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Let's take a bold leap forward in the year of the Tiger |
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Posted by Vidvuds Beldavs
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10.01.2010 00:43 |
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More than 30 years have passed since I developed and taught the course Space Industrialization and National Priorities at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1977. The enabling technologies to achieve the space industrialization vision of Gerard K. O’Neil’s High Frontier have been developed and refined. Yet the results have fallen far short of that vision notwithstanding its technological feasibility.
The primary weakness that I see with US space policy is that it is far too timid. The manned space budget at 300 million is roughly in parity with the budget for fusion research.
Fusion is a technology that has continued to be somewhere on the 25 year horizon for at least the last 30 years.
With a $300 million annual research budget in time fusion will arrive and be very useful but why should the vastly greater potential of space industrialization be so limited? Fusion continues to be a technology with unknown unknowns in Rumsfeld’s apt phrase. In contrast SSP presents engineering challenges with known unknowns that in the worst case may limit total output delivered to Earth. But there is no risk factor that appears to limit SSP for industrial expansion in space. I would like to suggest consideration of a bolder scenario for space industrialization (not just SSP). Space industrialization can be the principle driver for sustainable global economic development for decades into the future while concurrently addressing global warming and the energy problem. Principal implications of space industrialization are for a vast expansion of the demand for technical personnel in all fields of research and development – not just physics, chemistry and computer science. Life sciences, ecology and advanced agriculture will be needed to sustain tens of thousands of human beings and complex ecosystems of flora and fauna in environment of space and lunar habitats. Materials developments need to be accelerated. Entirely new fields of practice, such as ecological engineering will need to be created to engineer sustainable habitats peopled by humans living in harmony. Space tourism will flourish as costs are driven down from the millions per trip to the level of tens of thousands of dollars or less. A vast array of spin-off knowledge and technologies will emerge that can address a multiplicity of problems facing people on Earth – the need for clean energy, improved nutrition, sustainable agriculture and jobs for all who want to work.
Of key importance to the United States is that we are presently still in the lead in space development. We can lead and the world is looking for the US to lead our planet to a brighter future. Let’s not look at a budget that is in parity with fusion. Let us look at investment that can step by step lead to the industrialization of space. The Iraq War was budgeted at NASA budget equivalents per month. Let’s envision a space industrialization initiative that is budgeted at the Iraq War equivalent. Then we will see launch costs drop to a fraction of what would otherwise be thinkable and with much lower launch costs everything else will become possible. The problem is one of scale. Thinking at $300 million per annum we cannot get to industrial facilities on the Moon and SPS at GEO in the foreseeable future. What if there were an investment of $100 billion per annum to develop an infrastructure for space industrialization? What kind of results could we then expect? If we can throw $700 billion to save Wall Street why can’t we invest a fraction of that to create a more positive future for humanity?
Vid Beldavs |
