perfidy

I meant to respond to this a while ago, but several factors have delayed my response. (For those who are interested, they are, in order: laziness, work, children, getting ip banned from my own domain, and preparing the Epic New Jersey Post.) But late is often better than never.

So, Ken over at Brickmuppet blog now believes that he'll be buying me dinner soon. We made a bet some time ago that commercial manned spacecraft would be orbiting the Earth before NASA pulled its collective head out of it's many-orificed nether regions. He has changed his tune thanks to the announcement last week that Bigelow Aerospace will be orbiting a full-size habitat before decades' end, and is working to ink three separate deals with Lockmart, Kistler and SpaceX to provide manrated launchers to move passengers to his new orbital hotel. (Do you think it'll have hourly rates?)

As Ken notes, this is big. It does in fact solve the chicken-egg problem of having a destination to which manned, commercial launchers can fly to. I would add that it is ironic that NASA's nearly complete ISS notably did not solve this problem. There is a space station in orbit as we speak, but it isn't a destination. Remember the hissy fit NASA threw when the Russkies were about to launch the first space tourist? They don't want grubby tourists stinking up their pristine space station. No matter how much they may be forced by higher powers to encourage private space, they are at heart against the development of commercial space endeavors.

By spreading out the love on the launch contracts, Bigelow is (hopefully) preventing a commercial launch monopoly. I really didn't consider that to be a problem, considering the sheer numbers of .com billionaires in the game, but still good news.

One of the biggest things that will fall out of space development of this kind is that it levels the playing field to a large degree. "God created man, but Colt made them equal." When space is no longer the domain of the super, or near-super powers, things will change to a very large degree, and quickly.
The national security implications of commercial space are enormous. The fantastic capabilities of the NRO's marvelous spy satellites are, in effect, a kludge, because we couldn't put observers in orbit. Two intelligence specialists in a Bigalow-style inflatable habitat in a low altitude polar orbit would have very nearly all the capabilities of a modern spy satellite.

Further, the iron laws of orbital mechanics mean that if you are in space, you have a signicant energy advantage over those still on the ground. The old rods from god concept takes on a new level of danger when anyone can send a payload up into orbit. It's a lot easier to put together something like that than a nuke. I'm not saying Al Quaida is going to do it, but other nations, using space technology developed here, could.

Another thing that occurred to me while reading Ken's post. Often, space enthusiasts have pointed to other transportation technologies in an effort to explain why space travel hasn't taken off in the way that they hoped. The Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, but it was decades before commercial aviation was big business, for example.

But what if we imagine that Great Britain, locked in a cold war with a newly formed Germany in the late nineteenth century, started an air race? Some German engineer makes an airplane on a government contract (since the German military planners realized that competing with the Royal Navy was nothing but foolhardiness), and it's clearly designed as a weapon. The British race to come up with one of their own. And so on, through the 1880s and 1890s, aviation is developed at great government expense. Airplanes are large, sophisticated devices requiring the most advanced machining and precision manufacture. Mechanical computers are devised to calculate the fluid dynamics needed to optimize the designs.

By the turn of the century, there is in both nations a thriving industry of airplane manufacturers making airplanes to government specifications. What is the future of aviation in this world? Aviation was brought into existence far in advance of it's "natural" time, and its development is forced down odd paths by the requirements of international rivalry and bureaucracy. How long before a commercial aviation industry can take off, when everyone knows that airplanes are huge bombers that can only be built with the resources of one of the great powers?

I think that's some of what happened in our past, with space. Technology was probably ready for reasonable commerical space development by at least 1980, but investors and high tech industry had been conditioned by the exigencies of the space race to feel that it was inherently out of their reach. Also, government agencies jealous of their perogatives both on the civilian and defense sides – actively prevented commercial development.

And Ken, I think I want Indian cuisine.