Criteria in space

another blast from the past

{This essay was published in 1998 and at other times. It first appeared on the Houston Space Society web site. Later it was added to the space articles on Indomitus.net while that publication lasted. It appears here as a request for further discussion on opening the space frontier, what is actually needed and wanted. I have, since writing this essay, come to have further thoughts on the topic which I will add at the bottom of this piece. Your thoughts in the comments are very welcome. Comments on L5 News are always open, and L5 News is always free.}

The essay which follows attempts to develop a set of necessary, sufficient, and desirable criteria for the goal of opening the space frontier. Other attempts in this vein seem to have been trivialized by dogma and political claptrap.

A certain organization has made much of its so-called "Frontier Enabling Test." Yet this organization has apparently used this test to justify its support for everything from the international space station program to various multi-billion dollar efforts evincing a design to limit further the competition for space transportation services. Certainly, trusting any one organization, not built on the most principled of foundations, to determine and apply criteria for opening the space frontier is a speculative proposition at this time. Until the frontier is open, we should seek a multiplicity of approaches; no one true path has been anointed. In all likelihood, when the frontier is open we will look back and note that a variety of endeavors and factors were essential to its conquest.

In analyzing the criteria for meeting the goal of opening the space frontier, we should examine three categories: necessary conditions, being those conditions which are essential for the objective; sufficient conditions, being those which, once met, should soon see the frontier open; and desirable or preferred conditions, being those conditions which not only enhance the opening of the frontier in terms of speed or robustness, but also tend to enhance other aspects of life.

Cheap access to space (CATS), for all that it has been trumpeted as the cause celebre of the space movement, is a desirable condition. It is neither necessary nor sufficient for opening the space frontier. Just as access to the New World was once quite dear in terms of treasure, space may remain out of reach for many purses for some time. In the face of expensive access to space, we have seen thousands of satellites launched to orbit, doing yeoman's work in a host of industries. The supply of space transportation is not the only, nor is it even the most essential condition to be addressed. Given adequate economic incentives, the space frontier will be opened even in the face of expensive access costs. Traditionally, the opening of a new frontier drives down the cost of access to that frontier, not the other way around.

If the much vaunted "CATS" is not a necessary or sufficient condition, what criteria might we more profitably examine? What follows is an analysis of five conditions, each expressed as a necessary, as a sufficient, and as a preferred condition.

Necessary Conditions

1. Markets for space activities must exist.

2. Mechanisms for de facto property acquisition must exist.

3. Government involvement must be consistent and reasonably predictable.

4. Investor confidence in the space frontier market must exist.

5. Economic motives for space development must be acceptable.

Markets
Markets for space activities do exist, especially in telecommunications. Unfortunately, in Earth remote sensing, weather observation, technology demonstration, and space environment research, significant markets are stifled by government involvement. Each of these markets represents a significant opportunity for private enterprise, and each is being distorted in the most detrimental ways imaginable by governments bent on control. Privatizing and commercializing these markets is necessary to their healthy development. Previous efforts to do so have been perfunctory at best, and have tended in most instances to perpetuate the monopolistic influence of bad government.

Communications satellites represent an expanding market. As the geosynchronous orbit becomes increasingly crowded, greater interest has been focused recently on the opportunities for constellations of low Earth orbit communications satellites. A very large number of competitors each operating a major network of dozens of satellites is a near term probability, with the Iridium constellation and others beginning to be launched.

The market for space tourism is also very large. In the United States, this market has again been dominated by government intervention. An effort by this author to establish a space travel service company was thoroughly demolished on orders of the National Space Council. Space tourism on the US Space Shuttle has been negligible, limited to junketing Senators and Congressmen, foreign princes and dignitaries, and the occasional schoolteacher.

Expressed as a sufficient condition, the markets for space activities must exceed a certain level, perhaps $500 billion to $1 trillion per year, in order to sustain a high level of interest in opening the space frontier to economic activity. Additional research into the real level of in-space activity and the extent of markets therefor is needed in order to establish the precise definition of this sufficient condition.

As a preferred condition, markets should be extremely large. The greater the market for space activities, the more likely the frontier will be opened in a sustained fashion. The early market for Spanish access to the New World revolved around government explorations, land grants for minor nobility and government functionaries, the enslavement of the native populations for agriculture and mining, and the extraction of gold and silver to pay off Spain's war debts to the Rothschilds and other banking interests. A far more sustainable English approach to the new frontier is to be found in New England and Virginia, where cash crops, shipping, timber, and the triangle trade created a lasting economy.

Whereas the Spanish approach has produced a number of recently developing nations, it led to no great prominence for either Spain or the nations arising from its colonial territories. The Spanish approach was barely adequate to opening the frontier, but not effective at creating economic opportunity. Ultimately, this failure led to the demise of Spain as a world power and to much of the internal chaos which has dominated the successors to its colonies.

England, on the other hand, remains one of the great world powers, to this day. While its Empire has faltered and been sold down the river, it remains a dominant force. England, aka Great Britain, has a world class navy, a nuclear force, and a veto on the United Nations Security Council.

