Beyond Earth (ATWG) - Chapter 7 - Creating the First City on the Moon by Thomas F. Rogers

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Chapter 7

Creating the First City on the Moon By Thomas F. Rogers

Doing So Should Grow To Become The Major United States Civil Space Activity Of the Space Age's Second Half-Century

"We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. ...those who came to this land sought...a new country. ...[we must] make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: it was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of life"

Lyndon B. Johnson. His "Great Society" speech, 1964, The World Is Flat - A Brief History of The Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York; 2005; page 276

"... The assumption that because America's economy has dominated the world for more than a century, it will and must always be that way, is as dangerous an illusion today as the illusion that America would always dominate in science and technology was back in 1950. But this is not going to be easy. Getting our society up to speed for a flat world is going to be extremely painstaking. We are going to have to start doing a lot of things differently."

Thomas Friedman; , above, page 278

Real Estate Developer James Rouse once observed that creating new cities can provide "...a new, creative, thrust that will not only produce new communities but will release among the people in them the potential for the noblest civilization the world has ever seen."

James Rouse, "Better Places, Better Lives - A Biography of James Rouse"

Joshua Olsen; The Urban Land Institute; Washington D.C.; 2003; page 135

Introduction

The publicly funded United States civil space program came into being in response to the unexpected launch of the world's first man-made satellite into Earth orbit in 1957, and later satellite and cosmonaut launches, by the then Soviet Union. As the U.S.S.R. continued to demonstrate prowess in space, Cold War considerations led the

U.S. to demonstrate its superior technological capability to the world by deciding to be the first Country to send astronauts to the Moon and back.

By the end of 1972 the US had demonstrated the continued ability for two astronauts to take such a trip and stay there for three days.

Thereafter, the role of people in space became less clear, and the most important space activity became the conduct of scientific research, primarily in the natural sciences, using telescopes and robotic probes. Several attempts since then to extend human activities beyond Low Earth Orbit failed to generate widespread national support.

Now, however, the Federal civil space program is being fundamentally changed to institutionalize human expansion throughout the Solar System and the Cosmos. NASA has been drawing up plans for what some see as the commencement of the next human evolutionary advance.

At the outset, NASA says it will spend just over $100 billion (2005 dollars) to send four astronauts travel to/from the Moon's surface in 2018, and remain there for up to a week.

But considering its earlier actual civil space program cost experiences, and Federal fiscal circumstances, the cost could be as much as roughly $250 billion, and the trip date could be delayed to 2024-5. (See below for details.) "House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert said [on] Nov. 3 [2005] that "There is simply not enough money in NASA's budget to...maintain the current schedule' with the relatively flat NASA budgets forecast for the year's ahead." (Space News; November 7; 2005; page 6.)

Thus, we could spend some one-quarter trillion dollars and 20 years to merely double the capability we demonstrated in the early 1970s. That is, over a period of more than 50 years since the last Apollo flight, doubling of capability will have achieved a paltry average rate of less than 1-1/2% improvement per year. And there is little NASA or public discussion about how this increased space capability is to demonstrate its value. In addition: There is no public discussion about the U.S. public civil space effort being broadened to include other Federal offices than NASA in what would become a truly great human activity requiring a very broad and sophisticated national involvement;

  • The American public is not to be directly involved in the effort. The 1991 report "America's Space Exploration Initiative" should be recalled in this regard, as after stating that the then described human Moon-Mars program should "Involve the public in the adventure of exploration" (page 26), nothing further was said about doing so;
  • Private U.S. commercial-industrial participation is not addressed. Again, the 1991 "Initiative" report noted that "Industry effort should be limited to studying elements of the [program] architectures." (Page 7); and
  • Except for some potentially significant space transportation vehicle development efforts, private investment is hardly addressed; the tax-paying public is expected to pay for almost all of the program's financial cost.
  • Finally, what is the fundamental purpose of the initial human Moon activity that is planned? Is it to be conducted primarily, and perhaps only, to demonstrate that extra-Earth human trips and stays could also involve Mars? And, later, would astronauts visit Mars primarily to demonstrate that the technological-operational capability to visit Pluto? And continuing, then to have them visit ... ?

