Space's future: Cameron gets it

For what it's worth -- perhaps not much, given that I didn't see "The Hurt Locker" -- I thought James Cameron and "Avatar" were a little short-changed at the Oscars this year. "Avatar" might not have had a great story, but the world created through special effects, in 3-D, was something of a revelation. We had an interesting debate in the pages of the Register last year, with Brian Calle of our staff dinging "Avatar" for being a manipulative piece of green leftism and Dave Boaz of Cato saying that on the contrary it was a tale of people, who turned out to be the good guys despite being blue, protecting their land and property from alien invaders. Both had good points but I think Dave had the better of it.

That's prelude to being pleased that in this op-ed for the WaPo a while ago -- I've had it on my stack of stuff for a while -- director James Cameron appears to get it about the intelligent way to go forward with space exploration. He notes that NASA's budget reflects the policy going forward -- knowing the shuttle will be retired soon they're ready to let private companies provide transportation to low earth orbit -- though they might have to rely on the Russians in the interim, while NASA will focus on deep space exploration, both robotic and human. This has made sense for a long time, but it wasn't inevitable that NASA would come to this conclusion.

When I went to Mojave to see SpaceShipOne get into space for the second time and win the X-Prize a few years ago, I was a little surprised to see a high-ranking NASA official take part in the subsequent press conference and sound supportive. I had been to a conference a few years before that at which Burt Rutan, the visionary genius behind SpaceShipOne, was extremely dismissive of NASA, and with good reason. The Space Shuttle was a wasteful detour and he was on the verge of proving that a private company could do low Earth orbit space trips better. But apparently NASA has seen the light, and it's encouraging that James Cameron gets it too.

Of course Heinlein in one of his novels had private companies do almost all the space exploration, and it's theoretically possible for a private companies, or competing private companies, to do deep space exploration, probably better than NASA. But for better or worse NASA is probably not going away, so letting it handle deep space and let the private sector commercialize what has become almost routine may be the least-worst of the readily available policies.

Space: another government bungle

Maybe it's because I attended a conference where Burt Rutan, the mastermind behind SpaceShip One, spoke and shared his vision of human beings in space, but I see the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 a little differently than almost anybody who has been publicized by the media. Peggy Noonan, I think, said that the way the space program has gone is a little as if Columbus had discovered America and then nothing else happened. A couple more moonwalks and then the ill-conceived shuttle program, the spacegoing equivalent of a horse designed by a committee.

If only we had decided to turn space over to the private sector after those initial forays, I'm convinced a great deal more would have happened -- maybe not Mars, but possibly a colony on the moon and plans to venture beyond. We let the private sector take over after government developed or subsidized some of the early airplanes and the Internet. As Burt Rutan, who pushed ahead despite NASA's near-monopoly and seems almost ready to establish a viable space tourism business, noted, the Internet didn't start to become useful to a great number of people until after several years of playing and experimenting -- literally, barnstorming for airplanes, and some of the first widespread Internet uses were to play video games. NASA seems almost ready to cede the effective monopoly it nursed and protected for so long. Whether it will focus on basic research and let the private sector do the operational stuff remains to be seen. But that would be a much better model.

Let's get this space race started

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the landing of the Phoenix Mars vehicle. While there's excitement and coolness in this, we argue that the real excitement is the fact that Burt Rutan and Virgin Intergalactic have a viable competitor in the space tourism business. To be sure, space tourism in its first phase might be thought of as rather pedestrian: sending rich folk just to the edge of outer space for relatively short rides. But as Burt Rutan noted in a talk I saw him give a few years ago, the point is to do it, to have fun and play, and learn about potentialities as you go along. He pointed out that for the first years of the Internet becoming available to the public, the main thing it was used for was precisely playing games. Then people started seeing other possibilities and even chances to make some money, and eventually it expanded exponentially (through spontaneous order) until it became increasingly useful and valuable. Especially with competition, the main incentive for organizations not to get too bureaucratic and sclerotic, as NASA has, commercial space travel could be in for exciting times.

A commercial space race

Has it been four years already since Burt Rutan, backed by Paul Sperry of Microsoft and Richard Branson, the Virgin Atlantic guy, won the Ansari prize by getting an aircraft built by his company Scaled Composites into space and then doing it again within 30 days? Anyway, I went up to Mojave to see the final qualifying flight (joined by thousands of other enthusiasts). Saw Adrian Moore there and met a bunch of interesting people.

Having met Burt Rutan at a Reason event and talked with him at some length, I believe he is probably in fact thrilled that he now has some competition in the commercial space race (at least a dozen hopefuls had booths or exhibits at Burt Rutan's event). Xcor Aerospace, also of Mojave (it's a small airport, with almost no commercial flights, which may be attractive to innovators), has a space ship it expects to have ready to fly in two years. The Air Force has given the company a contract as well, to demonstrate the spacecraft's capabilities.

At least a half dozen other companies are designing space tourism vehicles, and even the FAA now thinks space tourism could be a !1 billion a year industry by 2021. I think it will happen faster than that. There's nothing like competition to spur innovation. As Burt Rutan has pointed out, the important thing is to get out there and start having fun, playing, experimenting. The Internet was available for years before people figured out what to do with it, and the process involved a lot of playing and just noodling around.

I think that having space be a government monopoly for all these years since the Apollo flights has retarded progress toward space travel. The space shuttle was like a giraffe -- a horse built by a committee -- and never especially promising. Now that it's becoming a commercial enterprise, I would be surprised if we don't see a lot more progress in space travel.