The untapped resources of outer space can provide pollution-free energy, miracle medicines, and unlimited precious metals.
Gold Rush to Space and the Stars
At the beginning of next summer, if all goes right, a shiny white rocket ship called the U.S.S. Private Enterprise [technically, the X-3 Volksrocket — Ed.] will zoom skyward from a small patch of concrete north of San Francisco and curl gently over the Pacific Ocean. Inside, as powerful thrusters burn and the craft hurtles upward some seventy-five miles, an astronaut will film and broadcast the event.
Bob Truax, the man who has spent the last six years of his life building the vehicle and preparing for the stunt, will be down below with his financial backers, who had to raise $1 million to fund the effort, watching hopefully and nervously.
Why send a man to the edge of space, a mission first completed by Yuri Gangarin some twenty-one years ago? Why risk some one’s life in space with only a $1 million budget-minuscule next to the Na tional Aeronautics and Space Administra tion’s 1981-82 allotment of nearly $6 billion-and a lot of spare parts, not to mention a crew made up mostly of volunteers? Why, indeed, would anyone want to build his own rocket ship?
The truth is that the flight of the Private Enterprise (which is also named the X-3), if successful, will usher in a new era that futurists. scientists, manufacturing ex perts, and veteran space technologists have been dreaming about for years: the age of private development in space. If their predictions are correct, manufactur ing, mining, and, in the long run, just about every industry are about to take a giant leap into the cosmos.
Truax plans to recover all of his rocket and use the whole rocket many times — not just a portion of it, as NASA is doing with the space shuttle. “Private enterprise can do things better and cheaper than the federal government,” boasts Truax, who headed up many of the nation’s earliest rocket programs, including Thor and Po laris. “Someday there will be more people working in space than on earth. The first step in making the industrialization of space a reality is getting private enterprise involved.”
“Space-made products will find a large market on Earth,” agrees Donald Waltz, manager of advanced studies at TRW, Inc.
If even part of what some experts say turns out to be correct, in fifteen years, everything in your household, from kitchen blenders to lawn mowers. will be made of alloys harder than diamond. Hamburger will be half-price. The same will be true of some medicines that are nearly priceless today. Steel will float on water. Gems sur passing the biggest known will be “grown” in orbit. Super thin wire capable of holding a million pounds will be com monly available. As factories move mil lions of miles away and the need for “dirty” forms of energy fades, pollution will disappear. You’ll talk to anyone you want to on your wrist telephone.
The futurists who paint this rosy portrait see space enterprise as not only a new. boundless frontier but also a safety valve for our planet’s pressing problems — energy, pollution, inflation, war, disease, even closer to Earth). Kuck also believes that our moon could be an excellent source of platinum, the grayish white metal-cur rently valued at more than $400 an ounce-that is used in chemical wares: dental alloys. and jewelry. And Harold Mazursky, a planetary geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center of Astrogeo logy, says that “given the past volcanic history of the moon and the fact that many rich metal deposits are associated with volcanic activity, it would surprise us not to find concentrations of iron and copper there.”
Kuck foresees large lunar troves of such rare platinum metals as rhodium (valued at $450 an ounce), iridium ($465 an ounce), osmium ($135), and palladium ($80). “They are probably strewn about right on the lunar surface.” reports Kuck.
“Someday there will be more people working in space than on earth,’ says one expert. “The first step is getting private enterprise involved.”
ff researchers are correct. the impact that space mining could have on earth would be staggering. Platinum is a case in point. According to the U.S. Bureau of Mines. world production of the strategical ly important alloy metals-96 percent comes from the Soviet Union and South Africa, not exactly the most dependable of suppliers-must increase tenfold in the next four years just to keep up with Ameri ca’s needs. Exploitation of the moon’s resources may be the answer.
Apparently titanium, used in alloys, is also common on the moon-certain sam ples taken by the Apollo astronauts had concentrations of more than 4 percent of the feldspars associated with the silvery gray metal. This discovery has convinced some futurists that titanium may turn out lo be the silver of space. “It’s stronger than aluminum,” says Masursky. 1naeed, cur rent state-of-the-art design calls for using titanium in many American spacecraft components.
Much of the titanium, chromium, and silica (by far the biggest component and a key source of aluminum) mined on the moon will probably never be shipped to Earth. Instead it will be utilized to build in place the very vehicles and equipment that will ply the moon’s minefields and then transport the goods elsewhere.