The United States can, and should, be doing more and better than this in non-military space.

The U.S. has great experience and capability in civil space, and it faces grave national and international safety, security and economic circumstances. Potentially, the Moon offers safety, security, economic, and cultural potentials, but we are not moving to realize these potentials.

This chapter suggests that the Moon program that it is now commencing could be, and should be, modified and enlarged in a fundamental manner. Doing so would see us involving a broad cross section of U.S. professional, business, and financial interests and capabilities to advance civilization's most fundamental interests and aspirations.


In thinking about past civil space advances (here "civil" includes all non-military, Federal government and private sector initiatives), it should be kept in mind that, measured from Sputnik, 2007 will mark the end of the first half-century of the civil space age.

Today, the U.S. Federal civil space program is focusing upon implementing the "space exploration" vision advanced by President George W. Bush in January 2004. An initial program has been set forth by NASA. (See, for instance, the contemporary summary: "Reaching for the Moon", Nature; 6 October, 2005; page 789.) The space community expected the vision to call for astronauts to visit Mars, and as Wendell Mendel observed "Most people seem to think "been there, done that', about the moon, which appears to most to have nothing to offer." (In "Making Space Happen", Paula Berinstein; Medford Press, Plexus Publishers, Inc.; 2002; page 193.)

This is expected to be the first step in a continuing United States program that would see robots and people engaged in physical discovery activities throughout the Solar System and, indeed, the Cosmos, for as far into the future as can be imagined. But the present NASA Administrator sees much more - - he has recently emphasized that NASA would be involved in "extending the range of human habitat[ion] out from Earth into the solar system [because] a single-planet species will not survive." ("Ground This Mission", The Washington Post; October 2, 2005; page B6.) And Nature (see above) notes that this activity would be "... not just flags and footprints [as in Apollo] but the beginning of humanity's permanent expansion into the Solar System."

This view implies that we must consider not just Columbus-like, or Lewis and Clark-like astronauts as explorers of space, but their immediate pioneer followers as well, people concerned not only with exploring, mapping, and geology, but with extending civilization itself beyond the Earth.

If not just a few individuals visit the Moon, but large numbers of people migrating to, bodies far from the Earth, it will be an extraordinary, novel, and complex undertaking for today's space professionals to carry out. Indeed, by themselves, they cannot do so - - it is simply too large and complex a task for them. ("The U.S. civil space sector; alternate futures", Courtney Stadd and Jeff Bingham; Space Policy; November, 2004; pages 241252.)

Therefore, in considering this initial program's goals, cost and schedule, it's instructive to compare it with another "super-exploration" program, the one that, 500 years ago, immediately after Columbus' arrival in the New World, saw mass migration by Europeans.

The first human visits to the Moon extended over an interval of nearly 3.5 years, but there have been none since December 1972, so the Moon has been "uninhabited" for nearly 33 years. If the next trip happens in 2018, which would be almost exactly 50 years following the first one.

In comparison Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic "was founded in 1496 by Bartolomeo Columbus, brother of Christopher Columbus, as capital of the first Spanish colony in the New World. It became the starting point of most of the Spanish expeditions of exploration... of the other West Indian islands and the adjacent [North and South American] mainland." ("The New Encyclopedia Brittanica, Volume 10, Micropedia, 15th Edition; Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc., Chicago; 2002.) That is, it took only 10 years after Colombus' original voyage to establish a permanent presence, and not just a "base" or "outpost," but a city. Today Santo Domingo is the industrial, commercial, and financial center of the country with a population of about 2 million, about double the population of Washington D.C.

