OPINION: Costs of space travel won’t stop us

The last week or so has been tough on the commercial development of space.

Starting with Orbital Sciences’ Antares booster fail in Virginia and continuing through the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo last Friday, the disasters seem pretty spectacular, and they are. Fortunately, the Antares launch was of an unmanned vehicle. “All” we lost there was a payload of food, scientific experiments and other equipment. In the Mojave, we lost Scaled Composites’ pilot Michael Alsbury. That one’s a lot tougher. He wasn’t the first life lost in Virgin Galactic’s pursuit of “accessible and democratized space.” But we’ve lost other lives — a lot of them — in the pursuit of space. We will lose more. It’s a given.

In the great Age of Exploration, men set out to cross a vast, hostile environment. It was called the Atlantic Ocean, or the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, and men — a lot of them — died in the crossing. Some were funded by countries, some were licensed by governments and some were purely private enterprise. Some went in search of gold, some of spices and some simply of a piece of land they could call their own. Some were get-rich-quick artists. Some were outright thieves.

But they kept on crossing.

Some would argue that today is fundamentally different from the 15th and 16th centuries. We live in a more “satisfied” society in which higher living standards and modern medicine mean we can expect to live longer, far more affluent lives. We have more to lose and less to gain by risking our lives on an uncertain craft intended to carry us across a vast and hostile environment. In absolute terms, the stake is the same — life or death. In relative terms, the argument goes, with so much to lose and so much less to gain, pioneers, explorers, even buccaneers are going to be harder to find.

It’s more expensive, too, many would argue. Of course, “expensive” was a factor for the great oceanic risk takers, as well, which was why Queen Isabella had a hard time financing Columbus. Certainly, the infrastructure required to put a spacecraft into orbit — or beyond — dwarfs the infrastructure necessary to build the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. After all, the largest of Columbus’ ships was no more than 75 feet long, compared with the Antares rocket’s 133 feet, and there’s no comparison between the complexity of the vessels’ construction and contents. Except, of course, that both of them represented the cutting edge of the transportation technology of their eras.

Robert Heinlein pointed out that Earth is “too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in,” and he’s right. That’s why we worry about things like global warming and dinosaur killers. Even aside from that, the prize space offers is far larger than the spice routes around the Cape of Good Hope or the vast and fertile interior of the continent we call North America today. Just as the explorers sent out by Prince Henry the Navigator, we already know what some of that prize might be. Other parts we’re only beginning to imagine — and still others we won’t know about until we get there.

And men — and women — will keep on crossing until we do.

Oh, yes. We’ll find them, just as we found them in Prince Henry’s day. Profit motive will drive the infrastructure, but we’ll find the people we need, like Rudyard Kipling’s Explorer did when he heard “something hidden. Go and find it.” If you think we won’t, then think again. We’ve seen them before, aboard Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Challenger, Columbia, and we’ll see them again. Count on it.

Development of space is going to happen, whether under civilian, or government auspices. I believe that private companies will persevere and succeed, just as the joint stock companies succeeded in the 17th century. But if they don’t, countries like China will gladly take the lead if they’re allowed to, or wrest it away from their competitors if they must. Because the prize is there. Resource extraction, orbital habitats, space manufacturing, virtually unlimited solar energy, and — someday — the stars. That’s the frontier, and just as the men and women of Challenger, Columbia and — now — SpaceShipTwo died to pursue it, other men and women will also die.

And when they do, still other men — and women — will keep on crossing.

It’s what we do.

David Weber is author of the Honor Harrington and Safehold science fiction series.