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C00002 00002	THE PROSPECTS FOR A PRIVATE SPACE PROGRAM
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THE PROSPECTS FOR A PRIVATE SPACE PROGRAM


	There is a  gloomy possibility that the U.S.  government will
not  finance  a long  term  manned space  exploration  program.   The
reasons would be that populist politics would put equalitarian social
goals   ahead   of   it   for   the   indefinite   future   or   that
anti-technological ideas would prevail. 

	In  my opinion, space travel is  very important for mankind's
future in order to provide safety for the species from nuclear war on
earth and  to provide a frontier  so that groups that  don't like the
way things  are going  here can  escape.   The  matter has  been  put
extremely well by Freeman J. Dyson in  (Dyson 1968) and (Dyson 1969).
In  these articles he  elaborates the above  arguments for emigration
into  space  and  discusses  the  technology  of  interplanetary  and
interstellar travel.  His  conclusions are that interplanetary travel
can  become reasonably  economical rather soon  and that interstellar
travel is also  possible though not in  hman lifetimes.  He  does not
propose  emigration from the  earth as  a solution to  the population
problem, and  I  agree  with  him  in that.    His  solution  to  the
interstellar problem has a capital cost equivalent  to a present U.S.
GNP, so  he thinks that interstellar travel  will not begin until the
GNP is many times larger than it is now.  I have an  alternate scheme
with a much lower capital cost  that will be discussed in Appendix A,
but  it  also  does  not permit  interstellar  trave  in  times short
compared to human lifetime,  and I also think  it will be one  or two
centuries before interstellar travel can be attempted. 

	The  situation is  different for  emigration into  space.   I
think it is cheap enough to be done with non-governmental  resources,
i.e. I think it can be started for a  billion dollars given a relaxed
schedule and an extremely economical project management.  At present,
however, the  U.S.  government is  doing  enough  so that  a  private
project would be  redundant, but as I said above,  the government may
falter. 

	Suppose,  for  example,  the  government  falters  after  the
Shuttle has been  built in the sense  that it does not  undertake any
ambitious missions, but it  will make Shuttle missions available at a
price.   At  present  the  NASA sells  launches  about  at  cost  for
communication satellites  launched by  other governments  and it  has
committed  itself to continue  in order  to get other  governments to
plan to  use  our  launchers rather  than  develop their  own.    The
purpose,  of course,  is to  offset  some of  our development  costs.
Whether  the  government  would  sell  launches  to  American private
organizations is another matter, but I think it would if the purposes
of  the organizations  did  not fall  in  an area  the government  is
presently in the habit of regulating. 

	The cost of a Shuttle launch  will probably be ten to  twenty
million dollars  and the launch  will put  100,000 pounds of  payload
into a low earth orbit. 

	Consider a private project to put a colony into space. 

	The motivation would presumably be to escape bureaucracy here
on earth and  to run  the colony  according to the  doctrines of  its
sponsors.   The kind of sponsors  that would have both  the money and
the  motivation would probably be free  enterprisers trying to escape
the welfare state.  It is doubtful that the  welfare state has become
sufficiently odious to the very rich to induce one or more of them to
put up this  kind of money,  but it  might happen, and  there may  be
potential sponsors even now. 

	As Dyson has pointed out, the best place for such a colony is
not  on another planet but  in interplanetary space itself.   This is
because  all other  planets  in  our  solar  system  have  unfriendly
environments  that are  more difficult  to protect  against than  the
vacuum of  space, because large structures can be built in space more
readily than  on planets  and because  solar energy  is more  readily
collected in  space than anywhere else because  the energy collecting
structure can point at the sun all the time.  The problem of settling
in space  is  material, and  Dyson attaching  the  first colonies  to
comets  which  have  materials of  biological  use  available without
having to take it out of the gravity field of a planet.