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Jim Davidson
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To the extent that it represents the furthest reaches that humans have been, the orbit of the Moon is the frontier of human activity. But we don't travel there anymore. Humans have not been to the Moon for 25 years as of this December. So, the orbit of the Mir space station, a few hundred miles above the Earth, represents the current frontier line.
Yet even this frontier community cannot be said to be thriving. It hosts two cosmonauts, one astronaut, and the occasional visiting crew of three Soyuz cosmonauts or six to eight Shuttle astronauts. It is tinier than almost any historical frontier community on record.
The failed Viking colonies in Vinland had more settlers. The lost colony of Roanoke had more settlers. There isn't a village of the era of the Spanish Conquest that was this small. Ghost towns of the Old West, in their respective heydays would have had many more people.
Mir is not a center of industrial activity. It is not the home to successful businesses. It neither produces major products for export, nor does it represent a significant market for imports. It is about the size of two or three Winnebagos, and while it covers a great deal of mileage every year, it can't be said to actually go anywhere.
Space, then, appears to be a failed frontier. It isn't creating vast opportunities for individuals, families, and businesses. About the only space activity which has proven profitable is the placing of communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit. That activity is managed and directed from the ground, needing no human space transportation at all.
Why is space a failed frontier? What went wrong?
Certainly, more than enough people are interested in space. Roughly 80 million adult Americans are interested in flying in space themselves. Films such as Star Wars and television shows such as Star Trek have illustrated a powerful urge people have to live and work in space, or travel there for pleasure.
Space has great potential. Even one nickel-iron asteroid, if successfully captured and placed in a high Earth orbit, could supply huge quantities of platinum, feedstocks for high grade steel, and dozens of other valuable commodities, not only for industrial applications on Earth, but for space development as well. One solar power satellite could power a city the size of Houston for decades, cleanly and cheaply. New materials can be produced in the weightless environment of space, and many important processes can benefit from high quality vacuum available in space. The view from high above Earth affords excellent opportunities for identifying land and sea resources. Tourism alone could be a multi-billion dollar space industry within 10 years.
Indeed, any brief evaluation of the universe will assure you that most of its resources are not down here on Earth. There is vast untapped potential for solving humanity's problems by tapping the vast resources of the Solar System, the Galaxy, and ultimately the rest of the universe.
But that potential hasn't been realized. The entities responsible for space activities have used a highly constrained model for human activity. That model has been essentially militaristic in nature.
Most of the 20th Century's leading space pioneers have come from military backgrounds. Werner Von Braun was an officer in the Nazi military. Even his post-War essays in Collier's magazine reveal a military orientation, with space "missions" and space "stations" and lunar "bases" to achieve a "conquest" of space. Von Braun's Russian counterpart, Sergei Korolev, was also a military man. Most of the astronauts and cosmonauts who have flown in space have had military training. The man responsible for the organization and development of America's post-War aerospace contractor community, Walter Dornberger, had also been largely responsible for the Nazi slave camps at Peenemünde. Not surprisingly, many NASA contractor employees feel like they are working in a concentration camp environment.
Military training is not a bad thing, nor indeed is military discipline and strategy. If your objective is to win a war, such as the recent Cold War, and if technological achievement can be used as a component of successful strategy in that war, then a military approach to space activities makes sense.
But frontiers are not settled by creating forts. Rather, forts are created to protect settlements already on the frontier. Settlements are created by settlers seeking opportunities not available in civilized regions. Settlers seek profit, they seek change, and they seek sanctuary. They rarely represent government, and are more likely to be fleeing from government oppression.
Governments operate virtually every aspect of the modern space industry. American, European, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian governments are responsible for almost all available launch systems. The few alternative launch vehicles available from the commercial sector are tightly regulated by government. Even new launch system development has been tied to government funding and government direction.
Unfortunately, governments are essentially inept at the one thing that frontiers need the most: economics. Governments do not develop economical systems. Competition develops more economical approaches, and government activities are inherently anti-competitive, even when they are not further hampered by corruption, intrigue, and turf warfare.
