Unpredictable Events
Hurricane Dorian and other hurricanes leave a lasting impression on Congress’s willingness to fully fund NASA’s Artemis and Mars plans.
The three costliest hurricanes in 2017 alone equaled 12 YEARS WORTH of NASA’s current budget.
Unpredictable events, such as hurricanes and other natural disasters, put pressure on Congress to limit/control optional spending, such as NASA’s budget.
Problem is, we really DO need to make major improvements in our ability to explore, learn about, live in, utilize, and exist in space. So what’s a poor space explorer to do?
We Can’t Afford This
Humanity’s future in space is dependent on intrinsic changes to NASA’s focus…changes that make sense to the majority of taxpayers and the 78% of US workers that live paycheck to paycheck (CareerBuilder survey). We can’t afford wasteful spending.
It Has To Pay For Itself
Space Centric has a sensible approach. Instead of spending our tax dollars on space exploration, focus on building a self-supporting in-space economy (see my Power Post) so that space exploration pays for itself! This gives us the ability to stay there and grow, instead of having to cancel programs and put our rockets in museums when the funding runs out.
DEVELOPING OUR ABILITY TO GROW BEYOND EARTH
The grandfathered flags and footprints Apollo-style of space exploration continues as as a basis for the first crewed trip to Mars and a return of people to the Moon. Neither of these objectives are popular priorities (see NASA Opinion Polls) and require unlikely and unrealistic large increases to NASA’s budget. Essentially, this approach for Mars and the Moon is unfundable and unintentionally side-tracks and delays what really matters: DEVELOPING OUR ABILITY TO GROW BEYOND EARTH!
And how do we develop our ability to grow beyond Earth? Create and grow a self-supporting in-space economy, based in ISRU, starting on the Moon. A self-supporting in-space economy leads us forward with increasing returns and decreasing reliance on taxes. The ISS, Artemis, and Mars 1.0 don’t do that.
Our future in space
Hurricanes and other natural disasters, military conflicts, economic recessions, pandemics, the national deficit…these aren’t the only unpredictable events and expenditures that put pressure on Congress to control and limit optional spending, such as space exploration.
Our future in space is dependent on growing past these limitations by focusing on creating an in-space economy.
More details here: Why NASA Won’t Send Astronauts to the Surface of Mars – AND HOW TO FIX IT!
Let’s bring some reality and sensibility to NASA’s direction and our future in space!
- Updated September 2, 2019. Changed the title, made some wording improvements, added the hurricane radar image, added a couple paragraphs.
- Updated November 27, 2019. Removed info relating to Space Centric Memberships, which are no longer offered.
- Updated November 27, 2021. Improved readability and added “pandemics” to the list of unpredictable events.