Up until fairly recently in human history, people believed that a solid dome, studded with the Sun, Moon, and stars, lay above Earth. The ancients called this dome the firmament. Above it, the ancient Jews taught, lay the vault of heaven. Our human instinct—something in our DNA, perhaps—compels us to rise beyond such barriers. The aerospace equivalent of the firmament is the Gravity Well.
Read MoreCourage and patience. Risk-taking. Boldness. Thinking big. All of this language swims against the current political narrative on both the right and the left.
Read MoreSpiritually, our nation lies stuck at the bottom of the Well, uncertain of how to break free. And yet, this is the beautiful thing about the space program: The Gravity Well is not just a metaphor.
Read MoreAmerica's success in agriculture offers a critical economic lesson. In “sciencing” farms, the government sparked unprecedented growth in an essential sector. It should come as no surprise that the government used a comparable model to help create the aerospace economy.
Read MoreThe most common argument against a publicly funded space program is that we can’t afford it, given the government’s many other priorities. The most common answer is that space makes an excellent public investment. But if it is a good investment, why not leave space to private investors?
Read MoreThe risks in space are socialized while the rewards are privatized, a famous economist argues. We taxpayers bear the risks, and private companies reap the rewards.
Read MorePrivate investors are beginning to inch into the market created by government investment of our tax dollars. Will this new industry succeed? There will be failures, just as there was during NACA’s long, patient investment in aeronautics. But there will be brilliant successes as well—provided NASA’s most active constituencies start working together to change the narrative.
Read MoreA new tool leads to new knowledge, which leads to a new tool. Over time, the cycle speeds up, first with a burst of creativity in Asia; then with the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age in Europe; leading up to the twentieth century and the invention of the airplane, transistor, and silicon chip. All of these inventions depended on the work of scientists. In turn, the scientists depended on increasingly sophisticated laboratory and field equipment. Throughout the 1900s, as the cycle spun faster and faster, the demand grew for ever more sophisticated equipment.
Read MoreIt really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