“It may eventually be cheaper to manufacture space-going boxcars in space from materials obtained in space,” Stine predicts. “We may well build things in space and land them on Earth to be expended, used, and never sent back into space again. Because the moon has a surface gravity only one-sixth as great as Earth’s, it would make a perfect base for just such activities.”
Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who participated in the first manned flight of the lunar module, agrees: “Going to and from the asteroid belt from the moon would cost one-twentieth of what it would from Earth merely because you don’t have to deal with the [strong gravity] environment.”
“The moon,” says Al Hibbs, senior staff scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., “should. in terms of setting up a center of operations, be our number-one priority. If anything needs servicing, it’s important to remember that the moon is relatively easy to get to.”
In fact, the idea of using the moon instead of Earth as a construction headquarters has completely revolutionized the concept of how much start-up money the industrialization of space might require. “Seven years ago, we thought it would cost fifty to sixty billion dollars,” says Gerard K. O’Neill, director of the Space Studies Institute in Princeton. “Today, our estimate is seven to eight billion dollars. Even to build a high-orbital space station, we should be able to get ninety percent of the material we need right from space.
The moon, however, is likely to become more than a jumping-off point: there are those who believe it may yield some of the human “basics” for working and living in space.
For example, if titanium becomes the silver of space, then oxygen will be more precious than gold. The moon apparently has great stores of oxygen locked away in its soil. “It can be separated out.” Kuck says. And although some other researchers still believe the lunar poles may con tain water and that hydrogen, which could be teamed up with the soil-borne oxygen to make water, might lurk in the bottoms of craters, no one knows exactly where the moon’s most viable resources are. Cur rent estimates are based on the puniest of samplings: a total of 845 pounds of lunar soil brought back to Earth. The United States has landed men on the moon at only six points.
In order to gain this knowledge, NASA has made three separate requests for funds to orbit a survey satellite around the moon. Each proposal has been turned down. In the meantime, Japan is consider ing a probe that will map the entire surface of the moon for possible mineral wealth.
Mineral and metal shortages are not the only problems whose solutions may lie in the heavens. There is an obvious environ mental benefit in mining the solar system rather than dredging the earth’s oceans. As Michael McCloskey, executive director of the Sierra Club, says, “In certain nearshore areas, ocean dredging could have a devastating effect on the entire food chain.” The concerns voiced by conservationists are heightened by the fact that a number of companies, such as Ocean Mining Associates, which is a consortium of U.S. Steel, Sun Co., Inc., Italy’s Sanim Co., and Belgium’s Union Miniere, would like to become more actively involved in underwater mining. Glenn Paluson, vice-president of the National Audubon Soci ety, says, “At least mining of the solar system wouldn’t disturb life.”
Some of the first products to be made in space will, as a matter of fact, enhance our lives — and possibly make them longer. At present, for instance, it takes 80,000 pints of human blood to make a single gram of interferon, which is believed by some re searchers to have great virus- or cancer fighting potential. Another example, says Dennis Morrison, head of the shuttle’s bi ology research projects, is urokinase, an enzyme that some stroke or heart attack victims need from twelve to twenty doses of to help break up blood clots. The cur rent price tag per treatment is $3,600 to $4,000. Using a process known as elec trophoresis, which “pulls” certain mole cules away from others, interferon, urokinase. and other lifesaving drugs could be produced more efficiently and in greater quantities 1n space. Although many laboratories already have small electrophoresis units, the delicate tech nique is limited because of the pull of grav ity. But in space, under zero-gravity conditions, there would be no problem in producing great quantities of these drugs.
Sometime this year an automatic proto type of a factory for processing interferon and cells that may help diabetics and hemophiliacs will be sent aloft in the space shuttle. James T. Rose, former director of engineering for the shuttle and the current manager of space processing for McDon nell Douglas Corporation, which is devel oping the factory under a joint agreement with NASA, says his company expects a “good return” on its investment, which he describes as “a lot more than one million dollars,” to date. If McDonnell Douglas is given permission by the Federal Drug Ad ministration to begin commercial production in 1986, one plant could make enough interferon to supply a good percent of the world market, according to Rose; an esti mated ten to fifteen such production units could be carried in a shuttle. Johnson & Johnson will handle marketing of the products for McDonnell Douglas.
