National Review Online, July 26, 2021

First Richard Branson and now Jeff Bezos have made their quick joyrides into space (or its neighborhood: in Branson’s case, it depends on whom you ask) and, critically, back. The flights were a victory lap of sorts for science, human ingenuity, and immense entrepreneurial drive. Not everyone was pleased.

Predictably, some malcontents made an appearance in the Guardian, where in one article (“How the billionaire space race could be one giant leap for pollution”) concerns were raised about the effect of increased spaceflight on, in various ways, the atmosphere and, inevitably, the climate. Justified scientific caution? To an extent. As space travel becomes more commonplace, it would be unwise simply to assume that there will be no significant environmental consequences. But to read the call of Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London, for regulation is to detect not only the shadow of the precautionary principle, a good idea often abused, but also both the deadening approach of bureaucracy— and something else:

“The time to act is now – while the billionaires are still buying their tickets.”

Ah, the billionaires: The article’s author, Katharine Gammon, notes that:

People have pointed out that the money these billionaires have poured into space technology could be invested in making life better on our planet, where wildfires, heatwaves and other climate disasters are becoming more frequent as the globe warms up in the climate crisis.

Whether or not there is a climate “crisis” (for what it is worth, I’m a lukewarmer, so I don’t think so), the notion that we can only manage one major scientific project at a time is absurd, as is the belief that redirecting Bezos’s and Branson’s spending on space towards the climate would make much of a difference to what the climate may (or may not) do. What the two are funding are science and engineering that would otherwise either not take place (in the U.S., anyway) or would proceed at the leaden pace that has developed into a NASA hallmark. Gammon also cites this tweet from economist and former Labor secretary Robert Reich:

Is anyone else alarmed that billionaires are having their own private space race while record-breaking heatwaves are sparking a ‘fire-breathing dragon of clouds’ and cooking sea creatures to death in their shells?

For some reason, Reich forgot to mention that Bezos announced last year that he is committing $10 billion “to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change. . .”

The Verge, from November 2020:

[Bezos’s] fund is equivalent to more than 7 percent of his net worth. It’s also 10 times as much as philanthropic foundations gave globally in 2018 to efforts to slow climate change.

But, but . . . billionaires . . .

And here’s Reich’s pinned tweet (from July 15):

Billionaires rocketing off to space isn’t a sign of progress. It’s a sign of grotesque inequality that allows a select few to leave earth behind while the rest of humanity suffers.

When political types start grumbling about billionaires, tax talk is rarely far behind.

Sure enough, Reich tweets on July 20:

Who else thinks Bezos should pay his fair share of taxes before thanking Amazon customers for funding his joy ride to space?

Not to be left out, Bernie Sanders weighs in:

Let us celebrate when we:
– Eradicate poverty
– Provide health care for all
– Abolish homelessness
– Combat climate change
– Provide Universal Pre-K

Let us not celebrate when:
– Billionaires who avoid taxes and exploit workers take a vacation to outer space.

That Reich and Sanders are sounding off with the help of an application of technology that they once would almost certainly have denounced as frivolous is an irony that may well be lost on them — self-righteousness is like that.

But, commenting in MSNBC, Talia Levin noticed that there was even more to the space moguls’ (a gang that includes Elon Musk) rap sheet than their being billionaires, “titans of greed,” no less, or insufficiently taxed (“They will never have to share the treasure troves they have acquired . . .”):

“These men — all men, all white…”

Men, but, to some, only just. To Hamilton Nolan in the Guardian, “Jeff Bezos is the most reptilian of billionaires . . .”

Writing in the Financial Times, Henry Mance frets that:

This is the worst possible time for [the billionaires’] space visions. Are we really promoting space tourism while asking ordinary citizens to restrain their diets, travel and consumption to fight climate change? Will people be persuaded to cycle to work while billionaires are blasting into orbit?

On the contrary, now is exactly the time that “ordinary citizens” need to be reassured that the future has more on offer than bicycling, recycling, and kale. There is plenty that can and should be done (including, not so incidentally, wealth creation) to toughen our resilience in the face of whatever the climate may throw at us. On the other hand, it is wrong to overlook the millenarian strain running through so much of today’s climate campaigning and the pointless asceticism that, as so often with previous millenarian frenzies, comes with it. If the spectacle of space tourism encourages people to resist the gray green destiny that the climate warriors have in mind for us, good.

