Last week I posted a diary - Principles for a Progressive Vision for Space Exploration - which offered several principles I believe can guide us when we seek progressive answers to these questions:
- Why fly people into space?
- Who should fly people into space?
- How should flying people into space be paid for?
In that diary, I offered this principle, among several others:
For the immediate foreseeable future, human spaceflight shall be driven largely by existential motivations rather than utilitarian motivations
A few days later, in a comment to my PSVE#2, Alice of Florida posted a comment with a phrase that has stuck with me - Human space travel is all about poetry and politics.
Having thought about this for a while, I find I agree. Human space flight is all about the poetry and the politics, for the immediate future, even if we work at finding future sources of tangible economic gain.
Originally, my five principles were as follows:
1. For the immediate foreseeable future, human spaceflight shall be driven largely by existential motivations rather than utilitarian motivations;
2. Doing space exploration the "right way" can facilitate our ability to think ecologically and with respect to the extended sustainability of large scale human ventures;
3. The taxpayers of our nation cannot shoulder the entire burden of funding a meaningful and sufficient program of human space exploration;
4. The United States - by itself - cannot accomplish a meaningful and sufficient program of human space exploration, even if our nation were to remain the world leader in this arena;
5. The ultimate long term objective of human spaceflight should be for our species to attempt to become spacefaring; to become a two planet or multi-planet species.
However after considering Alice of Florida's comment I wish to amend the first principle as follows:
For the immediate foreseeable future, the more significant motivation for human spaceflight shall arise from a combination of poetry and politics.
With that introduction, I turn to Politics, Poetry and the Space Economy -- PVSE #3.
Once again, I encourage everyone to read a paper issued in December 2008 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Group: The Future of Human Spaceflight.
This document deserves close reading (and re-reading) - not because I believe they are correct on every point - but because the report does an excellent job of framing certain issues, and can provoke thoughtful response. I assert this report makes a terrific start when it asserts that present day space policy questions must be framed in the context of a larger more central question as articulated by this passage from page 2 (Executive Summary):
Why fly people into space?
To answer these questions we rethink the rationales for
government-funded human spaceflight and then address
current policy questions in light of those rationales.
Note that the report is focused on government funded human spaceflight and largely ignores the potential role of non-government funded human spaceflight. In part, this is because the authors strongly discount the likelihood of successful profit making ventures, stating as follows on page 7:
There are presently no known natural resources in space that can be profitably exploited. Even if such resources and an efficient extraction scheme to be discovered, it is unlikely that human presence would be required. Human presence will always be more expensive than remote operation, so any space-based extractive business is likely to be heavily based on remote presence. Therefore technology and economic development are secondary objectives of human spaceflight.
First, I agree with these assertions with respect to tangible resources, at least in the short term or medium term. Elon Musk of SpaceX has provided us with a famous quote about crack cocaine and low Earth orbit:
At the same time, Musk is dismissive of some of the proposed applications that could take advantage of such a powerful rocket. "I don’t believe in the mining of stuff in space. The transportation costs are so horrendously high that I don’t think there’s anything... if there were packages of purified crack cocaine in orbit right now, I’m not sure it would be financially viable to go and retrieve them," he said, to gales of laughter from the audience.
But of note this other passage from that same link, which support my first draft "existential" approach to space exploration:
So what might be the "killer app" for space? Musk has an unconventional answer. "I think there’s some number of people in the US and other countries that would pay to move to Mars," he claimed. "They would sell everything that they’ve got, and they would move to Mars." If the cost of a one-way journey to Mars could be lowered to the "single-digit millions" of dollars, he said, "I think enough people would pay that to actually make the business plan quite viable. I think thousands of people a year would pay that." Needless to say, that got a loud round of applause from the Mars Society conference attendees.
That concept might seem way of out left field for an industry that is only now accepting space tourism as a realistic market, but it also fits into Musk’s personal philosophy. Early in his presentation he spoke of the importance of becoming a multiplanet species, calling it "one of the most important things we could possibly aspire to". "I think it’s really incumbent upon us to extend life beyond Earth," he said. "Basically, to help make that happen is why I started SpaceX."
Note my 5th proposed progressive principle about the ultimate purpose of human space exploration.
If crack cocaine cannot be returned to Earth at a profit, what chance does space based solar power have? Or extra-terrestrial metals? At least in the short or medium term?
But does that mean game over for private sector space ventures? Is taxpayer financed space exploration all that we can hope for in the years and decades to come?
In my opinion? NO!!
I say "No" in large part because we cannot count on the taxpayers to fund everything that needs to be funded to create the spacefaring civilization enthusiasts seek. Unless human space exploration can be performed in a manner that permits private investment in addition to taxpayer funded investment, human space missions shall remain rare, noteworthy events. Therefore, I have included the following as one of my proposed principles to guide the formulation of a progressive space policy.
