A fading Constellation...

When his fleet reached Mexico in 1519, Cortes disembarked and promptly burned the ships under his command to the waterline, thus cementing his position in the New World and ensuring that his men had the proper motivation – no available avenue for retreat. That’s a profound statement of confidence… if you don’t get yourself killed in the process. Of course if you fail, you do it brazenly and become just another crackpot who sailed “off the edge of the world” so to speak.

I worry that the Administration’s de-funding of the Constellation Program today effectively burns our collective ships; perhaps before we’ve managed to unload the supplies we’ll need for the next step in exploration. Rather than a great enterprise of exploration (say, something like taking over a continent or putting American astronauts back on the moon), our modern Captain-General is casting his men to the wind and expecting each to find their own way. Shutting down Constellation ensures that the critical mass of intuitional knowledge left at NASA will dissipate across dozens of companies and that none of them will have the capability to replicate what Constellation could have been.

I’ve been a champion of the free market my entire adult life and there’s no doubt that the private sector can “do” space flight. NASA is well stocked now with contractors working for United Space Alliance in the twilight of the shuttle program, but government has always been the driver of space exploration, with its massive contracts and goals of shooting the moon. Outsourcing exploration is abdicating the role that governments have filled since men sailed wooden ships to the undiscovered coast of the New World on behalf of the Old World’s royal houses. Such exploration was subsidized by governments until there was a viable economic reason for the private sector to take over – reasons like Virginia tobacco, South American gold, and Caribbean sugar.

I don’t see how we’re there yet. Apollo gave us the first glimpse of how computing power would change the world. Three generations of rockets and the shuttle have given us communications satellites that tie the world together and telescopes that can see nearly to the moment of creation. Until the private sector has a profit motive in space exploration other than government largess, I worry that today could be the real end of the age of exploration.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]