Space: The Final Frontier?

Heather Jack

 

        Space: the final frontier or just another opportunity for a tourist attraction and a mess of franchises? The sky is our last untouched area, humans have spread to all other corners of the globe. Above us, the stars and the universe, space is our last great mystery, the hope that there is something bigger out there and we are not alone on this earth. The magic of it is that we, as civilians, can’t get to it; that is what holds our captivation and interest in the world above ours. That boundary is quickly changing, however. The current United States space program, NASA, is heading towards commercialism for space travel. This could mean everything from buying a ticket to the moon, to orbiting hotels around the earth. Space will become just another tourist attraction, another mess of businesses and the loss of the mystery of space. Commercializing space will only create more problems than the only one it solves: money.

            Why is it now that NASA is turning space travel over to private businesses? The main reason is budget issues. Later this year all four of the currently used space shuttles will be retired after being in use for over 25 years. The Constellation program promised a new shuttle, the Ares I, and to put a man back on the moon by 2020, a feat that hasn’t been done since 1972. Obama’s projected budget for NASA in 2011 scraps the whole program. The hundred billion dollar project was behind schedule and over budget. Jim Kohlenberger, the chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology, promises that the program is cancelled but not the intent, stating, “While we’re cancelling Constellation, we’re not cancelling our ambitions” (Amos). The answer NASA is turning to is letting private companies take astronauts (and civilians) into space.

            Where will this leave human exploration of space? The president promises to boost NASA’s budget by six billion dollars over the next five years, but private companies would bear the task of sending people into space. NASA would turn to the science and research side of space travel, and leave the actual traveling up to the highest bidder. This would open the market to companies that sell tickets to space, with NASA as its core customer. These companies would also have the right to begin other markets, such as taking tourists on trips to outer space (www.pri.org).

            But this isn’t an unheard of event: Russia has had a commercial space program in effect for the last ten years. On April 30, 2001, Dennis Tito, an American businessman, became the first ever space tourist. Tito flew on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station for a week-long stay in orbit. With tickets going for twenty million dollars for one week in space, space tourism is not quite ready to turn into a leading destination for average families. Between that first visit in 2001 and April 2007, only five people have made a commercial journey into space, all aboard a Russian ship. Anousheh Ansari was the fourth to buy a ticket and the first woman tourist in space. Ansari talked about her experience, stating she dislikes the term “space tourist” because of the training she had to go through to make the trip. “I think tourists are people who basically decide to go to someplace and put a camera around their neck and basically buy a ticket and go there. They don’t prepare… I spent six months [training in Russia], and had to learn many different systems, and many new different technologies to take this journey, so I don’t think tourism does justice to this event,” Ansari stated about the training she had to go through before making the journey (Bonsor).

            The main issue stopping commercial space travel from taking off (no pun intended) is the lack of reusable rockets. A ten million dollar prize is offered to the company that can create a safe reusable launch vehicle. On October 4, 2004, the money was awarded to Scaled Composites in California. The company created  the SpaceShipOne, capable of taking three humans into orbit at a time. (xprize.org).

            Now that anyone with enough money can buy a ticket into space, commercial businesses have already expressed interest in building orbiting hotels to house the visitors. One Barcelona-based company has already announced they will be opening the first orbiting hotel, the Galactic Suite Space Resort, in 2012. A three-night stay in orbit will cost about $4.4 million dollars. This price includes an eight week training course on a tropical island. The program is based around three sections: the space port, the spaceship, and the space hotel.

            This sounds like an exciting adventure, but our move into space has repercussions. Just one problem this creates (and escalates) is space junk. Every time something goes into space, it stays there. Right now, there are thousands of man-made objects orbiting miles above our heads. Everything from nuts and bolts to non-working satellites are stuck in a floating space dump. Some of these metal bits can reach speed around the earth at a rate of 17,500 miles per hour. Even a bit the size of a square centimeter can damage functional orbiting crafts. The United States is in the lead for quantity of orbiting junk, followed by Russia (Britt). If we start building more orbiting crafts and sending tourists into space, our whole atmosphere will end up surrounded by floating garbage no one can figure out how to get down. Already, the U.S. Space Command has counted and recorded almost nine thousand orbiting objects (Britt).

            This is all assuming that the private sector can even get going. Taylor Dinerman makes an argument that the private sector would be unable to keep up, forcing America to depend on the Russian and Chinese space systems to put our astronauts into orbit. In the last thirty years, several private businesses have tried and failed to enter the launch industry. The few who have survived have done so with financing from government Small Business Innovation Contracts. Dinerman also makes a point that the industry would need steady administrative support for a long term period of time. For example, Blue Origin, a private spacecraft firm, was working on the DC-X program, to create reusable launch vehicles during the Reagan and Bush eras, but was shut down by the Clinton administration when it took office (Dinerman).

            Commercializing space travel has its upsides too, but are they enough to outweigh the risks and downfalls? There is a huge opportunity for profit in mining asteroids that investors are starting to see. There are millions of asteroids of different size and composition, some made up of  a variety of high-worth metals. S-type asteroids are composed of iron, magnesium silicates and many other metals, including platinum and cobalt. One of these kinds of asteroids is valued at more than twenty trillion for a half kilometer weight. That is, if we can figure out how to mine the metals (Diamandis). Another hope is that by taking out the expenses of actual space travel, NASA can refocus on bigger projects and aim for targets farther away, such as mars. 

            Lets step back and think about what all this means. Space is our last great unknown; Do we really want to exploit it with tons of space garbage and floating franchises? Yes, there is profit to be made, but we still have a long way to go to even be able to get that money. If the private sector can’t keep up, we as a nation will be entirely dependent on our cold war rivals, Russia and China, to get our astronauts into orbit. Space is our last untainted area, and it should be left that way.