In fact, the field of pharmaceutical pro cessing alone-1 of 101 potential space industries examined back in 1972 by Da vid Keller, then manager of advanced pro grams for the space division of General Electric-could result fn a ton of new vac cines worth a total of more than $1 billion every year, according to an obscure 1974 NASA study, “The Beneficial Uses of Space.”
Putting electrophoresis to work in space also might help ranchers breed livestock with more meat poundage and cows with more milk. The livestock sperm Industry that’s already booming would get a $422 million-per-year shot in the arm from space processing. according to one au thority, because, as with interferon, zero gravity would facilitate the isolation of puri fied hormones and X- and Y-type chromo somes, which determine the sex of the offspring.
NASA’s fifteen-volume study pegs the annual value of just ten industrial-space processes at $2.2 billion. Another report places the eventual sales for space-made electrical generators alone at as much as $400 billion a year. Based on these and other estimates. it would not be surprising for space to become a trillion-dollar enter prise by the year 2015.
Futurists see space enterprise as not only a new, boundless frontier but also a safety valve for our planet’s pressing problems.
If you talk with “earthbound” plant man agers about some of the most widely ap plicable qualities space has to offer manufacturing, about halfway into the conversation you will notice eyes rolling. It’ll happen just when you bring up “levitation — a trick you might have seen Linda Blair perform in The Exorcist.
But levitation, or contalnerless processing, as NASA prefers to call it, is real: Researchers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala., already have a breadbox-sized device that uses sound waves to float and holds drops of liquid, glass, or metal in midair without any container.
Sound impossible? It’s not. In zero gravity, electric fields can keep the suspended material that is injected (either by syringe or mechanical wand) between two poles, even if it needs to be rotated rapidly.
But why levitate “small globules” (as Lowell Zoller, Marshall’s manager of ma terials processing in space, describes them) inside an industrial furnace, as ground-based experimenters have been doing, in the first place?
The answer, once again, is zero gravity. Pour certain materials into containers, and you face the chance of contamination. Molds, jars, and even tongs limit processing temperatures. And containers “lock in” heat that, for some industrial purposes, needs to be removed fast Free-float the identical items during manufacture, and they will stay pure, unlimited by anything but their own temperature constraints and capable of being fast-frozen.
For glass alone, levitation is expected to carve out a $10 million-per-year market. Among the possibilities in this sector are glasses made from totally new materials, laser products, and improved fiber optics. Marshall’s Edwin Ethridge forecasts de velopment of a super lens for cameras. Mixing two or more metals, or a metal and a nonmetal, without the interference of gravity will make the bonding of thousands of new combinations possible for the first time; containerless processing will ensure their purity. As surely as the Indus trial Revolution changed every aspect of how we live, every industry, every home, everything from the vehicles we drive to the roofs over our heads, will benefit from these new alloys. But, to date, nothing much has happened, because most of the American projects to develop these alloys have not yet gotten under way. Soviet cosmonauts, however, have apparently been hard at work in space mixing metals since 1977, when Salyut 6 was launched.
Many experts expect American techno logical know-how to help us roar ahead of the Soviets once we stoke the fires of the shuttle’s electric furnace. But such specu lation, said the late Charles Sheldon II, ig nores the fact that the Russians have been actively engaged in space on an ongoing basis for five years. It also discounts the secret Soviet space budget-believed to be up to seven limes our own.
Even Sheldon, who was the Library of Congress’s senior specialist in space transportation technology, knew only the tip of the Russian story. His Washington office seemed to overflow with three-by five data cards — more than 10,000 at last count — which had been gathered since he began his relentless effort to monitor data from Western listening posts, Pravda, Tass, and anything else that might provide clues to the Soviet mission. “I’ve been watching them,” he said with a face that showed he was happy somebody cared, “since 1955.”
Salyut 6 carried two one-by-one-and-a half-foot electric furnaces, one in a hatch on the side of the ship and the other in a forward cavity where near-weightlessness prevails, according to Sheldon.
“They have created new alloys,” the analyst reported. Soviet literature claims the creation of a wide range of new mixtures — using thirty to forty elements,” by Sheldon’s estimate, including alloys of germanium, lithium, indium, molybdenum, and antimony. According to other data supplied to Penthouse by TRW’s Waltz, the Russians have melted combinations of copper and indium, aluminum and mag nesium, aluminum and tungsten, and mo lybdenum and gallium. According to Waltz, “They have been talking of foam metals, some of which will be able to float on water.”
