Ok, well this is a big question I'll be coming back to, mostly to refine the ideas I'm putting out right now. But this is something I wrote as input to the Space Studies Board of the National Academies. They were asking for public input for their "Rationale and Goals of the US Civil Space Program". Deadline was Jan 30th, so sorry folks, I should've started blogging earlier. Here's the website in case you are interested.
Anyhow this is what I wrote:
The civil space program's goal should be to increase opportunities for the citizens of both the United States and the World. In the most general sense, opportunities are situations where new knowledge, new infrastructure, or new technology opens a door to someone that had previously been closed. This can include inspiring and motivating someone to achieve, uncovering key knowledge that advances the scientific endeavor, or making a discovery that allows for new entrepreneurial activity. New opportunities in the space program are created through scientific investigations and human exploration. While many activities can be characterized as increasing the opportunities for the American people, much thought should be given to which activities maximize the potential opportunities in space.
In order for the civil space program to truly make important contributions to the opportunities available to the citizens of the country and the world, it should focus on enabling entrepreneurial activity, building transportation infrastructure, exploring the nearest planetary bodies to the Earth in search of resources useful to human civilization (primarily H2O), and exploring the solar system for pure scientific discovery.
Viewed with the lens of opportunity, endeavors such as the space shuttle, space station, and planned lunar outpost are extraordinarily inefficient for achieving what could have been achieved since none of these things enable future activities and become ends in and of themselves. If permanent hardware must be placed in space, lets make sure that it can help leverage future endeavors.
Entrepreneurial activity is of course a highly desired goal for space exploration as it provides a means for powering opportunity growth. However, many people see entrepreneurial activity as a means for achieving their desired ends (colonies in space, people living on Mars, etc.) and thus think about it in a limited way. Prizes are a good example of this where the hope is that entrepreneurial activity can be harnessed to achieve symbolic goals. This is an inefficient mechanism because the goal being set may not be the best way to spark entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurial activity should instead be seen as the goal itself, whatever form it may take. The civil space program should take advantage of open competitions for their limited transportation resources, in order to find the best ideas available.
Exploration for resources in near Earth space should be viewed as a primary goal of the space program. The availability of water that can be easily accessed greatly enhances the possibilities for what humans can accomplish in space. A giant hurdle for any space venture is our lack of knowledge of nearby planetary bodies. Water (H2O) should be seen as the most important resource to search for as it provides use in many different ways (rocket fuel, human sustenance, etc.). Water is also a good thing to look for because we have a high probability of locating large amounts of it in near earth asteroids. Looking for water on the Moon using ISRU is like going to the Sahara to look for water when you could have just as easily gone to the Pacific ocean.
Scientific discovery is also an incredible driver for opportunity growth. The more that is learned about ourselves, and the solar system around us, the more opportunities we can uncover. Science also dovetails with exploration as it provides the how and why for things that are discovered.
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