Of course, the physical circumstances on the Moon are markedly different from those faced in the West Indies, but in principle the difficulties that they present should be offset to some considerable extent today by the financial and political wealth that United States can call upon. In addition, our scientific knowledge, technological assets and experience, and our economic capabilities are far greater. And a voyage to the Moon takes only days, while it took Europeans months to travel to the Caribbean.

Why Should The United States Lead Human Immigration To The Moon ?

There are several important reasons why we should return to the Moon, and other than the first one, they are not yet given much attention by the space world or the general public.


A. Safety:

Fundamental Support for the Future of Civilization

The past several decades have seen increasing concern expressed by experienced scientists and others about the increasing peril that our civilization faces due to the growth in natural and manmade threats.

For example, Martin Rees, Royal Society Professor at Cambridge University, Fellow of King's College, and England's Astronomer Royal, has recently declared that "...terror, error and environmental disaster threatens humankind's future," and suggests that the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that humankind will survive to the end of the twenty first century.

If Rees is correct then many people already living today will face an awful fate, and their children could well be among the Earth's last. But if enough people carry human civilization with them a quarter-million miles away to the Moon, as they did across the Earth's surface from southern Africa starting some 50,000 years ago, many/most Earthly risks thereto should be eliminated for a long time to come.


B. Economics:

A Fundamental Response to "Economic Globalization"

A major change is underway in international economics. Over the past two decades, nations such as China have made rapid progress and have begun to join the United States, Canada, and Western Europe in business capability. They look forward, confidently, to equaling or surpassing the performance of today's economic leaders.

Billions of people in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia are becoming capitalists. "The scale of the global community that is soon going to be able to participate in all sorts of [economy-related] discovery and innovation is something the world has simply never seen before." (Friedman; pages 1812.) And this is raising grave problems for the United States and other Countries that have global developed economies.

For instance, Thomas Friedman has observed that "China's real long-term strategy is to outrace America and the E[uropean] U[nion] countries to the [economic] top, and the Chinese are off to a good start." (Friedman, page 118.)

The National Academy of Sciences recently released a report prepared in response to a request from Congress to study economic globalization and its likely influence on the U.S. economy. (The Internet: www.nationalacademies.org; The New York Times; October 13, 2005; page A16; The Washington Post; October 13, 2005; page D5.)

"America must act now to preserve its strategic and economic security,' panel Chairman Norman R. Augustine said. "The building blocks of our economic leadership are wearing away. The challenges that America faces are immense.' ... The underlying goal, the panel said, is to create high-quality jobs by developing new industries...based on the bright ideas of scientists and engineers. (The Times) Augustine also observed that, "The U.S. is not competing well in this new world." (Aviation Week and Space Technology; October 31, 2005; page 70.)

Section 102 (c) of the U.S. Federal Space Act of 1958, as Amended, states (in unusually strong language) that "The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [should] seek and encourage to the maximum extent possible the fullest commercial use of space."

But to date, civil space public expenditures have not produced significant private sector economic gain, but now is the time to think about the use of Moon-related assets and activities in an imaginative and determined fashion to advance America's economic interests at a time when we are threatened by economic globalization.

Learning how to move people to the Moon and have them reside and work there would be a large-scale imaginative advance that would take advantage of our past half-century's civil space scientific research, technology development, and space operations efforts, and could lead to enormous economic gain for the US.


C. Peace:

Seizing the Opportunity to Avoid War

The Moon is nearly a quarter-million-miles from the Earth, a distance that should offer protection to its inhabitants from any natural disaster that occurs on Earth other than a large meteor strike. However, in considering the formation of an Earth-Moon civilization, two generally- unappreciated Lunar characteristics stand out: While the Moon is billions of years old and has some four times the surface area of the United States or Europe, there are no people there!

And, except for a near-two week total interval in the some 150,000 years that modern humans have existed, no one has been there, so the Moon has essentially no human history!

In human terms the Moon is essentially a tabula rasa - - a blank space. There are no lingering hatreds, or even recollections of war, slavery, genocide, or religious persecution. There are no political or economic alliances or political boundaries, no land ownership, no weapons of any kind, especially weapons of mass destruction.

