An American government program to get to the Moon is simply not necessary; If we let them Americans will do it on their own
As a historian I often bring to any discussion of modern politics and our American space effort a perspective that is very alien to modern Americans. I see things as they once were in the United States back before we had a big overbearing federal government that everyone looked to for leadership. Instead, I see the possibilities inherent in a free nation led by the people themselves, not the government, as America was for its first two centuries.
This sadly is not how America functions today, and it is for that reason that as a nation we can no longer get great things accomplished routinely, as we once did.
Norwegian Amundsen, first to reach the south pole.
To understand how different the American mindset once was, consider just one example, the 19th century effort by numerous nations and individuals to plant their flag at both the north and south poles. While a handful of private American citizens mounted their own expeditions to reach the north pole, none attempted to do so in Antarctica. At both poles the bulk of the effort was done by other nations, sometimes on expeditions privately funded, and sometimes by expeditions with extensive government aid.
In the U.S. however there was no government program to compete in this race. Nor was their the slightest desire by Americans to create one. The attitude of Americans then was very straightforward. They found the race to get to the poles exciting and fascinating, and thoroughly supported the efforts of the explorers both intellectually and emotionally. They however had no interest in their government committing one dime of their tax dollars on its own campaign.
You see, they did not feel a need to establish American prestige in this manner. So what other nations got to the poles first? What mattered to Americans then was what each American wanted to do, and what Americans wanted to do in the 19th century was to settle the west and build their nation into a prosperous place to raise their children.
And so, the south pole was first reached by a Norwegian, followed mere weeks later by an Englishman. Americans played no major role in that early exploration. Nor did it harm America’s prestige in the slightest that it did not compete there. The nation was growing in wealth and prosperity, its citizens were completely free in all ways to follow their dreams, and everyone worldwide knew it.
America might not be the leader in far-flung exploration, but the world knew it was the leader in something as important if not more so, the idea that a nation and a government could be built on the premise that the citizen is sovereign, and that all law should be based on making that citizen’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness primary in all things.
And in the end, it did not really matter that the U.S. did not compete in that race to the poles. In the end, the nation became so prosperous and wealthy because of its freedom and moral commitment to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that by the 20th century it was able to dominate the world positively in all things. It helped liberate Europe twice, not by the power of its government but because its government had a remarkably diverse and capable free citizenry to draw upon.
Similarly NASA was able to land a man on the Moon in the 1960s not because it had the skills, but because the American nation had the capabilities that NASA needed. Private companies built the rockets, capsules, and lunar landers. NASA merely hired them.
Sadly however those government-led efforts taught Americans the wrong lesson, a lesson that still dominates their minds. We now believe that in order to establish our position of leadership on the world stage we must have a government space program. We must beat other nations to the Moon. And we must have the government lead the way.
This thinking however remains misguided, because in every case, the government doesn’t do it. It has not the skills in these matters. It has and will always rely on the American citizenry to provide it the talent and technology needed to accomplish great things. And if those citizens are given the full freedom to follow their own dreams wherever they lead, a space program is essentially unnecessary, because I can guarantee that many will devise their own, and do it more efficiently and with greater skill than any federal-run program.
We can see this pattern of freedom already developing today. SpaceX and Elon Musk is targeting Mars, independent of the government. Jared Isaacman fashioned his own multi-mission manned space program, on his own dime. Peter Beck at Rocket Lab is proposing his own privately funded Venus probe. And that’s only a very small sampling.
This is exactly why I since December have been advocating that Trump drop his demand that we race China to the Moon. It is why I say let China have its one-off lunar landing stunt. It isn’t important who gets there first for a onetime flag planting, and trying to compete in this way only distracts us from what is really important.
What I am urging is for our federal government to do whatever it can to encourage as many of these private efforts as it can. Let there be a hundred missions into orbit, a dozen private space stations, a plethora of private interplanetary probes, and a sampling of competing private manned missions. There doesn’t need to be any one government goal. Let the goals be set by Americans themselves. The wealth and abilities that will blossom by that wide-ranging effort following different dreams will make it possible for us to quickly bulldoze past the Chinese and their top-down government program.
