The Next 50 Years In Space

By Peter H. Diamandis, MD

Privately financed human lunar research outposts; fundamental breakthroughs in propulsion; one-way missions to Mars; trillion-dollar asteroid mineral claims; nanotechnology-enabled single stage-to-orbit spacecraft; first births in space; discovery of non-terrestrial microbial life … this is a small snapshot of what the next 50 years has in store for us.  While the stage will have been set by NASA, ESA, RSA and JAXA, these breakthroughs will not come through the incremental funding of government space agencies, but through the same economic forces that opened the Americas and the American West.  In the same fashion that government-funded computers gave way to the PC and Mac, and the DARPA-created internet birthed everything from Netscape to Google, so too will today's government space programs eventually be surpassed by private industry out to make a buck and fulfill their dreams.

     There are two critical economic drivers at work here.  First, the amount of wealth in the hands of ambitious and visionary individuals is growing at a staggering rate.  A new generation of billionaire entrepreneurs and philanthropists sees the space frontier not as a mechanism to maintain the military industrial complex, but instead as an adventure to fulfill the dreams planted by Apollo, a mechanism to "back up the Earth's biosphere," and a place to make a tremendous amount of money.

     Second, many companies and capital markets are slowly coming to the realization that everything we hold of value here on Earth (metals, minerals, energy, real estate) are in near-infinite quantities in space. As proof-of-concept missions materialize (i.e. the first private asteroid-prospecting missions), vast quantities of wealth will be mobilized for high-risk, high-return prospecting spaceflights.  The same capital that now enables $20 billion North Sea oil platforms, or multi-billion-dollar hotels in Las Vegas and Dubai, will begin to invest heavily beyond low-Earth orbit.

     In addition to these new economic drivers, there is also a new set of technological tools that will propel us into space.  During the past few decades we have been riding an exponential growth in computational capability known as Moore’s law.  This in turn has driven exponential growth in areas such as materials sciences, computer modeling and desk-top manufacturing plants.  We are finally able to put the tools once controlled by the Boeings and GEs of the world into the hands of small teams of non-traditional, risk-willing entrepreneurs.

     Looking back to 1961 when JFK put out the call to go to the Moon, the average age of the engineers who responded, and designed and built Apollo, was 26.  They literally had to make it up as they went along because it had never been done before.  Given the freedom to design, without the preconceived notions of “the way it had to be done,” allowed them to pull it off in a staggering eight-year period.  Fast-forward 30 years to the early 1990’s and it was this same group of twenty-something entrepreneurs who invented and implemented the dot-com revolution building the new trillion-dollar economy.

     During the next 50 years, in countless cycles, in countless entrepreneurial companies, this "let's just go and do it" mentality will help us finally get off the planet and irreversibly open the space frontier.
The capital and tools are finally being placed into the hands of those willing to risk, willing to fail, willing to follow the dreams.

--Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is chairman of the X-Prize Foundation.

Comments

[Robert Vreugde]

A comment on the above statement "...everything we hold of value here on Earth (metals, minerals, energy, real estate) are in near-infinite quantities in space.":

We should remember that there is a vast priceless treasure found only here on Earth that we continue to squander. That treasure is the unique genetic software contained in the millions of species of living organisms on our world. This genetic software would take ages to replicate and beta test (if we even knew what we were doing) and yet we are throwing it all away to dig up little bits of minerals or create tiny little areas of human living space. Sure, some of that genetic software results in mosquitoes, lice and the AIDS virus but it is also an almost unlimited library of self-replicating biomolecular engineering - a library that we are just now becoming able to read and utilize.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is right in saying that the open space and mineral wealth of the universe is practically unlimited and that is good reason to engage in space exploration. I say it is also a good reason to stop destroying what is unique to our world in order to acquire what is abundantly available everywhere else.

As we continue to vandalize the natural world we are like Neanderthals burning our way though the Library of Congress using the books to make fires for momentary heat and light. The time has come already to stop the destruction, step back and preserve what is left for future generations who will be able to see in full what we now just glimpsing with our modern minds.

[Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides]

That is exactly what it is all about, dreams and risks!

In today's world even to dream is risky. You might fail, you might get laughed at, you might be disappointed. But Peter is dead-on.

It's time to break the cycle. It's time for us to have the audacity to dream again. To risk being disappointed, to risk failure. Because one thing is certain- 100% of the things you never try, you won't accomplish.

So take risks! Meet people you normally wouldn't, speak up in the design review, pitch something to your boss, pursue an idea you have always wanted to.

Things really start to happen when individuals swinging way out and risk it all.

Are you game?
Let's go.