Missing: Audacity
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The good news: current leadership is working on renewing NASA.
The bad news: they’re working without the audacious national mission we need. It’s as if NASA is a boxer training without any fight scheduled.
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Why Futurists Get Space Wrong
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Space is humbling for everyone, and it offers harsh lessons to everyone attempting to enter the field. Newly formed space companies tend to offer wildly optimistic predictions.
Read MoreWhy Politics Gets Space Wrong
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Courage and patience. Risk-taking. Boldness. Thinking big. All of this language swims against the current political narrative on both the right and the left.
Read MoreThe Martian Farm Act
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America's success in agriculture offers a critical economic lesson. In “sciencing” farms, the government sparked unprecedented growth in an essential sector. It should come as no surprise that the government used a comparable model to help create the aerospace economy.
Read MorePrivate Industry Needs NASA to Help It Fail
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Private investors are beginning to inch into the market created by government investment of our tax dollars. Will this new industry succeed? There will be failures, just as there was during NACA’s long, patient investment in aeronautics. But there will be brilliant successes as well—provided NASA’s most active constituencies start working together to change the narrative.
Read MoreMission to Planet Earth
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Space offers an unparalleled vantage point for viewing Earth. Only by backing away from our planet can we truly see our tenuous life and how closely related we are. Only from space can we obtain the global data we need to unravel the mysteries of our home planet.
Read MoreIf I Were King
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I was talking to a friend about America’s civil space program recently, telling all about its benefits to the economy, STEM, and America’s standing in the world. Just as I was winding up, he interrupted me.
“What if you were king of America? For a whole decade. What exactly would you do with space?”
Read MoreHow Much Is Our Influence Worth?
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Let’s see if we can attach a dollar value to the international benefits of the public space program. The amount spent each year on international affairs by the federal government totals about $800 billion a year. That includes the State Department (about $50 billion), Defense ($600 billion), Energy ($24 million), and Veterans Affairs $150 billion). What if a fraction of that $800 billion went to the space program to help build our international standing?
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