3. The taxpayers of our nation cannot shoulder the entire burden of funding a meaningful and sufficient program of human space exploration;
But if commodities cannot be returned at a profit, how can profit be made? I assert this can be done by selling intangible values associated with human spaceflight. In other words, by selling the poetry of human spaceflight and the historical value that arises from our current era, which places our species at a cross-roads: Shall we become a multi-planet species or shall we remain a single planet species?
It is difficult to imagine that the following words were written nearly 150 years ago, in 1865:
"In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York." Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, 1865
There is poetry in that passage just as there is poetry in numerous other passages found at this website, Space Quotes. It is worthwhile to scroll through those quotations, IMHO.
I assert that popular interest in activities such as sub-orbital space tourism (as described by Keith Pickering in a Daily Kos diary: Space Tourism: So close you can taste it and by kalmoth in another recent Daily Kos diary, The first commercial spaceport in New Mexico) arises from a desire to personally participate in a terrific story, that of humanity becoming spacefaring.
And a good story, told well, shall always sell. Always. Even if there are no raw materials, no natural resources that we can return from space at a profit, we can always sell the poetry associated with human spaceflight and with the narrative associated with humanity's efforts to become a multi-planet species.
One example that blends these approaches might be to add numanistic value to lunar mined metals by minting that metal into coins and then selling those coins to collectors at prices far above the fair market value of the base metal itself. As I proposed in October 2005:
In order to capture and commoditize the future numismatic value of the very first coins ever minted from lunar resources, subscriptions for these $1,000 platinum coins would be sold in advance at a price of five to ten times face value. Subscriptions for the $100 coins would also be sold in advance with an asking price between $500 and $1,000. Sell one million platinum coins at $5,000 each and ten million nickel-iron coins at $500 each and this raises $10 billion dollars from the general public to help bootstrap lunar platinum mining.
While numismatic value is entirely intangible, it is also well established by the market. Banks will loan money secured by reputable appraisals of collectable coins. With each coin having an assigned serial number and the minting strictly limited, buying such a coin could be a lucrative investment. Imagine it is 20, 50, or 100 years after lunar mining becomes established and after a genuine cislunar economy becomes established. It seems entirely reasonable to predict that the numismatic value of the first coins ever minted with extraterrestrial metals will skyrocket.
I believe the essential point was well explain by Frederick Turner way back in 1996 following the Challenger disaster in this important essay Worlds Without Ends. He starts with this paragraph:
The disappointing progress of the U.S. space program was not primarily the result of the technical difficulties it faced, nor the dangers to which we were alerted by the Challenger disaster, nor its great expense, nor the sense that there were pressing social and ecological problems to be solved at home, nor the fact that the leaders of the program were World War II-era people with World War II attitudes and style who had not replaced themselves with fresh blood. All these were factors, certainly, but they are symptoms of a larger problem: We will only begin to develop a truly spacefaring civilization when we feel it is in our interest to do so.
Turner then terms to various waves of economic production and asks whether space exploration can possibly yield tangible economic benefit in those various sectors.
First, agricultural. Although Robert Heinlein wrote at least one science fiction novel based on the premise that lunar farmers would ship wheat and rice to Earth (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) today I think we can all agree that idea is ludicrous -- EXCEPT in the context of brand value creation such as is seen Vladislaw's "Space Beer" Daily Kos diary.
In the case of Space Beer, I would assert that the added value arises from the symbolism associated with space wheat rather than any actual tangible benefit.
Second, manufacturing. Some argue that perfect ball bearings, exotic micro-chips and extraordinary drugs can be manufactured in micro-gravity and that these products shall have significantly great value than products manufactured on Earth.
Perhaps, say I. Perhaps. But if so, where are the investors?
For example, Bigelow Aerospace has refined the Transhab technology with an eye to offering facilities to wannabe space industrialists and drug researchers but as far as I can tell, few private sector companies have signed up to purchase a Bigelow facility. From the Bigelow website:
Bigelow Aerospace is dedicated to developing next-generation crewed space complexes to revolutionize space commerce and open up the final frontier to all of humanity. At Bigelow Aerospace, we're building the future today!
As a personal aside . . .
I am a HUGE proponent of Bigelow style inflatable habitats, in part because they are made out of plastics which greatly reduces the secondary radiation that occurs when fast moving particles strike metals. In deep space, a fast moving particle will zip through an astronaut's body and unless it hits something will cause little or no damage. However if that fast mover strikes a metallic skin surrounding a space habitat, cascades of slower moving particle shall result, rather like a shotgun blast and those cascades of particles shall pass through an astronaut's body causing far greater damage.
Okay, here is what Frederick Turner says about space manufacturing and the information economy (which is the next wave to be discussed):
[O]ne mines and manufactures to be able to afford the luxury of going into space, one does not go into space to afford the luxury of mining and manufacturing. There is valuable information to be gained out there, but it can be obtained efficiently by robots, which is not the same as actually being there.