Imaginative and sensitive advantage could be taken of such an extraordinary civilization-related circumstance not to be found here on Earth. Indeed, political, economic, legal, and other governance-related steps could be undertaken on the Moon that can hardly be thought of in many parts of today's Earth based world.

For we now have the extraordinary, encouraging circumstance of being able in effect to restart civilization under the best circumstances possible, learning and demonstrating how the evolving New World could become a peaceful one for all of its inhabitants.

Is this possible?

In the opening section of "Wilson's Ghost - - Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century", (Public Affairs, New York, Perseus Books Group; 2001) Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight remind us of the awful experience that the world's people have had with war over the past blood-drenched century alone.

Many would say that because human nature is what it is, civilization will always be faced with the prospect of terrible wars, that such aggression "is in our genes." But this may well be an incorrect understanding of the human condition. Archaeologists are now concluding "...that warfare, despite its malignant hold on modern life, has not always been part of the human condition. The global archaeological record... shows that warfare is largely a development of the past 10,000 years." ("The Birth of War", R. Brian Ferguson; Natural History; July/August, 2003; pages 28-35.) Hence, for about 150,000 years of human existence it is seen as quite possible that there was no such thing as war.

This suggests that we could use human development of the Moon to learn how to change our culture. To achieve peace is one of civilization's most important goals and activities, one of the greatest in history and pre-history. It would certainly be the outstanding civil space accomplishment of the second half-century of the civil space age!


D. Diplomacy:

"For the Benefit of All Mankind", and Public Diplomacy.

The Space Act states that U.S. "...activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind."

Certainly learning how to live and work on the Moon in a manner that would formally seek out how to do so peacefully would fulfill the spirit and letter of this law, and would benefit all people throughout the World!

And it would be of particular importance to the U.S. today. For unlike the wide plaudits it received for its victorious World War II efforts followed by the Marshall Plan, its work in helping to create the United Nations organization and the defeat of Communism followed by the destruction of the Berlin Wall, recent years have seen the U.S. lose the approval of many of the World's peoples and governments: "Washington's image and influence [are] at a low ebb." (The Wall Street Journal; November 3, 2005; page A10.)

The extraordinary and worldwide understanding and appreciation of the Apollo program was a kind of "soft power" used by the U.S. in a manner that now could be described by the term "public diplomacy." Thoughtful pursuit of peaceful immigration to the Moon, in which it would lead the international community in seeking ways by which safety, economic gain, and peace would be sought for all people there and on the Earth could generate wide


spread approval for the U.S. again - - approval which could extend over decades to come. "We could certainly help our case by boasting about our benevolence less and proving it more...by acting, that is, in ways that seem worthy of a great democracy." ("Their Highbrow Hatred of Us", James Traub; The New York Times; Sunday Magazine Section; October 30, 2005; pages 15-16.)

But Why A Lunar City ?

The Moon's surface area is nearly as large as North and South America combined. Under proper circumstances, well over one billion people could reside there. Even if the number in residence were only to replicate that of Alaska, the U.S. State with the smallest population density, it would exceed 700,000.

While NASA plans to spend over $100 billion to see four astronauts reach the Moon's surface in 2018 and stay there for a week, a study of NASA technology development-operational programs by the Congressional Budget Office suggests that it could well cost some 45% more than this. ("A Budgetary Analysis of NASA's New Vision for Space Exploration", The Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, Washington, D.C.; September, 2004.") i.e., some $150 billion.

Since we can expect to run annual Federal budget deficits of many $100s of billions per year for decades ahead, this discretionary program sum will have to be borrowed, so it may cost roughly $250 billion in public funding to see this seventh astronaut Moon stay come about. Additional trips and extended surface stays will add to this cost.

