There is a robust market for adventure travel and tourism. People want new experiences. The price isn't necessarily the most important consideration. The value of individual achievement is still very great.
People want to fly in space. While Senator Glenn foolishly chides the media for covering his personal opportunity to fly in space, as opposed to the pseudo-scientific justifications behind which he is hiding his junket, the media have clearly identified what the public really wants with regard to space.
The popularity of films like Star Wars and the multi-billion dollar property Star Trek in its various incarnations may be traced to one attribute. These fictional depictions of humans in space do not owe their success to their faithful adherence to scientific principles (which are sorely in absence), nor to their fundamental understanding of economics (which is also not in evidence), but exclusively and singularly to their depiction of vast numbers of various types of mostly ordinary people living and working and traveling and playing in space. What people are interested in about space is going into space themselves. To the extent that they don't have an opportunity to travel in space themselves, they are excited by opportunities to travel there vicariously. The popular enthusiasm for Apollo existed up until the point when it was no longer clear why space travel was being limited to the astronaut corps. Until individuals have a chance to fly in space, space travel will not regain the level of popular support it had in the late 1960s.
In at least four surveys, the answer most frequently volunteered to the question: "What do you want to do about space?" was, "I want to take a trip into space."
Tom Rogers, head of External Tanks Corporation and the Sophron Foundation, has estimated that about 85 million American adults share this desire. These people want to fly in space. If only a tiny fraction were willing to pay as much as $30,000 each for a ticket to ride a rocket into space, the market would still be worth in excess of a billion dollars a year.
NASA and the Department of Transportation have been actively standing in the way of this industry. In many ways, their irresponsible behavior is encouraging the entrepreneurs who are determined to meet the tremendous demand for space tourism to find their way in other jurisdictions.
In other words, NASA and the US Federal Government have turned their backs on the dream of spaceflight. Once, John F. Kennedy declared that it was time to take longer strides in space, time for America to lead the way. No longer.
Now it is time for NASA bureau-rats and contractors to line their pockets at the expense of the American taxpayers. It is time for us to wait while they dither about safety and re-entry vehicle licensing. It is time for us to see the Department of Transportation draft regulations to limit and control access to the space frontier, and put those regulations out for public comment.
We shouldn't tolerate this attitude any longer. Our next step should be to eliminate NASA, cancel the boondoggle International Space Station, cancel the Space Shuttle program, and give up the socialist agenda for controlling access to space.
NASA is not opening the door to space, it is being the door. It is high time we kicked that door down, battered it in, and used the broken pieces for kindling wood.
The socialist paradigm for space achievement cannot peacefully coexist with the entrepreneurial market paradigm for space achievement. We should give up the pretense that the government has any meaningful role in civilian space activities.
If that means repudiating the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, so much the better. If it means laying off tens of thousands of NASA employees and contractor employees, so much the better. If it means reducing the Federal debt by a few billion dollars a year through not paying for a government space program, so much the better. If it means giving the property on which the NASA Johnson Space Center (and the corruptly organized and monopolistic Space Center Houston) is located back to Rice University, so much the better.
Entrepreneurs have been struggling to lower the cost and improve the quality of access to space since at least the 1970s. NASA has laid waste to such efforts as Arthur Kantrowitz's laser launch system, Robert Truax's Volksrocket, the NERVA program for nuclear powered rockets, Space Services Incorporated of America, American Rocket Company, Starstruck, Space Travel Services, and many, many others. Why? Because these efforts have threatened NASA's turf, its controlling influence over space activities.
NASA won't accept a role as the basic research agency in which it might shine. It wants to dominate the space arena. In pursuing this domination, it has accepted massive corruption, it has turned aside probes into corruption and laid waste to the lives of innocent civilians and contractors (e.g. the Operation Lightning Strike investigation) while covering up the role of major players including center directors and NASA Administrators.
More fundamentally, NASA has deliberately sabotaged the efforts of entrepreneurs to find funds by making false claims about the potential of their projects. NASA has viciously interfered with private space efforts by undercutting their prices, often giving away free launch services to potential customers of private launch companies.
NASA has repeatedly proven that it is managed by corrupt, evil men and women who don't share the dream of spaceflight, and for whom working for NASA is just another job, another rat race, another way of making a buck, and an excellent opportunity to feather their nests for the future. NASA has the most egregious revolving door program, where NASA bureau-rats corruptly allocate contracting opportunities and then take jobs with contractor companies.
All efforts to investigate wrongdoing at NASA have failed. All efforts to reform NASA have failed. All efforts to reform the Federal procurement process, at least 9 since World War 2, have reached the same conclusions and made the same recommendations, none of which have been implemented.
Meanwhile, companies like Advent Launch Services, Scaled Composites, Rotary Rocket, Kistler, Kelly, Texas Spacelines, and many, many others persevere. These great American companies are led by great Americans like Burt Rutan, Harry Dace, and Mark Goll. The only way to get these men to stop pursuing the dream of spaceflight is to kill them.
Yes, we believe many of these efforts will succeed. The market is too large, the opportunity too ripe for failure to be tolerated for long. No, we would not feel comfortable putting murder past NASA. There have been deaths in the entrepreneurial space arena which have been surrounded by suspicious circumstances.
Fundamentally, what NASA is about is money. Dan Goldin's recent performance on Capitol Hill makes it clear that NASA is perfectly willing, even eager, to extort money from Congress. NASA is about corruptly allocated contracts, it is about bribery, it is about the most venal men taking as much as they can from the taxpayers for as long as they can. NASA is evil.
Therefore, I am of the opinion that NASA must be destroyed.
NASA delenda est.
For more information on this story, see Sightseers to Titanic... Mayflower Rocket X-Prize Foundation Texas Spacelines Rotary Rocket Kelly Kistler Scaled Composites
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