or 4 centers and the human space flight program completely cancelled. The robotic space science program is valuable enough to keep although I have to admit that spending tax dollars to support scientific curiosity makes me uneasy but understanding the basic physics of the universe seems a worthy enough goal. If entrepreneurs want to launch them into space, more power to them, but do it without tax money. I don’t think anything useful will ever come of it but if it’s not my money, what do I care?

  2. Their thinking suffers from the same flaws that afflicted European foreign policy, which is that there should be one or a handful of goals or objectives and that all efforts and policies should mesh with those. As Walter Russell Meade explained in Special Providence, America succeeded where none thought we even had a coherent foreign policy because each interest group pursued its own objectives, regardless of whether those meshed with the objectives of other interest groups.

    Where European governments were busy pursuing one or two things, America was doing dozens of things – everywhere. Our State Department policy was in conflict with the War Department policy, and both were ignored by our businessmen who were working at cross purposes to our missionaries, all of whom were ignored by our farmers who set our agricultural policy. The result was that Europe ended the century barely able to field an army inside of Europe, whereas America ended up a global military, political, and cultural hegemon because dealing with America was like dealing with an octopus, where nobody could avoid getting wrapped in a few of its arms, whether movies, business, language, trade, alliances, military cooperation, science, fashions, or snack foods,

    Yet the whole time esteemed foreign policy thinkers failed to understand that the magic hand of free-enterprise in economics had a counterpart in foreign relations, where what seems like undisciplined chaos is what actually produces the results, in contrast to central planning and single-message, single-goal, focused, unified strategies.

    The debate over US space policy shows the same blindness. Even if they were to come together and agree, all they’d accomplish is one or two goals, primarily ones that would serve someone’s sense of power or state interests but accomplish little in the way of sustained expansion and growth relative to free-market chaos (the shotgun approach of trying to fill all niches). As Meade observed about US foreign policy, if it had been as successful in the 20th century as European policy, America would be back to 13 colonies hugging the Atlantic seaboard.

    Zubrin wants to go to Mars, so he should. Musk wants to colonize Mars. So let him. Many want to develop the moon as a resource base, and they should. Bigelow wants to build space hotels, and those would be nice. Lots of companies want to mine asteroids, and why not? And of course there are the backers of O’Neill type space colonies. Some people want to colonize the cloud tops of Venus, and they should have at it. I’m a fan of colonizing Mercury as an industrial base. Despite the large delta-V penalty, it’s probably a future profit center. Eventually some unlikely entrepreneur will turn Jupiter and Saturn into major tourist destinations, while a competitor will exploit both them and the Trojan asteroids for resources.

    All these efforts, though seemingly random and unfocused, will feed off each other, and humanity and business will expand in unforeseeable ways that we can’t currently imagine. Meanwhile at these conferences, people debate the goals and purposes much like the British crown once viewed America mainly as a good source of naval timber and beaver pelts, and wasted their time trying to prioritize funding between those two important resource development projects. Eschewing that, America cut itself loose and started making cars, talking movies, electronics, computers, and jet airliners. Beaver pelts and white oak, while useful, just aren’t a sufficient basis for a thriving economy.

    When what we have is a space program, the program should have a goal, and a goal that supports our national priority, and once someone follows that thought, they can’t see beyond beaver pelts.

    1. “All these efforts, though seemingly random and unfocused, will feed off each other, and humanity and business will expand in unforeseeable ways that we can’t currently imagine. ”
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

      That’s the reason the multi-pronged, many irons in the fire system works…because you cannot plan the successful path in big systems. Even in small systems: I am not doing precisely the work I imagined I wanted to do when I was in high school: it’s so much better than that. Even though I followed the educational path I planned after high school (Aerospace Engineering). The first perturbation to The Plan was getting a second bachelors concurrently in Computer Science. Before I went to college the thought never entered my mind.