Calls for government development of Cheap Access to Space, known by the amusing if bizarre acronym "CATS," are doomed to failure. It isn't possible for government to lower the cost of anything, certainly not by as much as an order of magnitude. That is a task eminently suited to the private sector.
Governments are also poor at developing businesses. Recent efforts on the part of NASA to fund and evaluate business plan development by private space companies are amusing, but destined to play infintesimal roles in the economy. Again, the private sector knows how to create businesses, evaluate their plans, fund potentially successful startups, and determine through market forces which companies will succeed and which will fail.
When you look at the history of frontier development, there are cases where governments ran things. The Portuguese empire, while based on mercantile trade, largely consisted of trading bases and stations sponsored by the Portuguese government. It is almost amusing to note that the Portuguese role in late 20th Century affairs is not a recommendation for this approach to frontier development.
The other major model involves private initiative. English monarchs encouraged private efforts to colonize North America. Chartered companies raised capital in London's financial district, bought supplies, and landed colonies in the New World. These colonies became self-sustaining when they developed export crops, in particular tobacco. Unauthorized colonies also came to America, and the drive into America's heartland was powered by the desires of individuals seeking good farm land, good ranch land, success in the fur trade, and eventually gold in America's West.
How shall we recover this great frontier in space? Surely not through the efforts of government agencies. While these entities can facilitate private space efforts, they have taken an anti-competitive stance, preferring to preserve their own monopolies.
Nor will it be government spending that opens the space frontier. Even were the United States government to allocate more than one percent of its annual budget to the development and exploration of space, it isn't able to afford sustained expenditures in this area when faced with a multi-trillion dollar debt. Moreover, without the profit motive to control costs, and with the usual political influence peddling and corrupt procurement practices for which our government has become infamous, it is unlikely that a trillion-dollar space program will ever land humans on Mars, much less open the space frontier.
Ultimately, the space frontier will be opened. It will be opened by individuals and by new companies, by those determined to see it opened. It will not be opened because of government regulation, innovative legislation, or increased federal spending, but in spite of those things.
The future will bring vast new opportunities for all the people on Earth. The day is approaching when you or I will be able to buy a ticket to fly to the Moon in much the same way we presently buy a ticket to fly to Australia, and for roughly the same price. The day is coming when factories in space produce such tremendous material wealth that factories on Earth can be retrofitted with major anti-pollution systems, or shut down entirely. The day is approaching when the vast energy and mineral resources of the Solar System make it possible to discontinue the mining of Earth, or do so in a much more environmentally benign fashion.
Ultimately, it will be possible to return much of Earth to the status of a wilderness park. The tremendous opportunities on the new frontier will drive economic development, encourage mass emigration, and raise living standards on a global and interglobal basis.
When these things happen, as they will begin to in the very near future, it will be entrepreneurs who are responsible. Men and women like those who created the microcomputer industry and revolutionized the Internet with developments on the World Wide Web; men and women like those who created the railroads, the airlines, and the trucking companies of the modern era; men and women who see the profit potential in space development and industrialization, who go out there seeking fortunes, who live by their wits.
Almost 400 years ago, shortly after the beginning of the 17th Century, Johannes Kepler wrote to Galileo. He said, "Create ships and sails capable of navigating the celestial atmosphere, and you will find people to sail them, people unafraid of the vast emptiness of space." In his words you can see that he envisioned a bold new shipbuilding industry, one that created vast commercial fleets like those of his time, fleets which would set sail on a new ocean to approach new worlds.
That is the vision to which we must return, if we are to see the potential of the space frontier realized. The diversion represented by the military model of missions, stations, and bases will ultimately be a footnote in history. Beyond a very limited sphere of activity, with predictable events and predetermined goals, the centrally planned approach is unable to sustain itself. The chaos of the market economy is the set of forces on which our future depends.
