A few recent articles of note about space policy and last week’s election:
- A Huntsville Times article Sunday argues that the Vision for Space Exploration will move ahead with President Bush’s reelection, with one local person, NASA Advisory Committee member Mark McDaniel, saying “People throughout NASA have been waiting on this election to start work.” However, local Congressman Bud Cramer (D-AL) says that the fate of the vision will depend on “budget priorities and the war.”
- In this week’s edition of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman asks if the election is “a mandate for exploration”. He argues that “unless the American people are given the chance to get involved or, at least, to feel that this investment will pay direct dividends to their children and grandchildren, the Vision will not be sustained.”
- Also in TSR, Sam Dinkin reviews the passage of a California measure to fund stem cell research and wonders if a similar approach could work for space exploration. “If you look at NASA’s share of the federal budget, which runs at about 1%, it is not inconceivable that Sacramento could fund space to the tune of $10 billion over ten years and launch the first Mars mission, Hollywood-style.”
Taylor Dinerman’s piece (combined with Jeff Foust’s brief editorial summary found above) could easily flow into support for a program that made sweeping grants of celestial real estate to venturesome space settlers. Personally, I think land grant programs are a terrific idea.
However, unlike the situation President Lincoln faced, neither the Moon nor Mars nor the NEOs have been acknowledged as being within the perview of the United States government to give away. If Lincoln wanted to initiate a policy that eventually led to Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise looking Far and Away to free land and a new start in Oklahoma, Lincoln had the advantage of already owning Oklahoma.
As Taylor Dinerman previously noted (brilliantly, may I add) the Moon may well come to be a late 21st or 22nd century analouge to the British base at Gibraltar during the Age of Sail. Therefore, should we be sanguine and expect France, Russia and China to sit back and passively allow Americans to homestead celestial real estate?
Many centuries ago, Machiavelli wrote that sending out civilian settlers (colonists) is a far less expensive and a far more effective means for a Prince to control distant territories than sending a professional military.
Jeff, I respectfully request a thread on Michael Huang’s article.
Well the Space treaty states that no one can own real estate beyond earth. So any type of state sponsered land grab is not possible. But if the State sponsers explorers, and those explores decided to mutiny and stay, and they begin to make use of that real estate, they might beable to claim ownership of it. Since they broke ties to the sponsoring government they would be a rogue state.
The UN gonna send troops to take those people back? Nope, I see it akin to those people who choose to live on a boat in international waters. the UN does nothing to those people and unless they begin to commit piracy.
Though on Dinkin’s thought, why not go one step further and create a Federalist Space Agency, where individual states contribute reasources to it? Hmm, I’m liking this idea.
But if the State sponsers explorers, and those explores decided to mutiny and stay, and they begin to make use of that real estate, they might beable to claim ownership of it.
If it is likely that explorers or colonists will mutiny to throw off the shackles of a Terran bureacracy, why would any Terran bureacracy with an ounce of common sense pay hundreds of billions of dollars to fund settlers who will only rebel anyways?
Reminds me of some college kids:
Mom, Dad, I despise everything you stand for and the way you have totally ruined your lives. Now send me five hundred dollars, okay?
“Well the Space treaty states that no one can own real estate beyond earth.”
Kinda beside the point but… arent geostationary slots a type of “space real estate” ? Somehow ITU can still regulate and allocate their use, and if im not mistaken its on “first come, first serve” principles.
Federalist Space Agency might be a good way for the states to collude on Aerospace so they don’t kill each other with incentives like the huge ones for the new Dell Factory. Personally, I would rather see the free for all of unbridled competition once $2T flow into tourism and exploration.