More on the agrarian to industrial transformation:
Two hundred years ago America was an agrarian nation in which 90 percent of the people worked on farms and 90 percent of the capital commitment and cultural energy went into agriculture. Prices were relatively high enough, and the production system labor-intensive enough, to support a large rural population. Wealth was widely distributed, reinforcing the American political ethic of equality that de Tocqueville celebrated. Then, with the introduction of such devices as the cotton gin and the combine harvester, the cost of production dropped rapidly, prices collapsed, production sharply increased, the number of workers needed fell sharply, and, after an initial increase in investment for mechanization, the capital requirements for farming relative to the rest of the economy went into steady decline.
* * *
Today perhaps 2 percent of our national treasure and work goes into farming. One odd little counter-trend, however, may be significant: There is an increasing number of gentleman and lady farmers, freed from more pressing economic necessities, who have taken up ranching or planted gardens or bought vineyards for the sheer joy of doing so.
and this . . .
It is already clear that what happened to farming is now happening to the extractive and manufacturing sectors. In the developed countries manufacturing employment and capital investment rose until it tied up about 90 percent of the available labor, capital, and cultural energy. At first, huge fortunes were made. Then wealth became widely shared; the essential and collectively powerful assembly line workers could ask a decent fraction of the earnings of their masters. Then automation, robotics, computer-assisted design and manufacturing, materials science, miniaturization, just-in-time inventory techniques, discount retailing, and global competition created successive leaps in efficiency--cutting costs, prices, and labor requirements, increasing volume, and maximizing the utility and durability of the product.
In many ways, our current economic debacle arose because there wasn't enough profit in manufacturing to satisfy the legions of MBAs and MFAs and Wall Street types. Therefore, they undertook to make money by selling things like financial derivatives and credit default swaps. And for quite some time now, General Motors broke even or lost money making cars but had been offsetting that by selling insurance and brokering auto loans through its GMAC finance division.
Therefore, I assert it is highly unlikely that the profit motive will drive industry into space. That said, once inexpensive access to LEO is achieved, governments can pass laws to require that polluting industries be re-located to orbit or the Moon so that our Earth is not sullied by such activities.
However, our ability to do that will only come later, not sooner.
The information economy? Turner writes this:
For a while a space program based on the information industries--one in which we go into space to hunt out valuable data or in pursuit of the raw materials of hardware and software--will flourish, but its possibilities are strictly limited. The largest pool of important information in the known universe is right here on our planet; it is thus no coincidence that by far the largest commitment in our space program is to devices designed to look at, or direct messages to and from, the Earth. If we, and our living companions, were to go to other parts of the universe, then they would become valuable as information. But we have to get there first, and we can't afford to; the cash flow and amortization problems would be insoluble.
But note the progression. Agriculture has not failed in any sense. Rather we now require 2% of our population to do what once required 90% of our population. With robots, industry shall follow suit and with better and better computers so shall the information technologies.
Perhaps the central challenge of progressive movement - of course - is to assure that the fruits of these developments are distributed in a just manner.
But then, what will remain? A new wave of economic activity Turner calls "charm" industries (a term I find clunky but there it is):
Finally, we will be left with the irreducibly labor- and capital-intensive human industries of what we might call "charm": tourism, education, entertainment, adventure, religion, sport, fashion, art, history, movies, ritual, personal development, politics, the eternal soap opera of relationships. Once the world's wages have leveled up to those of the developed countries, a process already well in train, the service industries will begin to starve for labor, and be forced to raise their pay scales. At the same time the job descriptions, and the actual content, of service employment will begin to approximate those of artists, entertainers, educators, and sports professionals. One can already see this process at work in the restaurant industry in such wealthy cities as Dallas, New York, Phoenix, or Los Angeles: Good waiters, sommeliers, and cooks are wooed and tempted by rival establishments, and each evening is conceived as a little work of art.
Another personal aside . . .
This vision only holds true IF we learn to live in a sustainable manner, with the ability to produce energy without carbon emissions or other pollution being the greatest challenge, here. If we fail to accomplish that there shall be no significant levels of human space exploration for we shall destroy our civilization first. But as I argued in PSVE #2, human space exploration can help us cultivate the skills needed to meet this challenge.
Of these, brand value creation is among the more lucrative. Just as Nike somehow manages to infuse the spirit of sports into ordinary clothing, if someone somehow manages to infuse the story of space exploration into prosaic consumer products, they shall sell more of those products, and thereby make money. If the sponsors are actually doing meaningful spaceflight.
If Turner is right, then the future of human space exploration shall be found in tourism and marketing of things like Space Beer.
If I am wrong, and money invested in notions like space solar power can and will return more economic value than must be invested, well then, I look forward to companies such as British Petroleum or Bechtel or Florida Power and Light investing the money needed to deploy those facilities.
Perhaps folks will find these conclusions distasteful. So did I, several years ago when I started thinking about this. However I do not see another way forward, into space and I shall truly be grateful if anyone can prove me wrong.