As of 2004, the primary impact of space upon society has been to drain society of its best and brightest, for the profit of a few elites. This is not to say that there is not much potential in space. There is a great deal that can be learned and gained from reaching beyond our planet. But for the most part, those who have claimed to be exploring those dreams have tapped only a mere fraction of the potential of space while charging astronomical prices.
Getting into space was not easy in the 1960s. Many things were new and unknown, and enormous costs were justified for developing systems to tackle these mysteries. But that was four decades ago.
The normal progress of technology, bringing that which is at first expensive into the reach of ordinary people, has been thwarted at every turn with regard to access to space since then. The furor which propelled mankind to the Moon in 1969 faded once this goal was achieved, since we had been there. Private industry was left to exploit our presence. But private industry discovered that it would be far more profitable simply to keep things expensive.
This has manifested itself in a number of ways, in organizational failures pioneered by NASA and adopted by ESA. Chief among these has been the use - indeed, the mere tolerance - of "cost-plus" contracts, wherein a contractor is invited to make up its own budget as a project continues, and is then paid the full budget plus a guaranteed profit. Few industries outside of space access would even think about such a thing, and for good reason. Given such a contract, a contractor has every incentive to discard cost controls that are all but mandatory in any other industry, and even to use methods that are known to cause frequent expensive failures. Engineers or administrators who dare to suggest ways to save money are disciplined or fired, which terminations are easily justified on the grounds that lower costs would mean lower profits under a "cost-plus" contract.
Reuse of components from other projects instead of building custom components? Minimized. Develop new technologies on cheap, tiny models before trying them on third-scale or full-scale vehicles where slight flaws could cause expensive disasters? Avoided where they could get away with it. Mass production to lower prices? Don't be ridiculous: there isn't much of a market because high prices are the norm. Reusable spacecraft? Efforts to design such are steered away from true reusability - see the infamous Space Shuttle.
If and when a project actually looks like it could produce lower costs, it gets cancelled - and irate shareholders demanding to know why are not allowed a voice at the shareholders' meetings. Nor has this been solely the contractors' problem. ESA and NASA engineers working on projects that show any sign of success often experience a surge in orders from managers looking to be associated with successful projects, which extra management frequently destroys any attempt at cost controls - with obvious results if cost control is itself the goal of the project.
The high costs of getting anything into Earth orbit has dominated the costs for all space activites. Nothing about space can be affordable until getting something into space is made affordable. It would make a lot of sense for both ESA and NASA to devote their entire budgets for the next several years into developing low-cost space access, given how little science is getting done at current costs. The planets will still be there afterwards, and then we can afford to send a lot more missions out there, to say nothing of properly supporting a manned presence in orbit.
People have tried to reduce costs on their own. However, ESA and NASA have also presented themselves as the only ways that citizens of their respective nations should ever get into space. Which means that those who honestly wanted to solve the problem went to ESA and NASA - and were then directed to work with contractors with no intention of allowing costs to fall.
Fortunately, at the end of 2004, we are starting to see the emergence of companies looking to reduce the costs of access to space. They do not work with the high-price contractors, nor do they work with ESA or NASA. ESA has fortunately been relatively quiet about this so far, but certain sections of NASA have been yelling bloody murder at the very concept of missions manned by Americans but not under NASA's control. We can only hope that ESA does not attempt the same regarding missions involving European citizens.
There have been much written about what space activities could contribute to society. This will only be realized once society can afford these activities. Doing things the way we have always done them will not suffice: we have not yet "done" all but the basics of what we need to do.
Mr.
Adrian
Tymes
Member
Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society
Professional Category:
Physical Sciences
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