Consider what would happen if the same forces that built up our global aviation, computer and electronics industries were unleashed on space. What might deep space look like then?
There would not be Moon bases, but rather lunar-based corporate subsidiaries -- and resorts. Commercial transportation, communication and energy services would be the norm. Governments would be just another set of customers among many, as is already the case for numerous Earth-orbiting space-business segments today. Someday there would be hotels in space and maybe even a McDonald's on Mars.
Just like the barnstorming days for aircraft, there would likely be some unconventional missions into deep space as well. Perhaps we would see a mission to the Moon or Mars to acquire unique footage for a Hollywood movie, or maybe a mission to transport heirlooms to an asteroid for eternal storage.
This time is not as far off as you might think! Total mission costs for such missions are coming down rapidly: Any company, consortium, country or individual that can afford a private business jet or large yacht now can afford to sponsor one of these missions.
SpaceDev, Inc., the world's first commercial space-exploration and development company, sees the aggressive application of time-proven, commercial business practices as the key to enabling the large-scale expansion of activities in deep space (at distances of the Moon and beyond). This vision is consistent with all of human history. Put simply: These techniques just work.
SpaceDev and other companies will be positioned soon -- by the turn of the millennium or shortly thereafter -- to design, build and execute a variety of robotic deep-space missions for clients, using proven commercial approaches. Human missions will follow -- eventually.
Most of this activity -- whether employing uncrewed robotic spacecraft like Mars Pathfinder, Lunar Prospector and Voyager, or vehicles with humans onboard -- will occur in the region of the solar system between Venus and the asteroid belt. The emphasis will be on the Moon, Mars and near-Earth asteroids; humans will eventually conduct activities at all of these locales. We'll see a variety of activities: exploration, resource surveys and assessments, mining, transportation of goods and services, commerce of all kinds. Outside this "near-Earth" region, most activity will remain exploratory for many more decades, employing robotic spacecraft.
The will to better ourselves
What drives all of this activity? Will humanity engage in this expansion primarily for the sake of discovery, science and exploration? We think not. What will draw our civilization out into this rather hostile environment is mainly space-based resources: water, energy (in the form of continuous sunlight), materials (aluminum, titanium, silicon, soil) and vantage point (for communications, monitoring, astronomy). Perhaps a known threat of an incoming, species-threatening asteroid would accelerate the process.
With Earth's population at 6 billion inhabitants -- and with billions more expected in coming decades -- we will have to rely on the nearly unlimited resources in space to augment the ever-shrinking resources on Earth. Eventually, our burgeoning populace will likely start inhabiting Mars, and maybe the Moon and some asteroids, too. Any other options run counter to proven human behavior patterns under similar circumstances. We expand out and resist caving in; we always seek a better life for our children.
Much has been learned the past few decades about the nature and extent of these space-based resources. We know that there are thousands of small asteroids and spent comet cores that occasionally whiz by the Earth. Hundreds of new ones are being discovered each year; many are thought to harbor huge amounts of water in the form of ice and frosty soil -- trillion-ton dirty snowballs. Many are easier to get to with a spacecraft than the Moon -- easier to reach than anywhere else in the solar system.
Mission studies conducted since the early 1970s indicate that finding a way of economically tapping into the water at these small bodies would radically alter the future of space -- forever. Water, broken down with appropriate application of concentrated sunlight, produces hydrogen and oxygen: very efficient and popular rocket propellants.
Propellant allows spacecraft to get from Point A to Point B. Once a spacecraft is in Earth orbit, it is about half way to anywhere else in the solar system, propellant-wise. Getting to Earth orbit is the difficult (and expensive) part. At launch costs expected for the next few decades, one container of water the size of one common train tanker car parked in low Earth orbit is worth about a billion dollars. Soon, it will cost far less than this to bring such a container back from an asteroid. For a business, this spells opportunity.
SpaceDev's vision is defined largely by a vigorous space-based infrastructure engaged in finding, assessing, accessing, transporting and utilizing these natural resources. This infrastructure provides the deep-space arena with economical transportation, concentrated portable energy, and effective communications. (This is analogous to the train/shipping, coal/steam and mail/telegraph systems of 100 years ago.)
Free enterprise, free space
But if we are going into space to stay, space has to pay. Companies utilizing proven commercial business techniques -- those of free enterprise, capitalism -- will lead the way into this new era; all will be driven to provide valuable products and services and to make a profit in the process. This is the engine that built the United States and is the fundamental process that drives civilization. The Industrial Age and the Information Age will be followed by the Commercial Space Age.
Government-sponsored organizations like NASA will likely continue to engage in the early exploration of new deep-space locales, as did Lewis and Clark for the western United States -- or Neil and Buzz for the Moon. But companies will enable and facilitate the settlement, build-up of infrastructure and expansion of activities 'out there'. As an indicator of this trend, in 1997 total worldwide expenditures on commercial space activities exceeded total government space expenditures for the first time, and the balance is tipping more each year.
To achieve this vision, SpaceDev's approach is to build to it one step at a time, not in big leaps and bounds. We favor not an all-out Apollo-like effort, but rather a measured, coordinated build-up to the end result. No one can afford to count on technical miracles. A commercial science mission to an asteroid here, a commercial ride for a probe to Mars there, a commercial lunar mapping spacecraft for the Moon. Whatever the market demands we intend to support.
There is a tsunami of commercial space activity coming! There will be hype, advertising campaigns, official corporate sponsors, commercial insurance, collect-on-delivery, international partners, closeout sales and marketing tie-ins with movies, toys and clothes. There will be spectacular financial successes and equally spectacular failures. Like it or not, that's business but it works to advance progress better than any other system yet conceived by mankind.
advertisement