Some of the whining over Bezos’s and Branson’s excursions is nothing more than the pedestrian expression of a pedestrian jealousy — human nature is what it is — but part of it stems from a different type of jealousy, felt by those who are jealous of their authority, and now fear that authority is under threat.

Twenty years ago, Dennis Tito cut a $20 million deal with the Russians to hitch a ride in a Soyuz rocket to the new International Space Station.

It was, I wrote at the time:

a wonderful story…the tale of a man who works hard all his life, who builds himself the American dream, and then uses the proceeds to take a ride on a rocket ship. It is the stuff of myth, partly Ray Bradbury, partly Horatio Alger.

But:

NASA, unfortunately, had borrowed their script from the Grinch. Dennis Tito, the agency explained, would not be welcome on the space station. Oh, they used all the explanations, it could be dangerous, someone might get sued (trial lawyers, these days, get everywhere), the space station was not ready, ‘protocols’ had to be drafted, and the clincher, Tito was not a ‘professional’.

The Russians insisted, however, and Tito went into space.

NASA’s attempt to bar Tito was an early display of the resentment, all too visible today, felt by sections of America’s scientific, political, and bureaucratic classes over the fact that they are losing the final say on who makes it to space or how or why. That resentment will color the coming battle over the regulation of space travel. And its traces can clearly be seen in a measure proposed by a Democratic congressman.

The Hill:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said Tuesday that he is planning to introduce legislation that would establish excise taxes on commercial space flights with human passengers that aren’t focused on scientific research.

Blumenauer, a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, announced his proposal on the same day that billionaire Jeff Bezos participated in a brief trip to the edge of space.

Blumenauer’s tax would hurt the (very) nascent U.S. space tourism industry (there can be spaceports elsewhere). While tickets for sub-orbital joyrides will be hugely expensive for years regardless, there is something peculiarly perverse about a tax that would push the cost of a trip to the heavens even further up from what — one day — might be affordable for you and me. That’s worth remembering in light of complaints that space is being gentrified into a playground for Croesuses — complaints, by the way, that ignore how innovations have often found their first (and crucial) market with the rich. Rolls Royce preceded the Model T.

Blumenauer prefers class warfare over that historical experience (my emphasis added).

The Hill:

“Space exploration isn’t a tax-free holiday for the wealthy,” Blumenauer said in a statement. “Just as normal Americans pay taxes when they buy airline tickets, billionaires who fly into space to produce nothing of scientific value should do the same, and then some.”

Implicit within that arrogant pronouncement is the conceit that access to space is a privilege, and that the state’s gatekeepers should decide what is the right sort of space travel — and what is not.

Blumenauer:

“I’m not opposed to this type of space innovation. However, things that are done purely for tourism or entertainment, and that don’t have a scientific purpose, should in turn support the public good.”

I’ll just leave that phrase “the public good” to twist in the wind.

Unsurprisingly, Blumenauer puts forward “climate”, one of command-and-control’s most reliable allies, to prop up his argument.

The Hill (my emphasis added):

Blumenauer raised concerns about the environmental impacts of the growing space tourism industry.

Turn to Blumenauer’s press release to find this:

While proponents of suborbital space flights point to transatlantic flights as having similar carbon footprints, these flights carry significantly more passengers and travel much farther. The result is space launches accounting for an estimated 60-times greater emissions than transatlantic flights on a per-passenger basis, enough to drive a car around the earth and more than twice the carbon budget recommended in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Researchers are also actively exploring the impact of space launches on accelerating the depletion of stratospheric ozone, which is orders of magnitude greater for rocket engines using alumina-producing solid rocket fuel or black soot-producing kerosene.

The Hill (my emphasis added):

. . . Blumenauer’s office said there would be two parts to the congressman’s proposal.

The first part would create a per-passenger tax on the price of a flight to space. The second part would create a two-tiered excise tax for each space launch, with one tier for flights between 50 and 80 miles above the Earth’s surface and a second tier with a higher tax for flights that exceed 80 miles above the Earth’s surface. There would be exceptions to the taxes for NASA flights for scientific research purposes.

