“Space… The Final Frontier.” These are the opening words of the theme in the original Star Trek series that, in my humble opinion, created much of the cultural interest in space travel during the Space Race of the 1960s. These words appeal to the insatiable desire of humans to explore new lands and frontiers and to discover new things and new places. Since the days of the Space Race and John F. Kennedy’s famous lines, “We choose to go to the Moon…”, our culture has never stopped fantasizing and dreaming about a future day when the average Joe will finally be able to venture into space and even to begin colonizing other worlds.
However, the United States Space Program has only declined since the conclusion of the Apollo Program and it’s victory in the Space Race. We began development on various projects such as Skylab and the ISS and our unmanned space program has made several feats in interplanetary space flight, but we have honestly done very little since we proved that our rockets were superior to the rockets of the Soviet Union. Why?
Well, the governments of the world have little economic incentive to seriously fund space travel outside of the military advantage that satellites provide in terms of reconnaissance. The Space Race itself was really a by-product of the Nuclear Arms Race and was probably only successful because of the American Government’s incentive to defeat who they believed would be their greatest military adversary during the Cold War. Despite the fantasies most of us would like to believe, the Space Race was actually probably about the creation of rockets in order to prove that our ICBMs are better than their ICBMs. The reality that we could land a man on the Moon signified that we could accurately launch a missile carrying a nuclear weapon to any location on the globe. There was a definite military incentive in the Space Race that our governments don’t have today. The funding NASA gets these days is very limited thus the fact that our space agencies have done nothing but keep astronauts going to low Earth Orbit to repair satellites and do some very limited scientific research. No real incentive for the government to return to the Moon or go to Mars, thus it has been decades since man has returned to the moon.
NASA is finally fixing to launch the Artemis Program, a mission designed with the intention of returning mankind to the moon and establishing a permanent base by 2027. It seems that they are finally taking a step towards expanding our presence deeper into the final frontier. However, I do not believe this is enough to begin any serious effort at colonizing space. We need more of a financial incentive to get civilian space flight more common and to launch people into space at cheaper costs than… $20 million dollars per seat.
This is where private industry comes in. There are many potential financial incentives to make space travel affordable to the average man. If we can do such a thing as a private industry, these private companies such as SpaceX or Blue Horizon will do what NASA could never do strictly under government funding and the slow behavior of a bureaucracy.
Private Industry already has a place in the launching of many satellites into low Earth orbit and has already provided astronauts with spaceships such as the DragonX. However, the ultimate benefit of getting space travel accessible to the private industry is the ultimate opening of the final frontier which will ultimately pave the way for the first landings on Mars and the rapid colonization thereafter.
Once a ticket into space costs less than 100K and is therefore opened up to the middle class, there will be the rapid creation of space hotels that will cause the price of a stay in space to drop. Centripetal force will allow the creation of spinning space stations that will allow people to stay in orbit longer than six months and cheap access to a space station will immediately open up the door to mining missions to the Moon and near Earth Asteroids. With these established private way stations, it won’t be long before venture capitalism naturally creates Lunar tourism and begins ferrying people to Mars and beyond. The colonization of Mars will be well underway because of the very nature of private industry to seek opportunity where it can profit.
The two frontiers of Space Venture Capitalism are opening space tourism to the general public and creating mines on near Earth asteroids. Once these two doors open, the colonization of the Moon and Mars will almost certainly begin within a decade. The bureaucratic machines of government are needed to maintain law and order and keep society free and I have all love and respect for the accomplishments of NASA, but the venture capitalists are going to be the key to opening up the final frontier for humanity, not the ill-funded bureaucracy that NASA remains at the mercy of.