Foreign interest in space-made crystals is intense. Except for metals testing. this is the area being watched the closest by France, Germany, and Japan. The Ger mans not only have garnered substantial participation by industry in crystal study but also. according to most analyses, are making the industrialization of space their top priority.
It is not surprising that the most spectac ular news to date about space crystals has come from the Soviet Union: a Russian ra dio commentator reportedly told his audi ence that the crystals brought back from Salyut 6 had a commercial value of $80 million.
How will crews be transported to space to work, and how will the moon’s metals and the products produced there be brought back to Earth? The American space shut tle is just one example of an earth-orbit space truck designed to lower cargo ex penses. In the 1960s Philip Bono of Mc Donnell Douglas proposed the vehicles Rambus and Hyperion. Unlike any rocket ever designed before, Rambus would car ry a maximum of 400 tons of cargo at a mere five dollars per pound. Hyperion would be a single-stage rocket, blasted up a rocket sled on a mountain, that could power itself on liquid oxygen and liquid hy drogen. Unlike the shu1tle, the forty-eight-passenger craft would land vertically. Bono estimated it would cost only $37 mil lion to build the first vehicle.
Nobody in the West is sure how far along the Russians are in developing their own space truck. but even the early indi cations are surprising. It looks like the So viets are trying to build something akin to a highly maneuverable “space van.” Mov ing large cargo will be their main empha sis. it seems.
The Soviet shuttle will probably take off horizontally with the help of a rocket. More important, this space-going service bus will apparently be launched from and return to conventional runways. It would be like launching the space shuttle from JFK, LAX, or O’Hare. The booster also will “glide back to a landing at a runway,” writer Donald Robertson told Astronomy magazine.
But for all their versatility, the proposed space trucks and vans of the near future will be used only within the inner solar sys tem, as the fuel cost of their continuing any farther is prohibitive. Instead. space trains would make the truly long-distance trips. All they would require would be a big enough shove to achieve the right velocity and could then be left to continue on through space. Other space tugs would meet them at their destinations. The ships could be slowed down by rocket power.
A commuter or freight train that sails through space might also be possible. according to the futurist Robert Staehle. Staehle’s World Space Foundation has been perfecting what may turn out to be one of the keys to the industrialization of space: a ship that requires no solid or liq uid fuel, no heavy tanks to hold them. and no tug to get it started when it is at least 1,500 km from Earth.
Sailing through space, using the minute and almost imperceptible but constant “push” of photons (bundles of energy particles from the sun) in much the same way that sailboats on Earth catch the wind, is an idea first suggested by Fridrikh Tsander in 1924. Tsander discovered that in the vacuum of space it doesn’t matter how slight the continuing solar nudge is; as long as it keeps coming, you can eventually build up to any speed you want.
There’s a drawback to most of the sail plans that enthusiasts rarely talk about: even with modern sail designs, “gassing up” takes a long time. To develop the speed needed to get to, say, Mars. might require a whole year of twirling in various orbits around the Earth; only then would your six-to-twelve-month journey begin.
“Space is both the key to getting around the limited resources we have on earth,” says Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill, “and, just maybe, toward ending conflict.”
But space sailing might yet develop speed. Some ideas for its improvement boggle the imagination. For example, a sail ship might be propelled from behind by a huge laser beam, or explosive charges might boost the craft to the de sired speed. The ship might even be flung into the cosmos with a mammoth gun, where it would glide. like a paper airplane that never stops.
For the last ten years, a number of scientists have been trying to tackle the problem of how to move the constant stream of products they envision being made on the moon without turning the entire lunar sur face into a giant spaceport. Only a finan cially efficient method of transporting moon-made products back to Earth will make space industry profitable and possible.
That’s where the lunar catapult comes in. Instead of flying ships in, loading them up, flying them out, and repeating the process, why not use a sophisticated slingshot to “shoot” the goods to their destinations?
Not only is such a plan neat — there’s no waiting at either end — but it really could work. The moon has no atmosphere to retard the “baseballs” such a slingshot would hurl. Better yet, its gravity field is on-sixth that of Earth’s. To push a container away from the ground, the catapult would accelerate its payloads to only one and one-half miles per second.
“The catapult would be built right on the lunar surface,” Stine predicts. “Since there is no air on the moon. there is no need to launch a payload vertically to get through air resistance as rapidly as possible.” Power for the shooter’s linear elec tric motor could come from solar cells, Stine thinks.
