Space Economy

May

2022

The SRI webinar with former ESA Director General Jan Wörner

Dr. Johann Dietrich “Jan” Wörner gave a beautiful lecture a few days ago – in the frame of the Space Renaissance Academy Webinar Series, coordinated by Sabine Heinz –, illustrating his favorite concept “Not going back, but going forward to the Moon”. Btw, that was also the subject of a brief speech he gave, as one of the keynote speakers, at the SRI 3^rd World Congress, end of June 2021.Dr. Wörner was the Director General of the European Space Agency since 2015 to 2021.His mandate was somehow revolutionary: while the ESA’s strategy was still focused on Telecommunication, Science and Earth Observation, he dared to put on the table the concept of a Moon Village, a permanent human outpost on the Moon, dedicated to experiment life, to explore and conduct scientific research on the Moon.

The Moon Village is one of the main topics illustrated during the lecture: the Moon is the next interesting part of the Solar System. The Moon Village is proposed as a multi-partner open project, to develop many operations on the Moon surface, human and robotic, public and private, exploration, outreach, cosmology/astronomy, transportation, communication, logistics, resources management.

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Jun

2020

The Great Objection and its Confutation

(image: the recently discovered golden asteroid, worth $700 quintillion)

THE GREAT OBJECTION AND ITS CONFUTATION

— Why we cannot solve any problems on Earth before going to space —

The original version of this article was written in 2009, and reviewed by the author in May 2020

(from the old Technologies of the Frontier www.tdf.it website)

Before going to space, should we solve the problems here, on Earth?
The need for growth
The management of scarce resources is possible only by despotic regimes
The only way is space industrialization

Before going to space, should we solve the problems here, on Earth?

Whenever we speak about human presence in space to a general audience, and quite often when we talk with specialists as well, we have to hear the Great Objection: ”Before going to space, we have to solve our problems here, on the Earth”.

As soon as we reason about it we understand that the Objection is in fact a general dialectic scheme, which consists in changing the topic, pretending that the alternative is more important and urgent and so avoiding to reply to what the speaker has said. In short, it is a sort of quite-another-ism: “The problem is quite another, the cause is quite another…”.

But the Objection is Great, because too many people use it and take it for good, therefore we must face it at once and make people understand that the truth is exactly the opposite: if we don’t go to space and we don’t do it quickly, we are destined to a bad future here on the Earth. The reason is that the Earth has a finite size, to live all well we need economic growth and already now its resources are not enough, then we have to look for resources elsewhere – that is in the immense universe out there!

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May

2020

SRI’S PROGRAM IS NOW URGENT, IN ORDER TO END THE POST-LOCKDOWN RECESSION

Abstract

This article discusses the urgency to start developing reusable passenger-carrying space-vehicles. Growth is necessary for quality of life, and no more growth will be possible without free space travel. Creation of new business activities is necessary, and lack of new industries is a permanent condition in advanced societies. The article also confutes the theory that economic growth is dangerous, and should be reverted, and discusses what new industries are candidates for creating tens of millions of new jobs, without destroying jobs in existing industries. The 7^th major transportation technology — space travel, based on rocket propulsion – is compared to the previous 6 ones: horse-carriages, sailing-ships, trains, propeller-driven ships, cars, trucks and buses, aircrafts. Collins brings powerful arguments to sustain the rapid development of a range of reusable passenger-carrying space-vehicles, followed by orbiting and lunar commercial and industrial infrastructures. Collins also explains why the SRI’s viewpoint has now become urgent due to the “Lockdown Recession”, arguing that even before the recent “lockdown” policies, economic growth was weak in the rich Countries. And, nowadays, the 7th transportation industry should be very attractive to governments. Collins ends by a strong confutation of the two major objections to civilian space development: 1) developing a luxury service like space travel was unnecessary and wasteful 2) de-industrialization was necessary to reduce humans’ environmental impact; and the clear indication that the development of space travel services should receive at least 1/1,000 of the budget that “green” policies receive, or about 1% of what space agencies receive for their activities. A severe judgment is then pronounced on those who advocate ending economic growth due to the “dwindling resources” of Earth: they are like a small child who still believes that the house where they live is the whole world. Continue reading →