Whether this is an acceptable sum to spend for the acquisition and demonstration of this particular Federal civil space capability does not depend upon its technological-operational success alone, but upon how it will be employed. To date, the most that is the government has said that it expects to do is to see that, in time, astronauts will "...live for six months at a time in Antarctic-style outposts." (Nature)

Certainly we can do much better than this! And if this activity is being undertaken to demonstrate "...that humanity is poised to take its next evolutionary step...the beginning of humanity's permanent expansion into the Solar system" (Nature), we must do more, much more, than this!

What needs to be done is to advance beyond government space explorers visiting Moon outposts for relatively brief intervals, to seeing large numbers of a wide cross section of the general public settled there as pioneers undertaking economic, social and cultural activities. We must see our government and private sector enter into an extraordinary undertaking together.

This undertaking must deal with very novel and complex circumstances, and therefore a very broad and most sophisticated approach is required. It must provide appropriate Earth-Moon transportation that is not only safe and reliable, but at a unit cost well below anything yet attained in spite of decades of attempts by NASA to do so. Food, water, electrical energy, communications, local transportation, housing, medical care, educational services must all be provided in a way that accommodates the Moon's great and rapid changes in temperature, its absence of an atmosphere, meteoric and radiation influxes, a much lower gravity, etc. Matters of governance and private investment practices must be created in a legal setting with which the World has had no experience. And, in principle, the varied interests of the Earth's very nearly 200 countries should be accommodated.

Several professional studies address having people on the Moon to make economic use of its physical resources have certainly been instructive and stimulating, but they have been primarily theoretical and have not dealt practically with such real-life matters. For the most part they conclude by implying what kinds of additional specific and detailed studies, analytical and experimental, are called for. (See, for instance, two examples: (a) "America At The Threshold - - the Report of the Synthesis Group on America's Space Exploration Initiative", Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 20402; 1991; this Group effort was Chaired by Thomas P. Stafford, Lt. Gen. USAF (Ret), a former astronaut; and (b) "The Moon - - Resources, Future Development and Colonization", David G. Schrunk, Burton L. Sharpe, Bonnie L. Cooper, and Madhue Thangavelu; John Wiley & Sons - Praxis Publishing, New York; 1999.)

There is one clear and early way to begin to bring this situation into useful professional, business, legal, and political focus. It calls for a novel public-private, technological-operational-economic, national-international, effort to begin to design the first Moon city in order to conceive and gain adequate acceptance of specific plans for seeing the city actually financed, designed, and created, permanently occupied, and widely and increasingly used. And to prepare to mount follow-on city investment, construction, and settlement programs. In beginning to consider designing the first such city, the views of James Rouse, the creator of the modern "new city" of Columbia, Maryland could be relevant. He thought in terms of an "... entire metropolitan region: "a series of small communities separated by topography, highways, public institutions [and/] or greenbelts...united by a center that provide[s] cultural, educational, [and] recreational facilities for many small towns around it.' " (Olsen, page 135.)

Private-public studies should be made of the activities that would involve the city's residents: government scientists engaged in scientific research in geology, astronomy, gravity-influenced human physiology, space tourism; low-gravity-influenced sports and entertainment, especially dance; mining; electrical energy generation and service provision; communications and position-fixing services... .

Fortunately, many countries have had very instructive experience with the creation of "New Cities" since the end of World War II. In the U.S., Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland, are the outstanding examples. (Re Columbia see Olsen; also "The Columbia Process - The Potential For New Towns", Morton Hoppenfeld; The Architects Year Book, The Garden City Press Limited, Pixmore Avenue, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, SG61JS, U.K.)