As we saw it done in the American west in the 19th century, we shall see the solar system settled by individual pioneers, establishing their own new worlds as they envision it, on the Moon, on Mars, on the asteroids, and wherever they decide to plant their boot.
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Yet ANOTHER reason not to race China to the Moon:
The race has already been run, AND WE WON.
The United States has (obviously) already been to the Moon, and it managed to do so before the Soviet Union and every other nation, including China, whether or not they themselves were working to go there.
In other words, Been There – Done That.
The NEW target, Mars, provides its own challenges, and potential rewards, and I would say it is at this point a smarter choice, one that will benefit from the input and efforts of private companies/individuals.
Bravo!
The Chinese fleets of a half dozen centuries ago were halted and dismantled. Those fleets were unequaled in the world at that time. The lesson that most miss is that it wasn’t the government halt to it’s own explorations that led to the decline of China, but rather the prevention of the private sector from exploiting the gains made and knowledge acquired. It was illegal for the private Chinese to build on the success, and a few centuries later, the insular Chinese were at the mercy of foreign powers from halfway around the globe.
It could happen here to some degree.
I had written a comment, clicked the post button, but now see nothing. Oh, well . . .
Not wanting to write out all I had written before, here’s a summary (not that anyone was waiting for ME to chime in):
We already won the race to the Moon, back in 1969, beating every other nation there, including China, whether or not they were trying to get there themselves.
Mars represents a new choice in a new race, with its own challenges and potential benefits. The input and involvement of private individuals and entities will likely prove helpful, maybe even critical, to a successful result.
Another reason NOT to race China to the Moon: We already won that race in 1969, whether or not China was working to get there at that time.
Mars is a sensible choice, with its own challenges and potential rewards. Private industry will likely be critical in winning this new race.
Mars is a private mans dream and I give him all the verbal support he could use. My private donations would amount to a lunch sandwich for him.
Now as for our race to the Moon. Its not a race to the Moon so much as a race to a moon base that could send back materials. Its the highest mountain close to the Earth and he who rules it rules the world.
Do you trust anyone but America to have that power?
I do not.
Letting the UN control the moon gives the power to the non democratic nations of the world. Which outnumber the real democratic nations.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “Let the goals be set by Americans themselves. The wealth and abilities that will blossom by that wide-ranging effort following different dreams will make it possible for us to quickly bulldoze past the Chinese and their top-down government program.”
If there are advantages to a lunar base or settlement, then American entrepreneurs will rise to the occasion and flock to the Moon. It is, after all, the American Way. When we let government run things, all we get is what government wants, but when We the People run things, we get what We want.
Robert has called this a stunt, and without Congress, the administration, or NASA having any plan to create a lunar base, he is right, and we are only doing similar missions as we did from 1969 to 1972.
A continuously occupied moonbase was the government goal before it became the goal of putting the “First Woman and First Person of Color”® on the Moon, and now it has become a mere “Beating the Chinese”™ project. NASA was going to use SLS to create a sustainable lunar base, but SLS-Orion cannot fly often enough to achieve that goal, so the government goal has changed, but the original goal was the better one, giving us more return on our money than a mere stunt would give.
We need to get back to the goal of a sustainable lunar base so that we move ahead rather than repeat the past missions. Obama said of those missions, “been there, done that,” as F noted. Now it is time for us to do more and to advance our use of the Moon from mere investigation to actual use. American entrepreneurs are probably the best resource for doing that in a timely, effective, and cost efficient way, giving us return on our investment, rather than another “neener-neener, we beat you” moment.
‘There is far more capital available outside of NASA [for use by commercial space marketplace] than there is inside of NASA.‘ — paraphrased from an interview with NASA Administrator Bridenstine on the Ben Shapiro radio show on Monday 3 August 2020.
