The NASA approach using public-private partnerships is a step towards a future where commercial business can fund an increasing share of development costs and sustain operations in outer space including space exploration. While there is no certainty that wars will happen, dependence on the political process to fund space exploration into the future is high risk. Earlier, the costs of the Vietnam War compelled Nixon to stop the Apollo Program.
President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) was a geopolitical initiative that did not survive in the face of the rising costs of the occupation of Iraq and the continuing war in Afghanistan that amplified other economic forces and led to the global economic crisis of 2008–2009. Space settlement is the ultimate driver of demand for lunar and asteroid materials. But lunar industrial development progress would need to be highly developed for lunar materials to be competitive due to forecast declining launch costs from Earth. The prospect of using lunar resources for construction of massive solar arrays in Earth orbit attracted considerable attention in the 1980s. No business case has been offered for use of outer space resources on Earth, but demand for space resources can be created in Earth orbit and beyond. The pathway to sustainable operations in space is thru the use of space resources, the emergence of an economy based on space resources, and space settlement.
The NASA approach using public-private partnerships is a step towards a future where commercial business can fund an increasing share of development costs and sustain operations in outer space.Īn approach led and funded by the government, as now recommended by Friedman, is not sustainable and is subject to major shifts with each new president or shift in domestic politics or geopolitics. That has been true for all of the Space Age, and I believe it will remain so.ĭependence on the political process to fund space exploration into the future is high risk. That is sensible if you believe that the purpose of human spaceflight is exploration and that its rationale is geopolitical. …the House Science Committee is pushing a policy more directed to Mars and away from commercial participation. In his recent commentary “For the United States, a second race to the moon is a second-rate goal,” Louis Friedman strongly rejects US leadership in human lunar missions that depend on commercial involvement.
0 kommentar(er)
