10-Year Plan

jdr7181 wrote:

>--- In spacesettlers@y..., "Arthur P. Smith" wrote:
>
>>jdr7181 wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>>What are the most immediate needs?
>>>>
>>>>
>>Money. More specifically, an assured market in the 100's of
>>
>>
>billions of
>
>>dollars. [...]
>>
>
>[...] Just
>generally, what do we, the collective space advocacy community, need
>to focus on in the next 10 years to make space commerce happen?
>
I stand by my first answer: money. Whether government or private
spending, from taxpayers or consumers, there needs to be a lot more
money being spent on space than there is right now. If it's to be purely
private, we'll need massive marketing campaigns. If it's to be some mix,
something like the Space Settlement Initiative is needed, allowing a
small number of companies a monopoly on celestial real estate (or some
other quantifiable asset), in return for establishing the infrastructure
we want. If mostly public, which is probably the easiest course for a
space advocacy community push, an increase in government spending on
space is in order.

Right now, if you live in the US, NASA spends about $50 a year of your
tax money. Except for the moronic anti-government types, that's an
incredible deal. Why not push to double it, over, say, 5 years? The
science community has successfully pushed several times to double the
funding for the National Science Foundation. Health researchers get huge
increases for the National Institutes for Health. What's wrong with
space advocates that they can't advocate for space spending?

If you really want it to be private, that means, instead of the $50
going to NASA from every person in the country, only those actually
interested in space (or whatever is being marketed) will have to
contribute proportionally more. Say we manage to get 100,000 people (the
approximate size of the space advocacy community) enthusiastic enough to
contribute to a major space push. If it's to be at all effective it's
going to have to spend on a NASA scale - for a $10 billion/year project
that means each person will have to contribute $100,000/year!!! I'm
afraid you'll have to count me out of that though - I don't make that
kind of cash.

Ok, here's a test, to see who's truly committed to commercial space
development. You can't do $100,000/year, I understand that. Can you do a
one-time $16.95 contribution? That's all TransOrbital (the first truly
commercial deep space mission) is asking:

https://www.transorbital.net/catalog/index.html

and you get your message included in a lunar time capsule as well. So,
how many of you have purchased one of these? I happened to get the
deluxe package...

Anybody who hasn't done at least this is, de facto, an advocate for
letting the government do all the spending on space.

>
>Ask yourself this: Where do I want the state of space to be in 25
>years? Orbital infrastructure? Space-based industries? Larger space
>station/more space stations? Moon Base? Mars Base? A human population
>in space (or at least, not on Earth) exceeding 10,000 persons? Etc?
>
All of the above, of course...

>Now, what do we need to make your view of space (25 years from now) a
>reality? Cheaper access to LEO? Business-friendly space law/policy?
>Etc?
>
A change in attitude among the population in general, and among the
space advocacy community in particular, to put their money where their
dreams are. Barring that, laws to provide monopoly grants to major
corporations...

>
>>My point: despite the fervent wishes of many, the free market isn't
>>going to get us there all by itself.
>>
>>
>
>In other words, there is absolutely, positively no way for the
>private sector (business) to "open the space frontier" to commerce?
>Government has to be involved?
>
Unless a miraculous change in attitude toward space development happens
to some huge number of people (including all the so-called space
advocates), government involvement seems to be the only option. It
doesn't have to be massive involvement, however; all that's needed are a
few well-regulated monopolies...

That's my opinion, anyway...

Arthur