      But back to the space program:

      Central planning has been a demonstrated monumental failure. It was ok for the Moon shot because the government had a political goal and the moon mission served that goal. And startups – as NASA was back then – are often highly efficient at the beginning because there isn’t a lot of bureaucratic sclerosis – yet. But 500+ political knuckleheads in the insular bubble that is Washington cannot – repeat (for the Jims and Gerribs of the world) CANNOT – choose the exact path to the best big system – like an economic system.

      And the space program is, and always was, an economic system.

    2. “When what we have is a space program, the program should have a goal, and a goal that supports our national priority, and once someone follows that thought, they can’t see beyond beaver pelts.”

      Or Saturn V’s

  3. To make money, to make lots of money, for the U.S. economy by making it easier for U.S. businesses to exploit space resources. Unfortunately whenever NASA takes a step in a productive direction, like planning to capture an asteroid, the scientist community that seems to believe that own NASA, screams and NASA is forced again into irrelevance.

      1. Please name a few. Raising tax revenues, while necessary, is also an exercise in control and graft. You exercise control by granting (for a price) exceptions and special favors to those willing to pay the price. The revenues get spent in ways for the politicians’ maximum personal political and financial advantage.

  5. “As I point out in the book, one of the reasons space policy is such a mess is because we don’t have a national consensus on that question.”

    Rand – I really don’t think we want a national consensus.

    We want a million ideas being pushed forward by private ideas and private money. And we are just now seeing the beginnings of that.

    I think the government’s space policy should be almost non-existent…. R&D and airspace-like regs, and contracted launch services to loft government satellites.

    1. I agree, go back to the successful NACA model. The government assists industry by supporting R&D and helping with expensive test facilities.

    2. I don’t think we need a national consensus on where to go, or how to do it, but it would be nice to have one on why we’re doing it. We’d be much more likely to get good policy if we did.

      1. Rand,

        The search for a national consensus on space exploration goals is Apollo Era thinking. President Kennedy saw Apollo as a way to demonstrate U.S. technology achievement was far ahead of the Soviets’ technology by beating the Soviets to the Moon. He needed at least a political consensus on why we were doing Project Apollo to get the Congressional support to spend the billions needed. And Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were successful in that regard.

        But the Cold War is long over and so is the need to demonstrated U.S. technical superiority in space. The U.S. needs a national consensus on space exploration today about as much as it needs one on computers. Like computer technology space should be left to the private sector, except for specific defense needs.

        Really NASA is the classic example of government inertia, its justification in terms of the needs of the U.S. disappeared decades ago, but because of Congress critters wanting pork to flow to their districts, and consultants, scientists and aerospace firms looking to it for entitlements, no one has the will to put it out of its misery. But I feel folks who are seeking a national consensus for space exploration are just trying to relive the glory days of Apollo or looking to get a piece of NASA budget for their pockets. What is really needed is the political will to shut down NASA and limit government space spending to national defense needs.

      2. Here’s the thing. I think there’s actually a fairly broad consensus that we’re doing space exploration for science, pride, prestige and to support our domestic space industry, not necessarily in that order, and that we don’t want to spend much more annually than the post-Apollo norm. The conflict comes from districts with existing NASA centers passionately wanting to preserve jobs at those centers and everyone else, not so much.

        1. Those are just the NASA talking points. There is no evidence the public cares about it other that as occasional entertainment that, for the boomers at least, bring back memories about Apollo.

  6. I’m with Greg: I thought your whole thing was that “we don’t need no steenkin’ national consensus” because private entrepreneur geniuses like Elon Musk will lead the way.

    1. Then I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. Rand has been all about having a national space program and a strong space industry, for as long as I can remember.

  7. If there’s one point of consensus about NASA’s exploration program business, it’s that there is no consensus among the space business community about what it should be doing.

    Nor should there be other than making money.

    NASA should have to justify their funding by clearly defining an objective that actually does justify the tax payer money spent, but this is part of a much bigger issue regarding accountability.

    That’s the fundamental difference between business and government. Business has a means of getting better… failure. Govt. isn’t allowed to fail, usually by saying red is black.

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