[meteorite-list] Ben Bova riffs with "what ifs"

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:40:41 -0500
Message-ID: <i4as75h9jt6vdjuvb7332avodpcjfgn8nv_at_4ax.com>

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2009/aug/08/ben-bova-wasted-opportunity-space/

Ben Bova: Wasted opportunity in space
By BEN BOVA
Posted August 8, 2009 at 5:03 p.m.

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the 40th anniversary of our first landing on
the moon.

Forty years.

We put a dozen astronauts on the moon between 1969 and 1972. And then we
stopped. Washington killed the Apollo program.

How far would we have progressed in space if we hadn?t stopped? What could we
have accomplished if we kept moving forward?

First, I want to get rid of the shibboleth about space operations being so
expensive. I know NASA?s budget of some $15 billion is a hefty piece of change,
but in reality space is one of the smallest government programs. All the money
we have spent on NASA since the agency was founded in 1958 doesn?t equal two
years? worth of funding for the Defense Department or the Department of Health
and Human Services.

And look at what we?ve gotten back for that investment! Home computers,
satellite TV and weather observation, GPS systems, new fabrics and metal alloys,
medical scanners, microminiaturized electronics that we use in everything from
cell phones to heart pacemakers.

Space technology has pumped trillions of dollars into the American economy, made
millions of new jobs. Space is the greatest bargain the American taxpayer has
had since the Louisiana Purchase.

What if we had pushed ahead as vigorously after July 20, 1969, as we had in the
years before the first lunar landing?

To begin with, we?d have a small city in orbit by now: a space station where
hundreds of people live and work. One of the station?s main functions would be
repairing and refurbishing satellites in space. When a multimillion-dollar
satellite breaks down because a battery has died or its gyros have
malfunctioned, maintenance personnel based at the space station would go out and
repair it. Much more economical than building and launching a whole new
satellite.

Industrial operations would be conducted in orbit, where the free solar energy,
near-zero gravity and cleanliness of the vacuum environment would permit
manufacturing metal alloys, pharmaceuticals and other specialized products of
unprecedented purity. The United States could have become the world?s leader in
specialized metal alloys, stronger than anything that can be manufactured on
Earth, yet lighter.

Scientists would flock to space laboratories to study everything from astronomy
to low-gravity metallurgy. Tourists would go up, try the zero-gee ?honeymoon
hotel,? among other delights.

Construction crews would be building solar-power satellites. Converting sunlight
to electricity in high orbits where they?re always in sunshine, powersats would
be beaming hundreds of gigawatts of clean electricity to receiving stations on
the ground, making the U.S. the world?s energy leader.

The raw materials for such construction would come from the moon, most likely.
The lunar crust is rich in aluminum, silicon, titanium and other valuable
resources. And launching payloads from the surface of the moon ?down? to Earth
orbit is more than 20 times cheaper than lifting the same tonnages from Earth.

There would be a new industrial revolution taking place in space, a revolution
that would make new fortunes and establish new industries.

One of the industries benefitted would be transportation. With a solid and
expanding market for launch services, private companies would get into the
rocket-launching business in a major way. And the rockets they develop to carry
people and payloads into orbit efficiently and reliably could also be used to
fly people across the world at hypersonic speeds ? New York to Australia in an
hour or less.

Transportation and electric power are both multitrillion-dollar industries. We
could have been a world leader in both, had we pushed ahead vigorously in space
after 1969.

Developing mining and manufacturing sites on the moon would lead to permanent
settlements there. How would you like to retire to a place where gravity is only
one-sixth of what it is on Earth? Or to a zero-gravity facility in orbit? You
could lead a much longer and more active life without Earth?s heavy gravity
pulling you down every moment of every day.

With some of the profits from space industries, we could afford to send
explorers to Mars and elsewhere, to learn what the other worlds of our solar
system are like, and to search for life ? either extinct or still viable.

There are whole worlds to explore out there, and the knowledge we gain from them
could change the way we think and behave toward each other.

Between Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt, a region strewn with millions
upon millions of smaller bodies of rock and ice. The asteroid belt could be the
bonanza of the 21st century, the richest lode of metals and minerals ever
discovered. One smallish metal asteroid, about the size across of a Little
League baseball field, holds several trillion dollars worth of high-grade iron
ore, plus many other metals ? including many tons of gold, silver and platinum.

There?s a banquet of unimaginable riches in space, waiting for us to go out and
make the human race wealthier than we could ever be if we remain nailed down to
the surface of the Earth.

Even more important, perhaps, we would have the technology to divert asteroids
or comets that threaten to crash into the Earth. A rock the size of Manhattan
Island slammed into the Yucatan area some 65 million years ago, killing the
dinosaurs and half of all the other life forms on Earth.

There are lots of other rocks that could drive us into extinction if they strike
the Earth. If we had kept pushing our space technology vigorously after 1969,
today we would be able to find them early enough to divert them away from us.

A strong space program is vital to our economic well-being, to our understanding
of the universe and to the very survival of our civilization and our species.

We?ve wasted the past four decades. Let?s not waste the next 40 years.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of more than 120 books, including ?The
Return,? his latest futuristic novel. Bova?s Web site address is www.benbova.com
Received on Sat 08 Aug 2009 09:40:41 PM PDT