Mid-cenury dreams, today's realities

Those of us who are time travelers from the 1900s recall the exhilarating years between Sputnik and the moon landing when our imaginations ran free. We pondered, often incorrectly, the implications of space travel and how it would affect future life here on Earth.

That fascination influenced popular culture with visionary renditions of what we imagined a “space age” to be, ranging from The Jetsons to the tail-lights on the 1959 Coupe DeVille, tin ray guns, and our dearly departed rocket slide in Kelley Park.

To others, our success in space was less whimsical. An atomically charged cold war rested national security and no less than the future of democracy on the shoulders of our efforts in space. JFK famously set our action plan in motion while putting the world on notice when he said, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

More than 60 years later, seven countries have launched 104 rockets into space in the first five months of 2024. Even more significant is the number of satellites in orbit. Estimates vary, but the satellite tracking website, “Orbiting Now” (orbit.ing-now.com) estimates the current count at 9,900.

I realized how far we have come in my lifetime last weekend as I listened to Newt Gingrich’s talk with space policy expert Dr. Greg Autry. In addition to a long list of professional and academic accolades, Autry served on the NASA Agency review team in 2016 and was the White House liaison with NASA in 2017. Autry is currently hawking his new book (spoiler alert), “Red Moon Rising: How America will beat China on the final frontier.”

Without prompting, Autry volunteered an answer to the question, “Why spend money in space when we have plenty of problems right here?” His answer centered around national security, citing China’s space ambitions that include no less than a crewed landing and a base on the lunar south pole.

Current military planners view space as the new battlefield high ground and have targeted low-earth-orbit superiority as the ticket to global security. While the US is first in current rocket launches for 2024 at 65, China runs second at 24, and from there, the numbers drop precipitously. The Russians, whose space program has sometimes been subsidized by the US (AKA Soyuz seats and ISS segments), pull a distant third place with only seven launches this year.

Autry argued that Russia was not a threat but took China’s aspirations more seriously, saying, "The Chinese say what they will do, and then they do it.” China, he added, demonstrates "little innovation but great follow-through.” Ultimately, Autry argued that the US would prevail but not without significant investment and involvement from the private sector.

China’s preference for establishing a presence on the lunar south pole underlines what may ultimately drive space exploration beyond military advantages — natural resources. In addition to exotic mineral resources, favorable conditions at the lunar south pole include water, ice, and stable sunlight for producing solar energy.

Estimates of the value of known mineral deposits on the moon range from $180 billion to over $1 quadrillion (and I’m old enough to remember when a quadrillion was a lot of money).

The US, however, is looking beyond the moon for natural resources. A NASA study estimates that the total value of minerals within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter could be as much as $700 quintillion.

More immediately accessible non-military motivations may lie in manufacturing. "InSPA,” NASA’s In Space Production Applications program, has funded experiments on the International Space Station for 21 years. During that time, InSPA has performed low-gravity research and developed metals, fiber optics, and pharmaceuticals. They are also exploring construction techniques and materials intended for in-space production of structures too large to be transported from Earth.

The latest announced innovation is in optical fiber production, which takes advantage of the low gravity environment to create a glass alloy offering ten times the capacity of conventional silica-based fibers. The pharmaceutical industry has also taken notice of the unique environment and the importance of microgravity in producing materials that cannot be manufactured on Earth.

Of course, we still don’t have the flying cars that were promised, and late-night radio tells me that the Wright Brothers flight was a hoax filmed on a soundstage in Anaheim. All of that considered, I am inclined to be impressed by how far we have come.