Our investors are willing to fund space missions that have a promise of profit. If they see that on the Moon, then they will fund our private commercial space companies to pursue that profit, which only happens if it benefits us here on Earth, benefits us enough that we are willing to pay for it.
“We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams.” — Willy Wonka Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
ad astra lucrum
There is no profit on the Moon unless it can be sold in lots and parcels.
Why build a Moon hotel if the UN can just come by and take it?
A military outpost can enforce OUR rules and laws for a lunar base and or colony.
And what exactly could be sent back from the moon that is not better used on the Moon? Or made cheaper in LEO or on this Earth?.
LEO has less gravity than the Moon. So why go to the Moon?
There is no profit in the Moon until safety and security are met.
The US Army Corps of Engineers built a series of forts across the frontier to support settlement.
Bob,
I don’t think bringing up our twin salvations of Europe helps your case here. Those were both very much government-run operations and even involved a lot of involuntary servitude – i.e. the draft – especially in WW1, though WW2 was also far from an all-volunteer affair.
That said, we are very probably not far from having what you advocate here. Lunar lander development is already more private than public and the end of any public involvement, beyond buying services, is already on the horizon. The main public expenditures anent the Moon remain SLS, Orion and Gateway. The first two seem likely to be sunsetted after two more missions and the third looks at least as likely to be cancelled entirely.
Replacing SLS and Orion’s basic functionality – getting people from Earth to the lunar vicinity – loosely defined – is the main thing needing privatization. It is my hope that Jared Isaacman, once he assumes office as NASA Administrator, will make efforts to get both SpaceX and Blue Origin to provide superior replacements for the SLS-Orion stack.
From the standpoints of both good public policy and political reality, I would like to see this occur in the form of unfunded Space Act Agreements. SpaceX is already working on more than 90% of what would be needed for an Earth-to-lunar-vicinity-and-back-again variant of Starship, so the additional effort and expense for SpaceX to provide an entirely private solution seem quite modest. Blue, for its part, would likely go along if only to avoid invidious comparisons to SpaceX were it to ask for money, and to assure itself that it would not be utterly left behind. Blue, admittedly, has more ground to plow to get it to the point where it can handle the entire Earth-Moon logistics flow than does SpaceX, but that should simply incentivize Bezos and Limp to get cracking.
Mars, of course, can – and should – be left to SpaceX and any other private entities that care to trail along or follow.
Once all of these become NASA policy, Isaacman can downsize the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate headcount and name. “Systems Development” should be excised from the latter as it will no longer have any “systems” to “develop,” just exploration missions to plan and conduct using privately provided transport and other equipment.
That leaves space stations. Again, the trend line is a transition from near-100% government funding of the whole shooting match to just GSA-style purchase of access and services. Five more years to accomplish this transition in LEO seems reasonable.
As for the Moon, I am long on record as positing the need for at least one 1-G spinning space station in lunar orbit as an R&R venue for human workers on long-term lunar surface assignments – private and governmental. Vast looks likeliest, at this point, to pursue such a project, but it might not find itself alone.
Dick Eagleson: The American efforts in both World Wars might have been government run, but as I noted in the essay, both efforts succeeded because the government “had a remarkably diverse and capable free citizenry to draw upon.”
That’s the key. The U.S. military was miniscule and largely ineffective prior to both wars. When expansion was required the government immediately accessed (and completely relied on) the expertise of the private sector. After WWI we immediately down-sized our military back to its small size. (Why waste taxpayer money on an military-industrial complex when we weren’t fighting any wars?) After WWII we tried to do so, but as Eisenhower noted when he left office in 1961, that military-industrial complex was too much for him. We are still paying for that complex today, and getting very little for it.
As for the rest of your comment, I agree entirely on relying on unfunded Space Act Agreements. All paying contracts must also continue to be fixed-price.
And as for the specifics of who does what where, I leave that to the people involved. Your idea of a station in lunar orbit might be a good one, but it will require the ability to make it pay. For certain Lunar Gateway will not achieve that goal.
