Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-- Mark Twain
It is not as though I hate NASA, but I am disappointed in them. So much so, that it has gotten hard for me to say anything nice about the organization in recent years. Why am I disappointed? Well, I suppose that I, along with many others of my generation, expected that we would be much further along in space exploration by now. Please don’t misunderstand, I didn’t expect to have warp-drive up and running. Nothing quite that fancy. Still, a small lunar base, or better yet, a Mars colony that we could aspire to visit and or work at would have been nice. Was that asking too much? Apparently so, and from the looks of things, I will need to wait another 15 to 20 years before that reality comes true. It may seem like I don’t appreciate any of their past efforts, but that would be untrue, especially for those who gave their life to the program. But based on the collective results over the past few decades, I think it is time to be more realistic, and ask that NASA be shut down.
Closing down NASA should not end man’s endeavors in space though. In its place the private sector should be allowed to jump in and fill the void that has been congested by a government organization, all to willing to pooh-pooh any idea contradicting or challenging its monopoly on space exploration. Is that an unfair statement? In don’t think so. NASA’s condescending attitude made itself quite evident when they first rejected having the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, come on board the new space station. When I first heard about it, my thoughts were about the wonderful opportunity that was presenting itself. Then to hear about NASA’s opposition to the idea, well, it really got my blood boiling. Personally, if NASA was ever shut down, I would say it stems from the day they rejected the idea of the first space tourist. In my opinion that single act signed their death sentence. What they should have done was fully embrace the idea from the very beginning and develop it even further. But to do that, they would need to possess a vision of what future space exploration and development looks like. Clearly they lack any such vision, or if they do have it, it’s buried under layers of bureaucracy. That of course should not be any surprise for what has become a stodgy government organization.
Current plans for a Moon base seem to prove that things have not really improved all that much. Now here is where I contradict myself above. Going to the Moon is for the most part a waste of time. There are no valuable resources on the Moon worth getting at, and the cold vacuum on the surface makes it an exceedingly difficult place to do anything. To make any environment livable for humans on the Moon, one must engineer solutions that are almost identical to living in empty space. You can for the most part stay on the space station in my opinion and get the same results. Yes, you could say that being on a planetary body is a little different than simply living in space. True, but to what end? Certainly going to the bathroom is easier when assisted by gravity. But one must ask why one needs to be on a planetary body like the Moon. Can we mine it for anything? Not for the most part, unless you count deuterium which is not quite in high demand yet. Can we terra-form it over time? No, that doesn’t seem possible either. Well, one could finally say that space tourism is possible. However, if doing so made sense, then why not develop space tourism in low earth orbit, which should be infinitely simpler and cheaper? We need some kind of vision here, and one that is not a hallucination.
I do like the idea about going to Mars though. I am a big fan of Dr. Robert Zubrin. He has written some great books out on this topic, the best one being “The Case for Mars”. I support Zubrin’s ideas because he tries to find cheap and simple solutions for space exploration. This contradicts the typical big budget and complex projects that NASA tends to favor. However, even NASA has begun to listen to him, and I think his ideas on Mars exploration will be incorporated, at least to some degree, on the next manned mission. If you wonder why Mars is a better location to explore than the Moon, the answer is simple. It has an atmosphere. That alone makes it easier to work in because an atmosphere offers protection from the cold vacuum of space. In addition, the Mars atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon dioxide. When broken down, it can be used as a source of oxygen, which is always good to have. But better yet, if you find water on Mars (and lots of evidence says there is water on Mars), you now have hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, and with these three elements you can start making all kinds of essential stuff for man to survive on the red planet. When you think about it, having basic resources available is a big advantage because unlike the Moon, one is forced to bring everything with him. Mars is farther away than the Moon, but going a short distance to do absolutely nothing makes less sense than going a far distance where possibilities abound. Will NASA know how to take advantage of new possibilities on a planet like Mars? I really doubt that. Instead, it will be the private sector that figures out what and how to do things there.
Now to be fair, NASA is finally opening up to the idea that the private sector needs to be part of their planning in order for them to reach any of their goals. For NASA, it must be quite an epiphany. Too late in my opinion, but an epiphany nonetheless. I think it must be a sign that NASA sees their own demise at some distant point in the future. Like so many companies that fail to innovate, they now see that they must allow others to help and eventually take over the reins (joystick in this case), or their own existence will simply end. Frankly, I don’t think they want to invite the public sector to join them in space exploration, they simply have no alternative. I am also curious to see how things are going to progress. They are obviously experimenting with ideas on private sector cooperation that range from prize money, to more standard looking contractor bidding models. I very much favor prize money models like the X-prize. However, the prize money model may be too liberal an idea for a governmental organization to accept, so I would expect them to favor something else.
.It is high time that we consider shutting NASA down, or bring forth a new organization that accepts the deep involvement of the private sector in a fundamental way. NASA has completely lost touch with their real mission. It is not simply to explore space. It is to explore and develop space on behalf of mankind. And we need to promote space travel more than any time in our history. If you haven’t noticed, pollution, global warming, and population density all indicate that we have pushed this planet to its limit. We need to give humanity more room, which can only be accomplished by moving off planet to places like Mars. It is inevitable, and will be accomplished in future generations, sadly, if not my own.
