04/15/2004: 
Technologica
Leave Space Research To The Private Sector?
from Captialism Magazine
referred by alert reader th0m45 p41n3
Following the recent FAA issuance of a sub-orbital manned rocket flight license, and perhaps a claim for the X-Prize near, Nicholas Provenzo, founder and Chairman of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism argues in Captialism Magazine that space exploration should be left to the private sector.
The space program is funded by tax dollars-the redistribution of wealth from one person to another. While space research is perhaps the least offensive recipient of government funding, the fundamental problem remains: space research has nothing to do with the legitimate function of government. And while it is often argued that the value of technological spin-offs justifies government involvement in space, it must not be forgotten that those spin-offs are the fruit of a poisonous tree.Provenzo goes on to hyperventilate about the ISS being "a platform for giving idle ex-Soviet space engineers something to do" but we get the point. Perhaps the possibility of energy or raw material exploitation of the solar system will prompt further investment as it becomes cost-effiencent. I think having the government invest in space isn't neccesarily a bad idea, because when Exxon/Mobil decides they want to leverage space for fuel, they won't have to reinvent the wheel. But private enterprise should step up their efforts and not rely on Uncle Sam.
It's also interesting that for all the prattling about competition being so important and antitrust being the Magna Charta of free enterprise, few take issue with the government's monopoly in space. What businessman could hope to compete with the government lifting payloads into space? How high is the regulatory burden placed on vehicles built and launched by private enterprise? Where the justice in a tax-fed government agency deciding what is to be the priority in mankind's development of space?
But perhaps the cruelest aspect of the government's involvement in space is the fate of the scientists and engineers who do produce incredible technological achievements. The men and women who make spaceflight possible are heroic. Yet as the Apollo space program showed, when these engineers and scientists achieve all that is asked of them, they will see their budgets slashed and their achievements ignored. I say the work of these heroes ought not to hinge on the political whims of the day.