Those engaged in the conduct of space science, technology and operations activities are quite used to dealing with such professionals as physicists, astronomers, geologists, mathematicians, with engineers, computer specialists, test operators, with astronauts and radio communicators. But in planning to design and build a city and see it operate successfully, quite different disciplines must be called upon to see that the worlds of financial investment, construction, local law, and social organization all receive balanced attention. Professions such as urban planners and designers, mortgage bankers, real estate developers, architects, landscape architects, economists, marketers and schedulers, experts on nursery schools and day care, housing, recreation, and religious centers will be involved. It is quite a different professional world, and present civil space-related government offices and aerospace industry offices must be markedly broadened and enlarged to deal with them effectively. (Hoppenfeld)


Modifying and extending the new Federal human "space exploration" program that is suggested here should result in much better understanding and higher value by the general public of the United States and throughout the world. Inasmuch as this fundamental civil space program, in political terms, will be very costly and will take a long time, its prospects will be strengthened by obtaining wide and continuing support.

Perhaps the Moon city could be named "Lunar Columbia", after (a) the great explorer Christopher Columbus, (b) the Columbia river in the present State of Washington that took so much of Lewis and Clark's interest, and (c) the successful U.S. "New City" in Maryland that, even today, is actively studying how it can become more widely useful and appreciated.

And perhaps the U.S. government post-Apollo Lunar city creation program might be named "Project Odysseus", after another Greek hero - - the one who, over time, became involved in just about everything.

Some Specific Suggestions

A. Wide Federal and Private Sector Involvement

As the "Report of the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy" (2004) emphasized, both the United States public and private sectors must be involved in providing goods and services required to establish "Lunar City" and see it function appropriately, and both must be involved in providing the financing required to do so.

While NASA and its related aerospace industry would have important roles to play in seeing the U.S. create the Lunar city, a much wider approach is seen to be required than they alone can provide, as opening the Moon to immigration must also be seen as an extraordinary financial-economic investment opportunity.

Therefore, a US public plus private investment-business plan should be developed that would see the Lunar city established and operated. At a minimum, the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, State, and Transportation should be involved, as should the United States Chamber of Commerce and countless companies. They should all become active advisors to NASA to assist in seeing the Moon initiative become a large-scale economic engine that provides a significant U.S. response to the growth in "economic globalization".

And the United States, under the aegis of the Department of State, and perhaps with the Council on Foreign Relations, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United States Institute of Peace, and the United Nations, should lead in seeing a national-international plan developed for city governance, with international plans for the related governance of localities throughout the entire Moon, and a plan or plans that would deal with Earth-Moon matters.

A research and demonstration program dealing with the avoidance of physical conflict, Moon governance, and Moon-Earth interrelation should be planned and conducted by NASA and others.


B. Interim Use of the Shuttle Fleet for Low Earth Orbit-Lunar Orbit Transportation

Earth-Moon transportation of people and cargo must be safe, reliable, and of large capacity and low unit cost (i.e., dollars per person / per pound).

While NASA has announced a space transportation vehicle development program that would allow astronauts to return to the Moon in 2018, but if the CBO "cost overrun" judgment is correct and NASA's annual appropriation is not increased to meet it, the return would not take place until as late as 2024-5. A Space News editorial has just observed (November 7, 2005; page 18) that NASA "...is looking at flat budgets for [at least] the rest of this decade." If so, its purchasing power could come down from today's by 25 - 33% or more.

And were the annual growth rates of the $ multi-trillion gross domestic products (GDPs) of the U.S. and China continue at the same pace that each has averaged over the past two decades (roughly 3% per annum U.S., and 9% China), by 2018 China's GDP could equal that of the U.S., and by 2024-5 China's could be some 50% greater than that of the U.S.!

These fundamentally negative financial-political considerations call for (a) our learning how to reduce the unit cost of Moon-related space transportation as far as possible, and (b) seeing our return to the Moon and its economic development made as soon as possible.