Two of its New World colonies are also very prominent on the world stage. Both the United States and Canada are significant world powers, with the US having a dominant navy, nuclear forces to rival any comers, and a veto on the UN Security Council. By any measure, England and the successor nations to her colonies are triumphant on the world stage. Even Jamaica stands head and shoulders above her Spanish counterparts in the Caribbean, making Cuba look like a booger.

It would be a grievous error to take the Spanish approach to opening the space frontier. More than likely, given the absence of native populations to enslave, that approach is untenable from the word "go." A market-based approach is quite possibly the only feasible way to open the space frontier.

Property Rights
It is necessary for de facto property acquisition to exist in order for any frontier to be open. While the ownership of spacecraft launched from Earth is not in doubt under the present regime, there is no governing authority for the acquisition of space resources as private property. While that is not a preventive factor, it is also not a motivator. Investors have expressed doubt about ventures that involve exploring or acquiring the Moon, Mars, the asteroids and other planetary bodies precisely because they are concerned about the practical methods for acquiring and maintaining ownership of these resources.

Accordingly, the only significant market for space activities which has thus far been developed is one which depends only on the ownership of spacecraft in Earth orbit. Recent events have demonstrated that water and other essential resources are available on the Moon and on Mars in plentiful abundance. Already, we have demonstrated (circa 1969) the technological means necessary to establish human operations on the surface of the Moon. Any number of conceptual proofs for establishing human activities on Mars have been established in considerable detail.

Therefore, it only remains to demonstrate that people can go to the Moon or Mars and acquire property thereon. The economics of the situation will then take over, and the frontier will spring open, releasing the flood waters of colonization.

To express this condition in its sufficient form, enough people must be satisfied by and enthusiastic about exploiting the availability of de facto property rights. Whether a sufficient number of people is a few thousand or a few million, at the present time essentially no one is satisfied with the prospect of obtaining property on any celestial body. Accordingly, it may require dismantling the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to fulfill this condition to its sufficiency.

As a matter of preference, property rights in space should be ubiquitous. There should be no more question about buying and selling real estate on the Moon than there is here on Earth. Ownership should be available in perpetuity, with no process of eminent domain for any purpose.

Consistent Government Policy
The bane of the space industry is government. When government changes its dictates, markets collapse, companies dissolve, and everyone looks around for a way to get beyond the new hurdles. Government is bad enough; inconsistent government policy is a nightmare for business.

For example, Orbital Sciences Corporation was founded with the idea that a Transfer Orbit Stage to take communications satellites from shuttle orbit altitude out to geosynchronous would be useful to a number of customers. The same stage could also be used to propel a number of spacecraft to other orbits, as well.

Then the Challenger exploded, proving NASA's ineptitude, negligence, and willful disregard for human life. President Reagan recognized that the shuttle was inadequate, and a two-plus year stand down was put into effect. Orders for the Transfer Orbit Stage never materialized. Subsequently, President Reagan took the important step of banning commercial satellites from the shuttle. Suddenly, the market for the Transfer Orbit Stage evaporated, too.

Orbital Sciences cast about for other markets. They examined small satellite systems for communications and other applications, correctly anticipating a major market trend. When they found that the available launchers for small satellites made some of the economics doubtful, they set about to build the Pegasus launch vehicle.

By converting the Transfer Orbit Stage to work with the Titan launch vehicle, Orbital Sciences salvaged some of that business opportunity. After their success with the first Pegasus launch, they went public. Getting into launch services in a big way, they acquired the suborbital launch services company Space Data.

Other companies dependent on the shuttle for launch services shifted their business to Arianespace. Suddenly, the Ariane was carrying more than half the world's commercial satellites into orbit. Market dominance shifted permanently away from the United States {2023 author’s note: for a long time}, due in large part to the original, inept shuttle policy. Making the shuttle the only US launch vehicle, shutting down the expendable launch vehicle production lines, and sabotaging the efforts of Truax, Hudson, Hannah, and other space transportation entrepreneurs was NASA's idea of a good approach. NASA proved its policy failure with Challenger and the aftermath thereof. The loss to American industry is measured in billions of dollars {author’s note 2023 - 1998 dollars, easily tens of billions of today’s inflating dollars}.

Therefore, it is necessary that government involvement in the space arena be consistent. Whatever obstacles that governments place in the way of industry will be bounced over and around. As Thoreau notes in Civil Disobedience, "Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads."

The problem arises, and is magnified in an emerging industry, when the government moves the obstacles around too frequently. In America, that seems to be the case every two years or less as Congress shifts about its political winds, blowing ill fortune wherever it turns.

Investor Confidence

The truth about the space tourism market is, not very many investors believe it exists. That’s sort of odd, to me, because all the way back in the Summer of 1990 I was able to prove that over 400 million people worldwide wanted to take a trip into space. The number one answer volunteered by people asked what they wanted to do about space activities was, “I want to take a trip into space.” We were able to further characterise the market with people who would pay $5,000 or $15,000 for such a trip, based on things like the existing market for vacation packages from Europe or North America to Australia for a two week stay.

Although I am confident that there is a market for about $300 billion a year in space travel services, if 5% of those 400 million were to travel in space every year and if the price for a vacation were $15,000 per person, there is apparently not any investor confidence. Therefore we have to ask what it is that can be done to make the necessary condition of investor confidence happen.