The Soviet space goal is to construct a space station capable of holding up to fifty persons. During the mission of Salyut 6, which ended early in 1981, the Russians disclosed that they plan manned mis sions, with Mars-not the moon or Earth — approaching asteroids-as their first goal.
NASA. admits Rusty Schweickart, who is now chairman of the California Energy Commission, “has been so focused on the shuttle that it has failed to articulate our next step or set of steps in space.”
“Whatever the goal is, it should not call for a one-shot effort, like we did with Apol lo.” comments Gerard K. O’Neill, who has devoted much of the last twelve years al most exclusively lo thinking about space goals and how to pursue them. “Everything I see in space revolves around two words, resources and energy. Our goal should be to harness the wealth of space for the benefit of all mankind. I firmly disagree with those who predict a future of shortages. Space is both the key to getting around the limited resources we have on earth and, just maybe. toward ending conflict. Have you ever noticed how most of the conflicts we have had involve resources or territory in one way or another? When new territory can be built in the form of space colonies virtually without limit, we will have an excellent chance of reducing human conflict. If we can move out to an environment where there are virtually un limited resources, perhaps we can end war forever.”
But before we reach such a utopia, it will be necessary to spend quite a lot of mon ey. And in these days of tight money and supply-side tax cuts, our “penny-wise and pound-foolish” attitude could prove to be a more deadly enemy than the Soviets.
Though nobody really knows how much the start-up costs for space enterprise will run, estimates made over the past decade range all the way from $50 million to about 1,200 times as much as that, or $60 billion. While very few experts give credence to either extreme forecast, there is a consensus judgment that even the $7 to $8 billion O’Neill says will be needed may have to be drastically lowered before most American companies jump on the space development bandwagon. “If we can get it down to one billion. the discretionary mon ey available to many corporations may be enough to fund most of the effort. even without substantial government help,” be lieves James Arnold. director of the Cali fornia Space Institute.
With the exception of McDonnell Douglas Corporation, TRW, Inc., and a handful of other firms that have committed themselves to space processing projects that go beyond research, most industrial man agers are still taking a wait-and-see attitude toward tapping into the cosmic treasure chest.
When NASA hired a special consultant to put on a space manufacturing sympo sium in La Jolla, Calif., in February 1981, agency insiders hoped the result would be heavy industry interest in the conference.
It was disappointing,” reports a NASA official who prefers to remain nameless. Even INCO. Ltd., one of three companies that agreed to participate in the meeting and a cosponsor of an upcoming shuttle metal-plating experiment, is hanging back. “Sure. it’s a lot of fun to grasp the ungraspable.” explains INCO public-relations manager David Graham. “But we have only a broad interest in something that may be centuries away. An asteroid may have a lot of nickel, but we have enough to last us for a long time on this planet.”
“Business is simply being prudent,” comments Floyd Roberson, the chief of NASA’s technology transfer division. “It’s a natural thing tor companies to be on the sidelines. A few risk takers were responsi ble for starting what eventually became the entire airline industry.” McDonnell Douglas space processing manager James Rose agrees. “We are taking a first step. What we need are more companies to join us.”
Other space industry enthusiasts want the government to monetarily encourage enterprise through tax breaks and subsi dies. NASA took a limited plunge in just such a direction when it signed an agreement giving a McDonnell Douglas drug factory a free ride in space if the company would build it.
“We need a unique government incen tive to lower the perceived risks,” says Stine. “That’s how the transcontinental railroad got built.” McDonnell Douglas vice-president and general manager Erwin Branahl concurs: “Without the support of NASA, innovative companies could not begin to undertake the enor mous risks inherent in these ventures.”
Still, selling space development to industry may hinge on how successful NASA is at explaining why costs will tum ble. Space industrialization expenses don’t have to be sky-high. In fact; if current trends continue, they’ll plummet to the point where almost all industries will want to become part of what will be an entrepreneurial rush into space. “Eventually, anti pollution laws and increasing energy costs will sharply limit industrial produc tion on Earth or make it more costly than producing the same products in space.” Stine says flatly.
The fantasies of forecasters are also more plugged into robotics than ever be fore. “We have the potential to lower front end costs just by designing in more automatic systems,” Arnold says. O’Neill envisions a whole swarm of self-replicat ing factories at work on the moon, grinding out 100,000 tons of products annually after only a few years.
