In his 1986 book, "The Reckoning," David Halberstam
summarized the defeat of American automakers at the hands of Japanese manufacturers with
the wonderful phrase, "Familiarity breeds complacency." Similarly, Zen master
Suziki Roshi tells us, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities,
but in the expert's there are few."
Expert complacency has the potential
to kill the nascent commercial space
industry, and at the International Space University's
annual symposium in December I heard numerous causes for worry.
2004 was a momentous year, including
passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, and the X Prize being
awarded to Scaled Composites. But there are no guarantees that small companies
like SpaceX, XCOR or Armadillo Aerospace will continue to survive in an
industry dominated by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and EADS. And like the early 1990s when IBM faced challenges from
upstarts like Compaq and Digital Equipment Corp., these aerospace giants may
not yet understand the wide-ranging possibilities of commercial space
transportation.
In this setting, how can the space community build on last
year's momentum? A clue was provided Dec. 1 at the space transportation session
chaired by Patricia Grace Smith, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's
associate administrator for commercial space transportation, during the ISU symposium.
In presenting "Commercial Space
Transportation and the Industries it Enables: Economic Impacts and Market
Development," Ms. Smith made it clear that commercial
space is not a stand-alone business. Her reasoning and vision were compelling:
"If you will, please pause with me for a moment ... and envision an intermodal
transportation system -- where air, land, sea and space all converge. Businesses -- both
manufacturing and service industries (hotels, restaurants, fuel providers,
cleaning, tourist services) -- thrive around the spaceport much as they do
around today's major airports. Routine
missions to low-Earth orbit and beyond occur on an hourly basis -- taking
advantage of the communications, navigation and surveillance capabilities our military has
to offer, and they are interwoven with a well-coordinated, real-time space and
air traffic control system," she said in prepared remarks.
"Intermodal" is the operative word, the key to the relevancy
and success of our emerging commercial space transportation industry. Sadly,
yet not surprisingly, this message was completely lost on most of the speakers
in this session, as evidenced by the question-and-answer session.
When I asked if their companies are considering
how to make space part of intermodal transportation, the chief spacecraft engineer for
SES-ASTRA answered that since the company's clients had not asked
for it, they did not see the need for it.The representatives of EADS Space
Transportation and CNES Launcher Directorate responded similarly.
What a lack of vision.
And then came the reply I was hoping for, from the person I
expected it from: Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX. He responded, "If we
aren't thinking about intermodal operations, then why are we doing what we're
doing?" Yes. The agile entrepreneur from outside
the industry outthinks the established players; and again we see the power of
new ideas.
If the emerging commercial space sector is to fulfill its
economic potential, it must be fully integrated with Earth-bound
transportation. If it is going to enhance our lives as broadly as has
information technology, it must similarly become a visible part of our everyday
lives. Anything less ignores the global economy's reliance on transportation and misses the best opportunity yet to enhance
understanding of the commercial potential of human space activity.
Jeff Krukin is Executive Director of the Space Frontier
Foundation. He can be reached at jkrukin@spacefrontierfoundation.org
