For those of you unfamiliar with 007, Orbis Non Sufficit is James Bond's family motto: "The World Is Not Enough" (hence the movie of that name). But it also applies to our situation on Earth. The Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said, "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever". It is time we moved beyond Earth to full citizenship in space.
Currently, Earth governments spend large proportions of their budgets on defence. This is somewhat understandable given the current global political climate, though many disagree that increased military power is the best way to eradicate terrorism. Perhaps the money would be better spent raising living standards and literacy in countries which propagate terrorists to remove the base of discontented citizens that organisations like al-Qa'ida draw recruits from. In any event, terrorism and the defence of countries against rogue states are serious issues. However, a, truly forward-thinking government might reduce defence spending and attempt to revitalise the space sector. Multilateral cooperation in such a direction is exactly what humanity needs to get manned space programs back on track after the Shuttle problems. The possible benefits of space technology will increase living standards on Earth, perhaps to such an extent that terrorism will fade as prosperity grows.
The first step, then, is governments paying more attention to, and putting more budget priority on, the space sector. Gorge W. Bush has already done this to an extent. Setting clear goals for NASA is a good way to get the organisation moving forward. However there has been little extra budget allocation to match the grand dream. An extra $1 billion has been added to NASA's $13 billion annual budget. Most of the funding for going to the moon and Mars will be redirected from other NASA projects which will be postponed for many years, or cancelled altogether. The situation is not ideal, and if space travel is to extend to the common citizen, and these flights to mars not fade away like Apollo, then governments need to make a larger, long-term commitment to providing space funds.
A
primary stumbling block to space exploitation has been its enormous cost.
The American businessman who went into space had to pay the Russians $40
million. The space shuttle costs roughly US$450 million to launch; Congressman
Dana Rohrenbacher called it, "the most effective device known to man
for destroying dollar bills". The second step, therefore, to space
rejuvenation is lowering the cost of getting up there. This is partly the
aim behind NASA's X-33 project. The X-33 VentureStar is a craft being developed
by Lockheed Martin from a $1 billion grant provided by the Clinton administration.
It is designed to incorporate lightweight composite alloys and effective
thrust nozzles to make it easier (and cheaper) to get into orbit. It is
also an SSTO craft which
means it wastes no weight on lifting disposable fuel tanks. The successful
development of a low-cost SSTO craft will be a large step forward.
Costs can also be reduced by increasing reusability. The Space Shuttle was intended to be much more reusable than it is. Even before the Columbia disaster, Shuttles flew only about 1 or 2 missions a year each. The X-33 should be capable of a much better turnaround time. Reusability is one of the key mandates of the X-Prize, a $10 million award which will be presented to the first team to build a spaceship capable of lifting three people to low Earth orbit and bringing them back, twice within two weeks. Edit: This prize was won in September 2004 by Scaled Composites LLC, the team behind the SpaceShipOne craft, now the basis of Virgin Galactic.
A final way to cut costs is mass production. Spacecraft are very expensive because they aren't mass-produced. The parts for them have to be made by hand by the supplying company out of often-uncommon materials. This is the same reason why B-2 stealth bombers cost $2 billion each, more than an aircraft carrier. A study by Boeing found that a fleet of 50 space shuttle-like craft operated in a way similar to aeroplanes would be much cheaper (per shuttle) than the small, expensive fleet of three. Such a large amount would also get a lot more done, being able to rapidly construct space stations and other orbital facilities. A shift to mass production of spaceships, even on a smaller scale than aeroplanes, will enable more to be done, and more revenue to be gained, which might offset (to a degree) the higher overall cost of having many shuttles.
Once we have a fleet (or even just a small set) of low-cost, reusable spacecraft, the next step is to use them to build up a permanent orbital presence. Currently this lies only in satellites and the few people in the International Space Station. A larger-scale orbital presence would entail not just scientific stations but manufacturing works, tourist hotels, spaceports for the stream of craft from Earth, and eventually residential colonies. This is a long-term vision, and could possibly be helped by two measures.
1)
- Introducing and encouraging commercial enterprise in space. Private corporations
are a large sector of the economy willing to provide venture capital to
build space works which they see as profitable. Proof of this lies in ambitious
projects such as Motorola's Iridium satellite constellation which not being
de-orbited (the failure of the program is not disproof of space's profitability,
however. The product didn't work because consumer desires were not adequately
addressed.) Anyway, profitable areas such as space tourism, mining and even
simple spaceflight may be substantially advanced by the investment of private
enterprise.
2) - Building a manned base on the Moon. The moon has no atmosphere, so obviously colonising and mining it will be a challenge. However, this is made up for by its suitability as a mining outpost. There is no wildlife or native population to consider when prospecting for ore. There is no environment to damage: we can mine as much as we want with no adverse effects. In the end, we may mine so much that the Moon's effect on Earth's tides is altered, but that is a long way in the future and could be fixed by substituting the mass with asteroids. These will be easier to lift off from the Moon than Earth due to the lower lunar gravity. The moon offers a practically limitless supply of common minerals such as carbon which will be very useful for space construction. It is also probably easier to extend operations on the Moon than it is to build space stations, until we are more present in space.
So, we use corporate and governmental capital to create more permanent space stations from lunar and Earth-based resources. At this stage, Earth will be a quite advanced spacefaring civilisation. By the time orbital residential colonies are built, supporting people living and working, space will be like just another continent for us to exploit. Hoverer, all launches of material from Earth will still be achieved through, rockets, which (even excluding economic factors) are very loud and would amplify the current problems with plane flight paths many times. The solution is to build orbital manufacturing plants which produce long strands of fullerene (C60), the strongest material we know of, and use it to build a Space Elevator. This will be the greatest engineering achievement of man to date. However, since exploring other planets is more adventurous (though no more grand), and to an extent easier than building such a massive project, it is likely we will have sent manned craft to worlds such as Mars by this stage. At any rate, by the time we complete a Space Elevator (or even just begin one), Humanity's ascent to the heavens will be almost complete.
This will then act as our launching point to the planets, and the stars; and then we will have left the cradle for the wide world around us.
