Houston Space Society
"The problem with the space program is..." starts just about every conversation about space these days. The problem with the space program is that space is being thought of as a program. A unified, monolithic, one-track approach is being used. Each new space project must fit into the program. The current space project is to put flags and footprints on Mars by 2019. This is no way to treat a frontier.
A frontier is an imaginary boundary surrounding human activity. Today, that boundary is a sphere surrounding Earth about 400 miles up. Beyond that, only robot probes are venturing. Oh, sure, we went to the Moon a few times, but we have spent more years since then not going to the Moon than we spent going there when we did. So the frontier is in low Earth orbit. To push that frontier out to the Moon will require a significant change in the way we are approaching our space program.
For there to be a frontier at the distance of the Moon, we will have to establish permanent, self-sufficient settlements on the surface of the Moon. Similarly, to have a frontier at the distance of Mars, we must have settlements on Mars. To do that, we must have a very different kind of program. What we have today is mission-oriented; people going to the Moon and Mars under the Space Exploration Initiative are going to explore. They will be on a mission with a projected date of return. In the space station they will be on a tour of duty. What we need are settlers establishing a self-sufficient support system with no intention of returning to Earth.
The settlers of the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies did not come on a mission from Europe. They were not on vacation, they came to stay. The commitment was to create something new. When people spread out from those early settlements, they populated an entire continent. They brought tools with them and lived off the land, putting infrastructure in place as they needed it. By 1636, scant years from the Mayflower's arrival at Plymouth, a university was founded in Massachusetts. Today, in the country where a few settlers put ashore at isolated landings in the wilderness three centuries ago, there is a thriving world power capable leading the exploration and settlement of the Solar System.
The same is possible with the Moon and Mars. We don't need more flags and footprints, we need pioneers and log cabins. Sure, the pioneers will wear pressure suits and the log cabins will be more like dirt-covered huts at first. Yet it is within our power to establish permanent settlements in space. Yes, they will depend on Earth for much. But most of the essential elements for survival can be found in situ. And once there, the settlers can establish research facilities on a much larger scale than would be possible with a mission-oriented approach. More importantly, the settlers would be learning about the space environment firsthand, developing new systems that work because they are needed. Some of these innovations may even represent exportable technology.
Why do we need to settle the Moon and Mars? By the same token, why go there in the first place? Not because President Bush committed us to the mission on 20th anniversary of Apollo 11. Not even because the National Commission on Space calls for human settlement of the Solar System. We must settle the Moon and Mars because it is the manifest destiny of life to colonize other planets. We are the agents of change who can create new Earth-like ecologies in space. We can utilize the resources of space for the benefit of Earth. We can create new wealth in space.
What is the source of the wealth of nations? Adam Smith made a convincing argument in 1776 that the source of wealth is people. People create wealth through innovation, through their labor, through their application of capital resources. The space program we need will be populated with people. People on the Moon and Mars creating wealth through innovation and labor, utilizing the resources of the Moon and Mars to make possible the further settlement of space, people applying capital resources for their own advantage and reaping the benefits. What has been missing in the Space Exploration Initiative has been the people.
We will never convince the American people to finance a multi-billion dollar space extravaganza to the Moon and Mars. Not after Apollo: check out the TV ratings on the last several Apollo missions if you want to gauge public interest in extravaganzas. The possibility of newer and better scientific research or going where no one has gone before will not suffice. The American people want to know what's in it for them. What should be in it is the opportunity for many people to explore and settle space for themselves. The investment in the Space Exploration Initiative could be like the first ship across the Atlantic or the first transcontinental railroad; a government-led expedition to open the frontier to everyone.
Once there, on the frontier, we could utilize lunar resources to develop solar power satellites to provide energy to other spacecraft as an electric power utility. We could even beam power back to Earth as Dr. Peter Glaser has suggested. Other industries and profitable enterprises will also arise, many unconceivable today. Certainly, tourism will play a major role as Earthlings come to gawk at the natives: us.
What would a program oriented toward opening the frontier look like? It would emphasize education, infrastructure, and homesteading. Historians will find those three quite familiar.
Education will be furthered by nationwide design competitions for small, student-built spacecraft to complete innovative space missions. Funding could come from federal, state, or local governments with the design competition targeted to the appropriate geographic area. Scholarships in space studies could be awarded as prizes for the most innovative student project, with hands-on training as the real reward.
Infrastructure would be furthered by encouraging private ventures to build synergistic or competing systems for launch to Earth orbit, orbital transfer activities, refueling, servicing, planetary landings, and in-space operations. Work to expand upon the closed-cycle life support work at Biosphere II and EPCOT will be vital to the development of self-sufficient settlements. Research into the specific facilitating technologies that will be needed for long-term stays on the Moon and Mars should be started.
Finally, homesteading will be furthered by providing cash awards for long-term stays in space or on a planetary surface. A grant of land on the lunar surface or Mars could be provided for settlers under the terms of an international treaty. It should be noted here that the so-called "Moon Treaty" is up for review in 1994; it governs the use of "the Moon and other celestial bodies." The US never ratified it, but can still participate in its review and revision. Property rights on other celestial bodies makes sense; after all, who do they belong to, anyway? Certainly those who go and work the land, settle there, and raise families will establish property rights, de facto or de jure.
Not long ago, a widely-known planetary scientist asked, "Who would want to live in space?" My answer is, "I do." The same answer has come from millions of Americans in various polls. Not in spite of the dangers, the hostile environment, the need to take so many vital materials along, the possibility of acclimatizing so that return would be impossible; not in spite of these things, but because of them. We are not sufficiently challenged on Earth. We are too comfortable here. The pioneering spirit of our ancestors lives on and calls us forth to the hinterlands.
Americans will never go to Mars, by 2019 or any year thereafter, unless we convey the possibility that we are going there to make it possible for others to follow. To live, to work, to play, to raise families, to settle, to move on.
Pioneering the space frontier is something that appeals to Americans because we are a nation of pioneers. It's not far-fetched. It's the only reason to go.
