President Obama pronounced the Constellation Program dead when he released his proposal for the 2010 federal budget (Nature)*. Funding for Constellation, NASA's plan to reunite man and the moon in 2020, has been pulled entirely. Instead, the money is now allocated for incentives for commercial space companies to develop cheaper launch programs for humans and cargo to reach orbit. Placing faith in commercial space corporations will run up costs, will create ethical issues, and will bring about difficult legal considerations in the long run. The space race is not over, and this decision could take us out of the lead.
To date, $9 billion have been spent on NASA’s Constellation project, which was supposed to develop an updated rocket system (Wikipedia.org) capable of carrying cargo and astronauts into space. The project was meant to replace the aging space shuttle that costs more to send into space every time it is launched. Constellation is effectively canceled though because instead of receiving the prescribed increase in funding, NASA is being allotted a billion dollars less this year. The money that was previously tagged for NASA has been reallocated as incentives, approximately $6 billion over the next five years, for commercial space companies to develop cheaper rockets with load-bearing capabilities. The government is picking the pocket of its personal team of rocket scientists and giving it to a bunch of businessmen in hopes that they can conjure a method of saving money. It is unknown whether or not a market for space flight even exists beyond NASA. In addition to the $9 Billion that has basically been wasted already, use of the International Space Station (Nature, Eric Hand)* that was supposed to end in 2016 will be extended to 2020, which will devour even more funding in the future. As if that wasn't enough of an insult, all deep space programs are being indefinitely canceled to free up more of NASA’s budget for Earth monitoring systems, such as a satellite that measures atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Global warming strikes again.
You are a menace.
Assuming commercial space companies are successful in producing cheaper, cargo-bearing rockets that are capable of orbital flight, the next steps are virtually unknown and unpredictable. These businesses will take what the government has given them and run into outer space as if it were the next gold rush. The idea of commercializing space is curtailed by a growing number of ethical concerns. To begin with, whose ethical standards even apply in space? The American government’s? Religious leaders’? The Federation from Star Trek’s? It is hard enough to think of determining an ethical code between different countries, let alone separate businesses. Next we will need to decide whether free enterprise should be allowed in space. The reigning economic system in the world may not be the most suited for outer space. Will countries and companies seek to claim different orbits? If facilities are established on the moon, will that land be the property of that company or nation? Manifest destiny was a perfectly feasible idea when people set out to explore the West because there was a limit to how far they could go. Once we set out to conquer the solar system and beyond, where do we stop? The point here is that privatizing space presents far more questions than answers (David M. Livingston), and in this day and age, questions have to be answered with law.
Current international space law is, in a word, inadequate, especially when you consider the fact that space travel may now be sponsored by a business instead of a government. Existing Space treaties (Sarah Coffey, 6)* employ vague phrases such as “free for exploration and use by all states” and that “the exploration and use of outer space … shall be the province of all mankind” to try and establish order in orbit. These treaties were written during the Cold War to prevent space from becoming another battlefield, and they were not widely ratified. Furthermore, it is obvious just by looking at the language that they do not account for separate companies entering into the usage of space, only separate countries. Once again, more problems arise than solutions. The issue of space law is not entirely without similar precedent. Sarah Coffey likens the situation to maritime law and to laws governing Antarctica (10)*. These are areas of the world that were uncharted for long periods of history and that were lacking in adequate legal oversight. Governments have since negotiated effective treaties that keep these regions from being lawless. If similar laws are written to govern space with individual corporations in mind, then maybe the fever will pass and businesses will not simply run wild in the final frontier.
By denying NASA the funds it needs to continue its space program, the president is creating a powder keg of issues that will be ignited by the volatile practices of commercial businesses. He is taking money out of the hands of people that we have trusted it with since they took us to the moon the first time forty years ago and instead giving it to people that can only give us projections and rough estimates of their capabilities to even accomplish the mission. NASA has done it before. They have the game plan written up already. Why then are we letting someone else reinvent the wheel to run ourselves over with it? The only way to salvage the situation will be to make sure adequate regulations are in place before stellar syndicates are established. Otherwise, this decision makes very little sense.
About as much sense as this picture.
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