I must be pedantic… :)
This is *mostly* true. While Americans were not nearly as active in polar exploration or research in the 19th century as Great Britain was, it wasn’t quite absent, and on at least three occasions, the U.S. government actually did dispatch official, federally funded expeditions (by the US Navy and US Army) to explore the polar regions:
* The United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, under Capt. Charles Wilkes. This was a 6-ship squadron ordered to conduct surveying of the Pacific Ocean, and particularly the Antarctic parts of it, and it ended up charting parts of the Antarctic coast that had never been visited before. (Interesting note about Capt. Wilkes: He would later become most famous for seizing Confederate diplomats off a British warship in 1861, nearly bringing on war with Britain in the so-called Trent Affair.)
* The North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition, also known as the Rodgers-Ringgold Expedition from 1853 to 1856. This explored the Bering Strait and conducted other scientific research in the Arctic, among other regions.
* The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 (a.k.a. the Greely Expedition), which was dispatched as part of the First International Polar Year to Ellesmere Island to do surveying and collect astronomical and magnetic data. It actually made what you might call a light stab at the North Pole, setting a new Farthest North record (which did not last long). The Greely Expedition became very controversial, as most of the men died from starvation and malnutrition, and allegations of cannibalism dogged its reputation.
Still, I think these exceptions more or less prove your rule, Bob. These were not (Lt. Greely’s wanton zeal aside) projects of national glory, but scientific and surveying expeditions: Very practical, as befitted the national character (and in those days, a very tight-pursed Congress). Of course, it is arguably also the case that the United States did so little in this vein because so much of its outward national energies were directed toward the exploration and settlement of the American West, which was not “closed” until 1890. In this respect it may not be a surprise that we really don’t see a Robert Peary or a Frederick Cook emerge until after that point.
As with so much else, this all dramatically changed with the advent of World War II and the Cold War.
I note that the Chinese “treasure fleets” bore a lot of resemblance to the NASA plans.
– expeditions planned and run by the state
– designed to overawe the natives of the countries they visited. I.e. they were a national prestige thing.
– not designed to make a profit. At most there were “gifts” and “tributes” exchanged at each stop.
– stopped because of internal politics – there was a faction that wanted them continued and another faction that thought other things were more important. When the second faction gained the upper hand, the fleets stopped and the ships were broken up. I think the leader of the previous expeditions may even have been imprisoned at one point.
Sound familiar? Add in “pure science” as a goal and you have NASA’s program described.
It seems to me that we already have everything we need for human exploration of the solar system at a basic level, except a reliable way to get from orbit to the surface of other planets.
Sam Houston‘s march from Texas with the rag tag volunteer army on Mexico with the motto “remember the Alamo” is a good example of private citizens taking matters into their own hands and the result was the conquering of Mexico and the Independence of Texas, doubling of the territory of the United States. (occurred in 1848, then re-conquered by the union army in the 1860s Civil War, but solidified in 1898 with the Spanish American war and the freedom of Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba… at least for a little while)
Offshore bases (like Guantánamo) we’re necessary to load coal and food supplies for the New modern steam powered ”White Fleet” made from iron and showcased to the world as a new dominant power in this hemisphere. Obsolete again before the beginning of World War I.
According to this article, a lunar base prototype are already under construction by SpaceX. (ridiculous concept Picture with tables and chairs outside on the surface)
https://econotimes.com/SpaceXs-29-Billion-Moon-Ship-Reveals-Spacious-Design-for-Future-Lunar-Missions-1692638
Space X website doesn’t have any details just plans.
https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/moon/
The super Draco motors used for emergency escape are under testing to be re-purposed as Landing motors for the lunar surface? This will prevent blow back damage until a proper landing pad can be constructed.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/video-spacex-crew-dragon-escape-system
(Old picture)
No, they’ll be hot gas thrusters making use of the oxygen and methane propellant used for the Raptors — to simplify things.
At least, that was the plan last I checked.