NASA. The state looks after its own.

Back to the congressman’s press release:

In the case of flights where some passengers are working on behalf of NASA for scientific research purposes and others are not, the launch excise tax shall be the pro rata share of the non-NASA researchers.

Some research, it appears, is more equal than others. But on closer examination, even the crude distinction between “science” and “tourism” is hard to sustain. Space tourism is a small part of a greater game. Virgin Galactic will, it seems, concentrate on jaunts into the periphery, but Bezos has bigger plans. His Blue Origin will have a travel business, but that is not where his company’s longer-term ambitions lie.

Bezos has explained that the whole point of trips such as the one he has just taken in Blue Origin’s New Shepard “is to get practice. . . . The fact of the matter is that the architecture and the technology we have chosen is complete overkill for suborbital tourism mission[s].” Devising New Shepard’s reusable rocket (the capsule can be reused too) is no mean feat, but the next stage of the company’s far larger project, the New Glenn, is a reusable rocket capable of putting a craft into orbit.

Then there’s Elon Musk. He hasn’t been to space yet (although he has booked a ticket with Branson’s Virgin Galactic), but his SpaceX Dragon 9 capsule delivered two NASA astronauts in a test mission to the International Space Station last year (the Falcon 9 rocket that shot them into space is also reusable) and on subsequent trips the recycled craft, delivered, on each occasion, four astronauts to the ISS. The days when American astronauts have to hitch a lift with the Russians should be over. And the private sector is doing what the private sector has a way of doing.

From a NASA research paper:

The development of commercial launch systems has substantially reduced the cost of space launch. NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. Commercial launch has reduced the cost to LEO by a factor of 20.

The easier and the cheaper it is to get into space, the greater the chances of taking advantage of the money-making opportunities that may be out there.

Practice works, as does the private sector’s far keener eye on the bottom line, and so will the bracing effects of competition. Much of the contest to come will be between SpaceX and Blue Origin, two enterprises run by men not known for their lack of competitive spirit. Virgin Galactic may be a small player in what will be a small niche, at least for a while, but it was heartening — in a brutal way — that just before Virgin’s VSS Unity set off through the skies, a few days (ahem) ahead of Blue Origin’s New Shepard, Blue Origin sent out two tweets that compared the New Shepard with Unity. The former, bragged Team Bezos, had “the largest windows in space”, an escape system and involved a rocket. The latter did not. Above all, so to speak, “only 4% of the world recognizes a lower limit of 80 km or 50 miles as the beginning of space. New Shepard flies above both boundaries.” Unity does not.

Always be closing.

That Boeing has now manufactured a reusable capsule of its own, the Starliner, which will shortly be taking a test flight to the ISS, is evidence of how competition is forcing technology forward. That Boeing has lagged the upstart SpaceX both chronologically and technologically (its capsule will be reusable, but its Atlas V rocket is not), is a reminder of how competition can upset and improve a stodgy marketplace. That this disruption has been accelerated by Musk’s ability to risk his own money is no reason to grouse about the depth of his pockets.

Back in the public sector, NASA is relying on somewhat old-school engineering for its SLS (Space Launch System), its most powerful (albeit not reusable) rocket ever, devised to “enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system.” The SLS is over budget and behind schedule.  Newsweek reports that Lori Garver, a former NASA deputy administrator, has said that the space agency should turn to SpaceX and the private sector for rockets rather than build its own. On Friday, perhaps tellingly, NASA announced that its Europa Clipper, a probe to check out Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons (Arthur C. Clarke fans can relax: The clipper won’t be landing), would be sent on its way by a (partially reusable) SpaceX Falcon Heavy, a far cheaper, if slower, alternative.

The SLS fiasco, yet another public-sector shambles, was never going to stand in the way of collectivist carping about “our billionaire overlords” (Kandist Mallett from, uh, Teen Vogue) and their race to the stars, and it has not. The overlords have been accused of succumbing to various forms of the (supposed) sin of pride, from vanity to megalomania to something of which the FT’s Mance singles out for shaming, a desire to appear in the history books, a motive as ancient (at least) as Achilles, and not one that is ignoble.

