Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality
As with similar NASA vision statements about space, this is heavy on the what &quot;Send people to Mars&quot; and weak on the why, &quot;What do we gain by being space faring?&quot;<p>As a result it will be constantly under pressure from earthly issues that need money now. For example if you are a congress critter and asked to choose between funding a $1B for Zika virus research&#x2F;abatement and using that $1B for 1&#x2F;5 the cost of developing a new space booster system, people always choose the &#x27;today&#x27; problem and delay the &#x27;future&#x27; opportunity. No one wants to say &quot;Sorry, you&#x27;re unborn child was killed by a virus we could have stopped but we spent that money on a rocket.&quot;<p>This is why I am a huge fan of the Commercial Crew and other &#x27;private&#x27; industry programs. Let private industry develop the tools and techniques for space and unshackle from them the cold war restrictions.<p>And yes, that is the elephant in this particular room. While the &quot;west&quot; wrings its hands over the PRK developing an operational missile capability, have you ever thought what a Falcon 9 looks like through that lens? As a military weapon it could be considered the first Intercontinental Ballistic Bomber. Think about that capability, a Falcon 9 with a payload capable of some re-entry steering, launches from a base in the US, lets fly the payload, and then flys back to base for the next payload. Ten of these sitting on pads in the Dakotas could put 100 tons of conventional explosive on to any target in the eastern hemisphere in about 45 minutes.<p>That is the kind capability that SpaceX could &quot;market&quot; to third parties. And it isn&#x27;t something nation states like private companies to have.