Space in the Market

A Field Report from
Liona Fan-Chiang
Basement Team member
Los Angeles, CA

September 23, 2009 (LPAC)--The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics held their annual conference this year at the Pasadena Convention Center in California in the midst of a politically and financially stormy month of September. Excitement could be seen in the interactions of participants who were able to take the opportunity to share the most advanced space related research ideas and questions the United States has to offer.

However, besides the particular advances, one other unique development was being presented this year: the financial meltdown. The conflict which seemed to pervade every mind was, how are all these great ideas going to be funded in a collapsing economy?

Recently, the government issued Augustine Report came out, outlining why instead of shutting down the International Space Station in 2015, as the current budget would allow, we should instead dock it in 2020. It also pointed out that after the Space Shuttle retires, we may have to wait of 7 years or so until we will have the capability to send man to space. Indeed these prospects make it difficult for anyone who is trying to plan any missions which might take a decade or a few decades, as many worthwhile missions would. One panel was very explicit: “Maintaining the Quality of Operations in a Down Economy.”

In this context, several desperate attempt have been made to squeeze through the cracks of the financial breakdown. One currently popular line is that space exploration will only survive if it can be made profitable and increasingly privatized just as much of US infrastructure and military has.

Obeisance to “The Market” coated almost all presentations. If your proposal does not include cost cutting into your equations of motion, it must be incompetent and not serious. As a result, several presentations which might have taken a more frontier approach and posed larger more encompassing questions, were restricted, a sentiment which was confirmed upon further provocation of speakers after their presentations. One Mars forward presentation was even proud that his proposal did not require new technology.

In fact, only in a collapsing economy and an increasingly service dominated economy would “Green Space” have been allowed at a conference like this. The panel's name “Green Space: Addressing Space Debris - End of Life Operations” was very revealing. Maybe we should call for satellite palliative care doctors as well. This panel showed the epitome of monetarism. For example, there was an argument made to tax third world countries more for their satellites. Why? For those who have studied the British and the origins of environmentalism, the answer is obvious: to hinder development of colonies. The argument of the panelist was that, most likely the first ones sent out by a third world country will likely fail. Thus, as the argument goes, instead of spending more money on optimistic goals for exploration, spend it cleaning up the population...of space debris.

There may be hope yet

Despite this mossy conclusion to the conference, many very exciting ideas were presented, which included very specific details of plans to not only return to the moon, but stay there for a while. Several habitats were proposed, along with a few plans on how to counteract the effects of microgravity and low gravity on the human body. Lyndon LaRouche's proposal of constant 1G acceleration was not mentioned, but the response to the idea was almost universally, “That would work, but that would require a lot of energy.” When He3 fusion was proposed, the typical response was, “Oh, so you mean we have to mine the moon.” Just as LaRouche had said, if you define the challenge, it defines the necesities. Since there has been limited capability to do on the ground testing, modeling techniques have become very sophisticated, which however, as one presenter pointed out, will never be close to accurate without just going there and testing.

Fortunately, since this may be one of the highest concentrations of skilled, thinking people still around, including many previous Fusion Energy Magazine subscribers, any amount of interaction will show that most people knew more about economics than the popularly accepted lines, which they shrouded their presentations in, let on, and certainly more than most purported economists today. First of all, no one would be in the business if they really believed in no growth, and only sustainability. Second, many participants work in defense, or are directly part of the military, and know the disaster of attempts to privatize the military. Even from a business standpoint, the cost-cutting method was crazy. As one participant pointed out in discussion, the government is running this country like a bankrupt company: cutting workers, cutting capital input and shutting down R&D. Any sane, growing company knows that 110% has to be invested as capital to make real profit in physical terms. Beyond the budget cuts, the chord found resonance, when cold academic discussion and courteousness went out the window around the vehement continuing bailout.

Thus when offered the chance of creating a credit system to replace the current corrupt monetary system, estimates for the practicability of technologies such as fusion energy suddenly fell from 10 years to 2-3. This trend was true for many technological challenges.

21st century science and technology press posed to these scientists: instead of waiting for the recovery, or begging for table scraps, hasn't frontier science always been the backbone of US economy? The response was overwhelmingly, “Of course”. Many people had been in the industry for almost half a decade and were around for the successes of the Apollo program. It was quickly revealed, that though a valiant attempt is being made to pose space exploration as an option, like any other product of the market, no one actually believes such nonsense. Finally, the title of LPAC's release “From Moon to Mars: The New Economics - Part 1” inspired many to be willing to talk about their own roles as national leaders on a generational scale.