“He who controls the moon controls Earth.” … After all, the moon is the ultimate high ground, providing clear vision to detect attacks and material that might attract Earth-based powers to seek an alliance with the moon – assuming the proposition that humans might live on the moon merely to become wealthy… Europeans went to South America seeking gold, silver and all the rest. Given current technologies, the relative distance between Portugal and Brazil and between the moon and Portugal is not wildly different. The voyage to the moon may even seem less daunting.
Humans pursue wealth and will use military power to attain it. The history of the world is the history of movement and the struggle for wealth.
George Friedman
But first, due to risk aversion in modern humans space launch to Earth orbit has to become routine, cheap, and reliable. After that, a number of steps must follow.
Until SpaceX, the cost of launching mass to Earth orbit was stuck around the level of $10,000 per kg. The SpaceX Falcon rockets have lowered the cost per kg to $2,000 or below. That is helpful, but it isn’t good enough for large scale movement of infrastructure to cis-lunar space and beyond. We are hoping that the SpaceX StarShip will provide an order of magnitude reduction in costs down to $200 per kg, or less.
Elon Musk has targeted an orbital launch cost of $10/kg for Starship, with propellant costs accounting for roughly one-third. Orbital launch cost would be about four times more than the cost of point to point on Earth rocket delivery costs. Point to point rocket delivery would only need the Starship upper stage. There are only six engines in the upper stage instead of 39 engines for the upper stage and the booster stage. The fuel usage would be four times less. This would mean point to point rocket delivery at $2.50 per kilogram.
Unbelievable Reduction in Launch Costs Possible?
The trend in launch costs is certainly in the right direction. Until SpaceX, no one actually believed that space launch could be turned into a routine operation, with mass-produced reusable rockets and the increasing substitution of AI and robots for human personnel at launch centers.
If the overall trend continues, access to space may become relatively affordable to most people during the second half of this century. Visiting a space hotel could one day be as routine as a holiday overseas.
NASA has stated a long-term goal of making LEO accessible for tens of dollars per kilogram by 2040. The agency has also speculated that a space elevator (requiring 15 years to construct) would lower this cost even further, to just a few dollars per kilogram.
Making it Affordable
NASA is just another corrupt government agency. Without the assistance of private profit-driven innovation, NASA would still be spinning its wheels and spawning kickbacks — just like the defense agencies.
It is taking between 65 and 75 years to achieve affordable and reliable space launch to Earth orbit, for the purposes of colonizing the moon. Once space launch is cheap and reliable, infrastructure has to be put in place for routine transport of materials, supplies, and personnel between Earth and Luna.
But as we have seen in the space launch example, government and corporate bureaucracies do not follow the same trails — either mind-trails or real-world trails — as visionary innovators do.
Space development plans that are devised by government or corporate bureaucrats, are not likely to match the plans laid out by more visionary individuals of talent. That is one of the unpredictable elements of future planning and prediction. Bureaucrats hate those unpredictable elements.
The Goal for Visionary Dreamers is to Inhabit the Larger Space
Space visionaries don’t want to rule Earth. That is small potatoes. They want access to the greater wealth of the solar system. Past Mars, past the asteroid belt, past the giant gas worlds and their rich moons. The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud lead on to the edge of the solar system, and what waits beyond.
Visionaries who are reality-based will always be looking for the “killer-app” that can start the ball rolling, and pay for the next step at the same time. Elon Musk saw that cheap space launch was a killer app for the nascent space value chain. But the next space economy will have a much larger value chain, so the killer apps will need to keep coming. Bureaucrats are not much help with that.
But politics will be politics. There will always be fanatics willing to destroy the world in order to control their own little sphere of influence, or to promote their own little pinhead ideology — religious or secular.
The relentless movement of restless humanity outward (space) and inward (technology) threatens the ability of earth-bound tyrants to control everything and everyone.
So far, humans have not built appreciable colonies and settlements on (or beneath) the ocean. The costs and hazards involved in full-time deep ocean living do not seem to be balanced by any obvious benefits, so far.
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But Earth is not the only large body in the solar system to have an ocean. So it is possible that the first undersea colony will be built and inhabited by humans somewhere else than Earth.
A primary goal for space-going humans, is to assure that the home planet is preserved at the same time as they are assuring themselves of a resilient future far beyond the home sphere.
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