Is the Space Program Spacey?

In 2004, President Bush stunned space enthusiasts like me by boldly proclaiming that real-life Americans would be returning to the moon and Mars. While others scratched their heads, wondering how space funding could sprout from the arid shadows of budget deficit shrouding the U.S. Treasury, we space nuts simply checked our hearing. By the time Grandma had plucked me from playing flashlight tag to witness Luke Skywalker and his friends save my theater from the Empire for the first time, real-life astronauts had been permanently grounded to Earth's orbit. For trekkers even a few years younger than I, space flight has seemed ironically historical rather than futuristic.

In fact an invigorated space program has much to offer our economy. If there are little green men, Romulans, or alien trade federations out there, one can only imagine the market for weapons of universal destruction. On the other hand space exploration seems more likely unfold as in 2001: A Space Odyssey-- absent the monoliths. Unlike the expeditions of Columbus, Cortes, Newport, or even Lewis and Clarke, earthlings are likely to head into vast areas ripe for colonization with more hostile environmental issues than their ancestors faced, but no competition, friendly or otherwise.


Seeing these more realistic probabilities in the stars presents an entirely different economic picture than merely defense. Laboratories, vehicle factories, clothing manufacturers and other space economy enterprises will pay premiums to individuals with experience in physics, biology, basic medicine, computer science, human resource organization, engineering, and accounting. In the early stages space exploration and travel will have to be heavily funded by the government because they will initially be public goods. In economic terms they will be non-rival (two or more people can benefit from the same discovery) and non-excludable (because we won't be able to keep those who didn't pay from receiving benefits). Small government types should remember that the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were public goods in the 1490s although air and sea travel are conducted by private enterprise today. Would there be privately owned ski resorts in the Blue Ridge or peanut farms here in Suffolk without fifteenth and sixteenth century public investments by Western Europeans?


This week saw China and Japan each announce major space initiatives. Enticing as these announcements were, there appears a sense in some quarters that the communication revolution was the practical answer to science fiction's fascination with space travel and exploration. Let's hope not. Sooner or later the world will not offer enough for all the people on it. Somebody or some bodies, will fulfill the demand for more. Most likely more will initially be provided by a government. Let's answer this call! God knows we have the skilled laborers, the education system, the open society, and the government necessary to make it happen.