Public discussions of the astronaut Moon-return plan often note that it will take important advantage of Shuttle vehicle technology and operational experience. Therefore, careful and imaginative attention should be given to extending this thinking to considering the use of the present Shuttle fleet to provide Earth LEO-Moon Orbit cargo- and people-carrying transportation service for 10-15 years after 2010. Doing so would make full use of already paid-for vehicles and already experienced operations and maintenance professionals. They could be fueled by private sector Earth surface-LEO vehicles now being developed to support the International Space Station (ISS) and to meet the space tourism market - - vehicles that, in serving large, continuing, markets can expect to achieve much lower unit costs than the Shuttle and today's ELVs. Inasmuch as they need not travel through the Earth's atmosphere, they could carry much greater payloads, and they should require less maintenance attention. An initial private study of this approach reached a positive conclusion.

A relatively small vehicle to be used for Lunar orbit - Lunar surface transport would have to be used as well. Perhaps the model now located at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., could be regained and refurbished; and NASA is moving to support private sector development of such a vehicle capability.

(In passing, it should be noted that the U.S. Air Force continues to plan for keeping its early 1960s B-52 bombers in service for as long as 100 years.)


C. Changing the Way that Basic "Space Exploration" is Publicly Funded

While it is not often spoken to, the President's "space exploration" vision must expect to see NASA and other Federal offices dealing with infinities - - infinities of places to be explored, of their distances from here, of travel time, and thereof, overall, of cost. Already the cost and time involved in astronaut return to the Moon have been seen to be so high-long that any human Mars trip program activities have had to bee essentially deferred.

If it will cost the U.S. tax-paying public more than $200 billion to see four astronauts make a week's return to the Moon's surface, what will it cost to replicate doing so on Mars, at least 140X as far away? And what of other Solar System bodies out as far as Pluto, some 3.5 billion miles away? Several of the Solar System's planets have forbidding physical characteristics, and Pluto, "...once seen as...at the [solar] system's edge...has...been revealed as just one of a growing swarm of dwarf planets reaching far out toward the depths of interstellar space." (From a review of the book "The Planets", Dava Sobel; Viking; 2005; in The Wall Street Journal; October 28, 2005; page W8.)

Given the anticipated Federal fiscal circumstances and the other priorities besides civil space that call for Federal funding, it should not be surprising to see the "space exploration" program's level of appropriations come under wide and serious political fire - - especially if most of its attention is essentially culturally focused, as it is today. (The Washington Post)

Under these circumstances, a fundamentally different way of paying for "space exploration" activities is called for. The following steps are suggested:

  • Starting in a few years so as to allow NASA to adjust to a new way of fiscal life, each year the President and the Congress would see that its basic C.P.I.-adjusted appropriation is reduced by a fixed percentage - - say (arbitrarily, for discussion here) by 2% per year. This would result in its basic public expenditure level being reduced by nearly 67% by 2060. Doing this so would certainly encourage NASA to focus upon cost containment.
  • Each year the budget would be adjusted upward to reflect taxes collected from all new private sector businesses that involved people in economically attractive Moon activities. What might reasonably be expected to result can be seen from considering two existing civil space business areas: (a) The Department of Transportation has determined that space transportation supported just under $100 billion of business three years ago. ("The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy: 2002 Results and Outlook for 2010", Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Washington, D.C.; March, 2004); and (b) "...by some estimates, commercial revenues from satellite navigation exceeded $12 billion in 2002, growing at more than 20 percent annually." [...which could reach some $35 billion per year by the end of 2005.]. ("Space Diplomacy", David Braunschvig, Richard L. Garwin, and Jeremy C. Marwell; Foreign Affairs; July/August, 2003; page 158.)

The satellite communications business began to produce income in 1964, and satellite navigation in about 1978. Taken together, these two new space-related businesses have been growing at an average rate of about $2 billion per year. Inasmuch as the Internal Revenue Service obtains 16-20% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in taxes, this suggests that today the Federal government's tax revenue from these two space businesses could approximate $25 billion per year.

If these early space business / tax results were replicated in the Moon city economy, by 2060 the Federal government could expect to be receiving nearly $20 billion per year in taxes. Such an amount would be used to more than restore the NASA space exploration 2/3rd appropriation reduction that would amount to some $8 billion per year by then (all in 2005 dollars).

