Space – The Last Great Profit Center

It was announced today that NASA’s budget for the Constellation program, which would have ultimately put human beings back on the surface of the moon, has been cut.

In justifying this change in priorities, commentators have noted that NASA has a great track record in unmanned exploration of the solar system, and this is true.

Right now, with the US embroiled in multiple wars and with harsh economic circumstances gripping the country, it probably is not the right time to pursue a new lunar exploration program, but that’s not the part that really disturbs me.

The suggestion has been made that perhaps manned missions to the moon and other extraterrestrial bodies should be left to the private sector; i.e. the corporations. What part of this scenario stinks like a two ton load of salmon left rotting on the dock? All of it.

Corporate America, or for that matter, corporate Earth, is not about to sink trillions of dollars into manned space missions unless there is… drum roll, please… an enormous profit to be made.

Here’s how I see this playing out. bear in mind, this a long term prediction which my children and as yet unborn grandchildren will probably witness.

NASA and other government agencies around the world will continue to be funded the way they are today; very poorly. NASA’s proposed budget of $19 billion amounts to 0.23 of the total proposed budget of $8.3 trillion, less than one-fourth of one percent of the total pie.

When an exploitable resource is discovered somewhere in the solar system and technologies have been developed to facilitate huge corporate profits in said resource’s extraction, then and only then will manned spaceflight to other worlds be fully realized if manned interstellar travel is left to private interests only.

Beyond large profits, the rewards to private sector corporations that participate in this process will likely be “very favorable” consideration in the auctioning off of mining and mineral rights on places like the moon or Mars; places that should rightfully belong to all humankind, if they should belong to any human at all!

When the time comes, I also wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the prison industrial complex get in on the act. I mean, isn’t that what humans, especially humans motivated by greed and imperialism have always done – shipped the undesirables off to some far away penal colony?

I know this is all a bit negative and presumptive, but given the current lovefest government has been forced into with corporate America by Chief Jester, John”Smirky Face” Roberts, I haven’t really got much reason to be optimistic.