If Bezos, Branson, and Musk are driven on by their egos, what of it? Our species has not gotten to where it has on the back of humility. If some of these tycoons’ aspirations, whether moon bases (Bezos, relatively modest under the circumstances), Mars colonies (Musk), or spreading even further into space (both of them), may seem far-fetched, well, one man’s folly is another’s New World.

In writing about Denis Tito back in 2001, I noted this:

If space really is to be opened up, it is going to take more than governments and their “professionals” to do the job. The real work will be done, as it always has been at every new frontier, by the usual motley suspects, by capitalists, cranks, charlatans, and crackpots, by dreamers, drones, visionaries, hucksters, showmen, and opportunists and, yes, even by tourists.

And then there is the matter of the profits that may or may not be out there, from satellites to asteroid mining. Investment-banking analysts are what they are, but Morgan Stanley’s forecast last year that “the global space industry could generate revenue of more than $1 trillion or more in 2040, up from $350 billion, currently,” is a sign that hopes of riches ahead are rising. Coming in “peace for all mankind” is all very well, but showing up for a slice of the pie isn’t so shabby either.

A smart man once observed, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

And people are beginning to place their bets in the hope of a feast.

Ashlee Vance in Bloomberg :

Here are just a few of the less remarked-on recent stories out of the private space industry. First was the stock market debut of a company called Astra Space, which, backed by venture capitalists, built a viable orbital rocket in just a few years. Its goal is to fly satellites into orbit every single day. Shortly after Astra went public at a value of $2.1 billion, satellite maker Planet Labs—which uses hundreds of eyes in the sky to photograph the Earth’s entire landmass daily—announced its plans to do the same, at a value of $2.8 billion. Firefly Aerospace has a rocket on a California pad awaiting clearance to launch. OneWeb and Musk’s SpaceX are both regularly launching satellites meant to blanket the planet in high-speed internet access. Rocket Lab, in the previously spacecraft-free country of New Zealand, is planning missions to the moon and Venus.

Venus?

Yup, Venus.

Some of this will turn out to be — to use an appropriate idiom — pie in the sky. That’s how capitalism works — the potential of high rewards attracts investors who are prepared to put a price on the risk that a venture will come to nothing. And if the quest for glory, gratification of ego, or a dream of humanity sprawling across the expanse leads some billionaires to price that risk more cheaply than they otherwise should, why complain? What the rest of us learn from their loss could well be our gain.

The next chapter in this saga will feature another billionaire tourist, but one who will be traveling on one of Musk’s Dragons. Musk being Musk, and competition being competition, not only will the specially fitted-out capsule have a larger window (a dome, no less) than anything on the New Shepard, but will, all being well, orbit the earth for three days, and at an altitude higher than the ISS. According to an estimate published in Time Magazine, Jared Isaacman, the CEO of Shift4 Payments, an online payments company, will be paying $200 million for seats for himself and three guests: a physician’s assistant from St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Memphis (who herself is a survivor of childhood cancer), an Air Force veteran, and a professor of geosciences (there is much more to the last two’s resumes). The mission is intended “to raise awareness and funds for” St. Jude’s.

Meanwhile, Time’s Jeffrey Kluger reports that Blue Origin “is competing to build the lunar landing vehicle that will return American astronauts to the surface of the moon in NASA’s Artemis program.”

Indeed it is.

Space.com:

The United States’ next moonshot is shaping up to be a contentious affair.

In mid-April, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to finish development of its Starship vehicle and fly two missions with it to the lunar surface for the agency’s Artemis program. If all goes according to plan, the second of those missions will put two astronauts down near the lunar south pole in the mid-2020s — the first crewed moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.

SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, beat out two commercial competitors for the lunar lander deal — Dynetics and the “National Team,” which is led by Blue Origin, a spaceflight company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. But those two groups didn’t accept the decision and move on. They both filed protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in late April, citing perceived flaws in the award process. NASA has held up the $2.9 billion until the GAO finishes an investigation into the matter, which will wrap up by early August . . .

Competition.

Sadly, prompted, it seems, at least in part, by lobbyists for Blue Origin, Congress got involved, but that’s a story for another time.