So NASA's space exploration program could continue to maintain its purchasing power, and therefore its program ambitions and schedule, and perhaps even see it increase significantly even though its original appropriation rate was sharply reduced. Of course, this would see NASA doing something that it has not done since the 1950s-60s, when it worked closely with the private sector (AT&T, IT&T, ...) to create the large and unusually useful satellite communications business.


Adopting such a plan for sharply constraining the need for public financing of "space exploration" would certainly gain NASA wide and prompt appreciation for leading the Federal government in such a novel fiscal direction.

Summary

The United States is still the world's professional leader in human space flight and related human Moon analytical and experimental operations and studies. It is now starting a large, human, Moon-focused activity as the initial stage of a large, long term, overall "space exploration" program designed to realize President Bush's 2004 civil space vision. In addition, it has obtained very useful experience in the design, creation, and operation of "new cities," experiences that are actively broadening. And it still continues to be the world's economic leader, generating roughly 30% of global gross national product (GNP).

Given this fundamental national context, for several national and international security reasons - - reasons of physical safety, security, economics and diplomacy - - the U.S. now should enlarge and modify its Moon program so as to begin to lead the world in commencing human immigration there, to seeing pioneers settling and working there and learning how to advance civilization's prospects. It would marshal its public and private sector capabilities and mount a sophisticated and early effort to do so.

Specifically: it should now commence planning to create a unique "new city," humanity's first city in space, on the Moon.

The city would not be a Lunar outpost to be visited only by astronaut space explorers; a program to obtain and utilize such a capability is already underway. Rather, it would draw upon this experience in the creation of a true city - - a growing one to be lived in permanently by a broad and growing cross-section of the general public. Its residents would settle there primarily for economic reasons: to make widespread commercial-industrial use of the Moon's unusual physical characteristics and potential resources.

Doing so will take imagination, energy, financial investment and perseverance in technology development, city design and construction, space and Moon operations, and Moon-related economic development. Unusually wide and continuing Federal Government involvement and support will be required, as well as active and widespread national-international private investment and effective modern governance.

This will be a large, novel, complex, and therefore unusually difficult activity - - perhaps as much so as any non-military one carried out in the history of the world.

But much has already been accomplished in space and in modern city building since the end of World War II, and continues today. And there is extraordinary security and economic value to be obtained by opening up the Moon to imaginative civilization; the realization of these values justify proceeding, and some of their features justify speed in doing so.

It is now time to begin involving not only natural scientists and professional space explorers in Moon activities, but a wide array of people with broad experience and education, with varied public and private U.S. and international community and investment interests. We must move beyond the idea of astronauts making relatively short visits to the Moon and involve others as pioneers, commencing immigration there, to settlement and working there; broadly speaking, to "living there," striving to create an expanded and improved civilization created in and for a two-body, Earth plus Moon, New World! A New World that is safe, peaceful, secure and economically sound.

It is time that we learn and demonstrate that we can move to the Moon now as rapidly as we did in the Apollo era, with new ways of financing such an effort, in the interest of broad national security (not military security) and "for the benefit of all mankind."


In 2007, the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the civil space age will take place. So will the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent "New World" English colony in America in 1607. 2007 will commence the second half-century of the civil space age, and it could also mark the beginning of a program to create the first city on the Moon and the initiation of the permanent expansion of the World's human civilization beyond the Earth. In commenting upon the opening stage of the new "Space Exploration" civil spaceprogram, NASA administrator Mike Griffin said that, "the United States is... building the space transportation systems needed for traveling [between] the Earth [and] the Moon... a project he likened to the creation of America's... interstate highway system more than 50 years ago [, and] that NASA fully intends "...to figure out what we can ...accomplish at the exit ramps.' " Space News; November 7, 2005. "On the Moon, we can learn if mankind has what it takes to settle the solar system."

Paul D. Spudis "The Once and Future Moon"

Smithsonian Institution Press; 1996; page 215.

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