There is clearly investor confidence in geosynchronous orbiting satellites. For the communications market, there is so much money in high orbit satellites that even after the Challenger explosion there were plenty of investors for building satellites to go up on any available rocket. Art Dula of Space Commerce Corporation made a small fortune marketing the Soyuz and Proton rockets for sale to Hughes and other companies that wanted to send their payloads up. China’s Long March Industries was able to offer competitive prices to, for example, Arabsat in 1990. So competitive that the finks at the legislation committee of the Nationalist Space Society went rogue and filed a “dumping” claim without asking the full board of directors. I remember because the Arab investors in the company I was working for in May 1990 were very upset about it.

How do we bring about investor confidence in space remote sensing, space tourism, satellite repair and refuelling, space resource recovery, and other space industries? By having the government stop attacking businesses, as a start. Measured as a sufficient condition it would probably involve a few billion dollars of investor capital in these areas of activity.

Measured as a preferred condition, it would involved tens to hundreds of billions of dollars invested. That could be a while, given how difficult it has been to get the government to stop interfering.

Economic Motives

There is a huge amount of nonsense spewed by people who hate free markets. So it is necessary to make it acceptable to invest in space projects. There are people who will demand that all investment in space projects go to direct subsidies to the poor. There are other people who insist that we have to fix the environment before we can go out into space to recover and refine space resources, presumably because they have no idea how much of the pollution of mining and refining doesn’t need to be here on Earth in our atmosphere.

Creating the necessary conditions for opening the space frontier involves making the policy arguments to a wide audience. If you look at, say, the Collier’s magazine article series feature paintings from Chesley Bonestell and ideas from arch-war-criminal Werner von Braun, you get a sense of what might be helpful. From 1952 to 1954 these articles did a lot to help Americans understand what would be possible if we applied our technologies for nuclear armageddon to the opening of the space frontier.

Obviously it will be sufficient when people in daily life argue for the opening of the frontier spontaneously and without having to be encouraged. And it will be a preferred condition when people seek out space related projects to work on because they see the opportunities and possibilities.

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”
~ Konstantin Tsiolkovsky 1911

2023 Update

Today I would add some other thoughts to this topic. One of the criteria that I think we must consider is whether it is pleasing to God that we go out into the Solar system and then throughout the galaxy to other star systems. I believe that Jesus gave us the great commission to go and bring the gospel to all parts of God’s creation. There are intelligent beings on other planets orbiting other stars, and they have not heard about the good news of Jesus Christ. So I feel we have a moral imperative to do so.

It is also a moral imperative that we free the slaves, stop the wars, and end tyranny as we proceed toward building our stairway to the stars. We must not enslave the other intelligent beings we encounter out in God’s creation. We’ve had enough trouble with the slavery industry here on this planet. It has to end here and never go further.

I am also confident of my instructions that God will not allow demon worshippers to join us on this journey to the stars. So we have a certain amount of house cleaning to attend to in our work here. We must build a solid foundation by following the teachings of Jesus, hearing his words and doing them. With a solid foundation we can build a stairway to the stars. With the shifting sands of expedience we can only build a disaster.

I feel it is incumbent upon me to mention that in 1999 while I was in east Texas working to ratify Texas Constitution 2000 for a group of liberty activists based in El Paso and other parts of Texas, I was talking to a young man in San Augustine, Texas. We had successfully ratified at an event in Sabine county, held in the community of Hemphill and we were on our way to do the same in San Augustine county. A terrible man named Bob Phipps was tasked with destroying our project, and he did. Never trust an insurance claims adjustor.

During my conversation with the family in San Augustine who wanted to help us with the ratification, the teenage boy of the family asked if I thought the space shuttle would ever come to east Texas. I said it would but only if it were crash landing. As we know, it did crash on the first day of the second month of 2003. There were no survivors.

There were no survivors because NASA is run by really evil men and women who do not want to open the door to space. They want to be the door. And they want the door kept shut.

So they came up, in 1969, with the idea of building in every congressional district parts of the single most complex mechanical engineering system ever conceived. They attacked and destroyed Arthur Kantrowitz’s idea for research on laser launch systems. They attacked all the expendable launch vehicle programmes. They attacked anyone who challenged the idea that space shuttle would do everything. They ended the nuclear fission rocket research project. They even deliberately allowed the space station Skylab to re-enter and burn up because they refused to devote any funds to re-boosting it. They did all these things out of an abundance of caution, a desire for keeping control, and because they are worthless bureau rats unsuited to guiding a free people into a bold new frontier. NASA delenda est.

I believe that the future of mankind is throughout this galaxy. I also believe that to get out there, we must keep our focus on the goals. The goal of settling the space frontier is to expand our capabilities and use the resources of the Solar system to improve things for people here on Earth. The goal of settling the stars is to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to as many of the creatures God has created as possible. These goals are consistent with free markets and great prosperity for the people involved.

Let us pray: Eternal Father, please help us explore your creation and bring your Word to the farthest reaches of the universe. Thy will be done. Amen.