By Charles Polk
Star Trek is a utopian opera, at least with regard to how humans conduct themselves on the grand stage. Let’s face it, something as selflessly honorable as rigid adherence to the Prime Directive is as unlikely as the panoply of spic-n-span starships, science-before-commerce, and pressed uniforms. It’s no wonder that inter-species conflict provides the theme for the most popular episodes of Star Trek – I mean, we’ve got to relate to something.
There was one character whose actions spoke truth to this transformed-humanity dreamland – Zefram Cochrane. We know from Star Trek: First Contact that the inventor of warp drive was an entrepreneur using surplus hardware, on a shoestring budget, and in the pursuit of a passion from which he expected to profit.
Of course, once Zefram succeeds, the Vulcans show up and everyone goes all gooey. Thank God a human woman comes along to corrupt a high-ranking Vulcan and produce Spock, through whom the most enduring story arc transpires: The role of emotions to bring substance to pure rationality. But I digress.
Pure scientific exploration is funded from the surplus generated by society. The blank-check approach exemplified by the Manhattan Project and Apollo can only be justified as responses to perceived existential threats – they are not justified by whatever science is produced. Further, blank-check efforts result in institutional inertia that consumes societal surplus inefficiently. The national lab and NASA center institutions have endured long after victories over the threats that created them. Conducting scientific exploration through such institutions is wasteful.
Let’s consider NASA’s latest heavy lift booster concept:
The prime directive of proposed NASA launch systems since the mid-1980s has been, “Build something, anything, out of Shuttle components.” The latest travesty is no exception.
What’s behind NASA’s booster prime directive (BPD)? The Shuttle was a compromise design based on technologies the freshest of which date from the mid-1970s. The Shuttle was an economic disaster. The Shuttle’s various design flaws killed 14 people. Nothing about the Shuttle suggests a technical or economic rationale for the BPD. Rather, the basis of the BPD is the political-industrial coalition behind the Shuttle – the inertia of entrenched interests, pure and simple.
The Shuttle and its last raison d’être – the International Space Station – consumed enough money for several Apollo programs, yet humanity has not left low-earth orbit since 1972. And, since there is no credible existential justification for manned space exploration, NASA’s latest Shuttle retread will continue to consume all the available oxygen (a.k.a., U.S. government funding) in the room.
So, “What would Zefram do?"
Well, Zefram wouldn’t separate the higher goals of space exploration from the economic realities that govern how things get done when daddy hasn’t given you a bottomless piggy bank. Which brings us to Zefram’s Basic Principles:
Small nimble companies can surprise and, over time, crush large sclerotic companies.
- Make minimum modifications of what exists in the broader vendor community. For example, if SpaceX will sign a fixed-price contract for ten Falcon-heavy launches at $1,000/pound, then concentrate on orbital assembly rather than on getting into orbit.
- Tight, focused, vertical integration of what can't be bought from vendors.
- Tie together complementary customers. For example, science missions as secondary payloads on commercial satellite launches.
- Don't shy away from creative -- meaning non-governmental -- ways of funding exploration. For example, the National Geographic Society provides hundreds of millions of dollars for exploration through proceeds from its media (entertainment, really).
Small nimble companies can surprise and, over time, crush large sclerotic companies.
Endowed foundations build everything from performing arts centers to observatories.
Space isn’t so damn special that only governments can operate in it. In fact, if only governments can operate in Space, humanity will never get all that much done beyond Earth.
Star Trek isn’t real. Humanity isn’t going to form an enlightened Federation dedicated to giving Space-geeks an unlimited budget. Basically, it’s time to grow a pair. Zefram did.