As time goes by, researchers are realiz ing that going to work in space will save even more money than they thought earli er. McDonnell Douglas technicians recently found that impressive cost reductions could accrue from the quality alone of space-made silicon crystals. “We learned that only 10 percent of the cost is presently in making the material,” reports Rose. “It’s the (product) rejections that hurt. On earth, we figure rejections are about four times more than what we will have in space.”
“The surest route to opening the resources of space is through private-ven ture-capital operations,” says O’Neill. Roberson agrees with him: “We should show the way until the technology ma tures, stay in place as a regulator, and let the private sector carry on.”
In these days of tight money and supply-side tax cuts, our “penny-wise and pound foolish” attitude could be more deadly than the Soviets.
Already, the process is evolving: such organizations as the California Space In stitute, based in San Diego, are funding their own projects, which include long-range weather forecasting, and are partic ipating in the programs of others. Formed in 1979 with the support of Gov. Jerry Brown, an ardent space enthusiast, the state-operated group began with little fanfare and virtually no money; by 1981 its budget had skyrocketed to more than $1 million. It recently was on the receiving end of a $100,000 contract (to be shared with Rockwell International) from O’Neill’s SSI to, as Arnold describes it, “document the steps that will be needed to process lunar soil” once factories are established there.
The first space factories will be small, temporary structures that can be crammed into the shuttle for short spins through space. By 1990, the shuttle will have the capability to “drop off” larger plants — some of them manned — at their permanent sites. Subsequent flights will bring up fresh supplies and new “shifts” of workers. The old crew and the finished products will go back in the same ship.
From the outside, these orbiters may resemble floating junkyards, Stine depicts them as surrounded by all sorts of space trash, “parts of old equipment, parts of new equipment that haven’t been installed yet. old modules acting as warehouses for finished products,” and by “lashed up and hung-on” solar panels and heat radiators.
At first glance, factories on the moon will seem like those on our planet. Instead of being located near ports or railroads. most plants will be clustered around shut tle stations and catapults. Facilities erected in distant mares-the lunar countryside, if you will-are likely to rely on moon trucks to get their goods to market. Two types of cargo movers are expected by fu turists: electric carts, built in the style of the Apollo buggies, and cable cars unlike any ever seen before. Think of gondolas hanging upside down from a monorail, and you’ve got the basic picture of a “wirecar” rocketing across the lunar landscape.
Odder still is what many of the first work centers will be making: more factories. “The Japanese have been talking about building this kind of factory for years,” points out O’Neill, reaching for a pad. Soon, his pencil is producing a blizzard of numbers. “Three months after the first small-scale unit, you’d have an identical one. Three months later, you would have four. Three months after that, there would be eight.”
Despite the fact that nobody has a firm sketch of what shape factories beyond the moon will take, even fully automated reproducers are going to require mainte nance crews now and then. When something needs servicing, the factory’s computer will signal a repair shop orbiting at a distance of a few weeks’ journey; an engineer will show up, fix the broken part, and leave.
Sound simple? There are those who worry that space work, for all its exciting gadgetry, will be extremely boring. Robot watchers may become so “sedentary,” warns one expert. that they will need “special exercises.”
Others compare the first space developers with the pioneers who settled Amer ica only a few hundred years ago. They struggled under many hardships, but they survived, and they kept coming and com ing in ever increasing numbers.
We are, it seems, at a middle course, a juncture in the fabric of future history. II is a time for deciding where we have been and where we will go now that the other plan ets beckon. As Ben Bova, editorial direc tor of Omni magazine and author of The High Road, writes: “If we are to solve to day’s global problems, we must look be yond Earth, and we must also look toward the future. Problems that have taken generations to accumulate require long-range solutions. … To solve these problems,
we have to create new wealth. And the new wealth that we seek is waiting for us. untouched and eternal, a few hundred miles above our heads.”
As a frame of reference for this article from 1982, this launch never took place, and it would be 20 years before the founding of SpaceX. Granted, that company has a run of private funding rounds before the IPO and the initial valuation of $1.8 Trillion in June of 2026. You do not need to get to the numbers today before realizing that the $1 million necessary for the U.S.S. Private Enterprise represents 0.06% of SpaceX value at the IPO launch. … One may draw their own conclusions from that fact, but we found it interesting. Of course it was also interesting that they were talking about launching rockets from San Franciso back then.
Another frame of reference for this specific day might be that the cheapest U.S. Senate race for this election cycle was $71 million in Nebraska. Texas, of course, surpassed half a billion dollars in its spending, ironically mostly funded by the SpaceX guy.
