Harnessing this energy

> I've been looking hard into this issue over the past
> two years myself. I started along a similar path at
> first, writing my congresswoman and senators. They
> didn't seem to big on it. Then I tried talking with
> various academics and scientists in the field and
> found out that most cannot agree past their own pet
> projects and field of research (though there are some
> notable exceptions to this).

The solution is not to look to government. The solution is to seek ways
that we can contribute as individuals. Right now the biggest obstacle
to the development of a true spacefaring civilization is high launch
costs. Anything you can do to bring launch costs down will help. It may
even be as simple as saving money to buy a suborbital tourist ride on
one of the vehicles that will be flying in the next five years. At
least that puts money into the pockets of people who are working to
create the next generation of launchers.

Another possibility is to make small contributions to some of the
ambitious amateur groups that are working on launchers, like ERPS or
JAMSTARS. These groups may not achieve their explicit goals, but they
serve as an incubator for people who can then go on to either found
companies or work for companies that will lower launch costs. Remember:
evolution makes many starts. We need to move towards a situation
analogous to the personal computer market in the early 1980s - there
were tons of companies with plenty of ideas about how to do things -
the profusion of machines was incredible. I can name probably ten
different machines of the top of my head (really different, not
psuedo-different like various flavors of windows boxes). At the time
there was no way to know which one would win out, but because there
were so many startups many possible paths forward were tried, almost
guaranteeing that someone would find a killer application grow the
market.

The point is that we cannot know what the future will be like once
things really start to change, so we cannot plan a single path forward.
What we can know is that if there are many groups trying to blaze a
trail, the chances of one succeeding are that much higher.

The greatest danger is ill-considered government action. I know of at
least two startups that were negatively impacted by NASA research
programs basically drying up the pool of investment funds (Beal
Aerospace, and one other whose name escapes me for the moment). There
have been other instances of NASA directly competing with entrepreneurs
trying to run space-oriented companies (by giving away services the
companies were providing).

This is getting too long, so I'll stop here. Suffice to say that the
best policy the government could follow is to do basic R&D only and
solicit bids for operational services (flights to ISS for instance).
Directly funding vehicle development kills startups that aren't awarded
contracts, even if their idea is superior in the marketplace. Market
guarantees would be the biggest boon to the startups, and would ensure
that taxpayers get the best price for their launch services, to boot.

......Andrew