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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. October 2, 2004 What with all the interest the approaching presidential election is garnering in the news, we are overlooking what may be an ultimately much more significant story; the second successful flight of SpaceShipOne. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, billionaire and then some, is poised to be the Henry Ford of space flight. I doubt that his plans include a Model-T but I have to admit his prototype space ship, SpaceShipOne does have a certain tin-lizzy panache. SpaceShipOne is apparently going to win the Ansari X Prize. Inspired by the Orteig Prize for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris the $10 million Ansari X Prize will reward the first team that privately finances, builds and launches a spaceship carrying three people or the functional equivalent 62.5 miles above the Earth twice within a two week span. SpaceShipOne has already made its first qualifying flight and is scheduled to make its second on Monday, October 4, 2004. It's hard to believe that it was only a couple of years ago that the space shuttle flights had become such a routine matter that live coverage of launches was all but impossible to find on network TV. Even on local TV stations it seemed clips of shuttle launches had become little more than easy filler on par with footage of Aunt Tid's prize winning tomatoes. That is in stark contrast to when I was a child in the seventies and all television programming would be preempted, sometimes for hours, in anticipation of a launch. It seems to have taken the combination of the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia, the prospect of private space flight, and China's recent entry into space to reawaken our sense of the awe. It is rocket science after all. Still, one has to wonder really what the point of it all is. I understand well enough the military implications of space flight and the blurry distinction between the ostensibly civilian role of NASA and the primary role NASA plays in our military apparatus. I understand that spy satellites are indispensable in that one of their primary uses is to avoid the misunderstandings that lead to wars in the first place. And certainly we must consider that missiles based in space would be nearly impossible to detect or intercept. Certainly that makes a presence in space a necessity for any self respecting nation with designs on real world power. Certainly the guiding interests of China, Russia, and America must be military exploitation of space, but what about Europe and Paul Allen? What do they intend or expect when with great expense they launch a vehicle into space? Let's start with Europe. The brute fact is that post WWII Europe was colonized and partitioned almost as effectively as Africa had been during the 19th century. Effectively there is no military in Europe that is not in reality commiserate with the Indian Army of the British Empire; useful for controlling the natives but not much to worry about in a real war. The chief purpose of the European Space Agency seems to be legitimate selfless science, not anything as mundane as mere military posturing. I respect that, but considering the economic disparity between the various states that comprise the European Union and the necessity for vast social spending on the Eastern bloc states I doubt that space exploration will be supported at the expense of health care and modernizing their infrastructure. That leaves Paul Allen. I find it amazing to note that in the great space race of 2004, Paul Allen is running a not too distant third to the United States and China. I suppose it may seem a slight to Russia to put Mr. Allen third, but honestly, our space program and Russia's are one and the same now and it seems pointless to make distinctions between them. I would have put the Europeans third since they have exceeded Earth orbit, but it seems almost silly to view their Mars missions as anything other than tagalong little brother expeditions. Somehow, I believe Mr. Allen will make money on this venture. I'm not knocking that. Occasionally I make money and I've come to enjoy it. But Paul Allen drops his dime on a different scale than I do. I doubt that he envisions anything less than a space agency that dominates private space flight much the same way that Microsoft is the lord and master of computer operating systems. I know there is a profit to be obtained in deploying satellites, maybe even in ferrying supplies to the International Space Station assuming it ever becomes fully operational, but where is the real money? Where is the Global money? In over forty years NASA hasn't found a financial model that turns a profit to speak of. I would think that mining is about the only hard industry that can conceivably take place with existing technologies and that only with great difficulty and an expense of deterrent proportions. The consensus seems to be that the only profitable business opportunity available at the moment is space tourism. That's where they all seem to think the money lies. They're probably right, but that's also where the danger lies. I mentioned Henry Ford earlier. I mentioned him for a reason. I know it may be asking for a little indulgence, but hear me out; the automobile industry and all that it entails has been one of the great disasters in American history. I'll freely concede that it has been the source of vast fortunes and played the central role in the expansion of the American economy. Without the auto industry we wouldn't have won WWII and we wouldn't have become the world power that we are today, but-and to me this is an overwhelming but-the lack of preplanning that has been part and parcel of the industry and the economy that grew in lockstep with that industry has been an unmitigated disaster. It would be too easy and too short sighted to merely point out that our dependence on foreign oil has us staring down the barrel of a long term colonial war in the Middle East, but consider also the effect of automobile emissions, consider the irreparable damage to lives caused by the lead that still pollutes many of our nations most densely populated areas, consider the ecological impact of impeding the migration of our wildlife, consider how poor the design of our highway system has been. In fact there are multiple ineffective systems of highways that interlace one another, all of them bad. Aside from the constant repair work-a constant drain on our economy-they rarely meet the traffic demand even conservative models of population growth would recommend. We like to look back with great affection at early years of the automobile, the tin-lizzy days when we began our vagabond love affair with the road. We like to romanticize our roadside diners, our truckers, and our Harley Davidson motorcycles, but in reality we have paid a heavy price for our wanderlust. If we had it to do over, don't you think this vast network of blacktop highway could have also been designed as a vast solar energy collection grid? How hard would it have been to have run PVC pipes through those thousands of miles of blacktop? Even a high school science class should be able to perform the necessary engineering to devise a primitive working model. There are other modifications that could have been made (incorporating passenger rails in the medians, emergency only lanes, geothermal heating to avoid the build up of snow, etc.) and would have been cost effective at the time of the initial construction, but since they weren't incorporated at the planning stage the cost of reworking the existing systems is nearly beyond calculation. My thought is that if there is no great imperative that compels us to rush headlong into the private exploitation of space, let's not rush. We've seen tourists in space already, what's next, Survivor on the Moon? Don't laugh. And please don't let it happen that way. Let's all declare the moon holy and taboo. Haven't we already left enough footprints on the face of the moon? My belief is that the moon is one of the great natural beauties certainly on par with the beauty of the Grand Canyon or the Pyrenees or the great redwood forests and it looks better without some infernal neon logo of imperialism on it. For once I hope we can all get together, use a little foresight, and do what we know is right. Let's all work together and keep the Paris Hilton's of the world off the moon.
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