To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: Space Exploration and Public Policy
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American Enterprise Institute Web event — To the moon, Mars, and beyond: Space exploration and public policy Introduction: James Pethokoukis, DeWitt Wallace Fellow, AEI Discussion Panelists: Tim Fernholz, Senior Reporter, Quartz Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stan Veuger, Resident Scholar, AEI Matthew C. Weinzierl, Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School Moderator: James Pethokoukis, DeWitt Wallace Fellow, AEI Tuesday, February 23, 2021 2:00–3:00 p.m. Event page: https://www.aei.org/events/to-the-moon-mars-and-beyond-space- exploration-and-public-policy/ James Pethokoukis: Good afternoon. Welcome to our AEI event on the future of America and space. America, in 2021, seems to be interested and active in space to a degree not seen since the space race with the Soviet Union. Private firms, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, have emerged as new pioneers of space exploration, and many politicians have begun calling for us to return to the moon and finally put a human on Mars — an American. And the US is not alone. Countries ranging from China to the United Arab Emirates have developed space programs as well. Overall, humanity appears ripe to resume its exploration of outer space, which opens many questions — among them, what are the roles of both private companies and NASA in driving this exploration? And what new opportunities and challenges will be uncovered as we delve further into the final frontier, and will those opportunities be profitable? I’m excited to discuss these questions with today’s panel, which I will now introduce. Tim Fernholz is a senior reporter at Quartz, where he covers space, the economy, and geopolitics. He’s authored the excellent 2018 book, “Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race.” Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she’s known for her research on extrasolar planets. She’s the author of the 2020 memoir, also excellent, “The Smallest Lights in the Universe.” Stan Veuger is a resident scholar in economic policy studies here at AEI, as well as a visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University. And Matt Weinzierl is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, as well as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He’s recently launched a set of research projects focusing on the commercialization of the space sector and its economic implications. One last thing before we begin: We’ll be doing a Q&A at the end of the event, so please, please, please submit your questions on Twitter with the #AskAEIEcon. And there are also links and email addresses to ask questions on the event page. So with that, we will get started. Let me start with Sara. Is this renewal of interest (that I mentioned in the intro) in space, is this a permanent thing? Are we entering a true space age as the optimists of the 1960s envisioned? We’ve sort of been here before, and we lost interest. Are we going to stay interested in space and all its many aspects? Sara Seager: Well, I have to say yes, because that’s my whole field of research. James Pethokoukis: Good. Sara Seager: But it seems like we are because it’s just as everything got smaller and cheaper. Like, the amount of capability in our phones today, compared to the beginning of the space race is just tremendous. And that, in part, is also fueling this cheaper and more accessible space for all of us. James Pethokoukis: Why did we lose interest? Sara Seager: I don’t know if we lost interest, but it’s like the shiny new thing — “Do it, it’s really hard.” Also, it all wrapped up initially in the Cold War, and we just had less of a motivation to continue to pursue. James Pethokoukis: Certainly, we lost interest in sort of the manned aspect of exploration, but that’s not it. We’ve been doing a lot of other things over the past 50 years other than — we may have not been going to the moon or Mars, but we’ve still been exploring space, which is kind of what, you know, what you devoted your life to. Sara Seager: The human factor adds just a whole lot of risk. You know, it’s true that our Mars rover landing in the last couple days was just absolutely fantastic. Like, perfect, really. But when you add humans to the equation, you know, no one wants to be responsible if something were to go wrong with a person there, because that usually is fatal. So it’s just my personal opinion that the cost is just too high, typically, you know, when we put humans in the equation. James Pethokoukis: Tim, what is driving this sort of renewal of activity? Is it commerce, exploration, national pride, national security, some combination of all of the above? Tim Fernholz: I mean, the correct and easy answer is all of the above, but what we’ve seen in the last few decades has been an increased emphasis on the economic potential of space. We saw that, at the turn of the century, the tech boom laid out a lot of trends that have made this possible. Like the small powerful computers and batteries in our cell phones are at the heart of a lot of what’s happening in space now. But we saw people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos make a lot of money and, believing in the future of space, invest in there, both with the idea of driving down the cost of access to space. And it’s that dynamic that has reawakened commercial interest in space and new scientific potential. But you can’t ignore the geopolitics. I think, in particular, China’s ambitious space agenda has a lot of people in the strategic national security community saying, “We need to make sure that the US has those same capabilities.” And it also raises questions about, you know, if China thinks economic success is possible in space, what can US companies do there? So I think all of these things are sort of interacting and driving each other on. James Pethokoukis: Does the fact — and anybody can answer this — does the fact that China isn’t going away — apparently their interest in space probably isn’t going away — so that sort of argues that America’s interest in space, and all these many dimensions, is really going to be a long-term factor in American policy, you know, whether it’s government or American business? Matthew C. Weinzierl: Yeah, I guess I’ll just jump in. I absolutely think that that rivalry, both economic and geopolitical, is going to drive a lot of activity in space. I think we all also have some, I think, natural wariness about the directions in which that might head, right. I mean, space is — we’ve always wanted space to be a non-militarized zone, to be a zone of cooperation, and it has been that in many wonderful ways for the last 50 years. And so I think there’s some nervousness about where that might go. But I think you’re absolutely right, Jim. It’s a huge driver of spending and of competition. James Pethokoukis: Sara, as far as other nations, you know, exploring and doing science, is that their focus? Or for some of these other countries, is it more sort of what the US was like in the 1960s, where a lot of it was driven by sort of, if not geopolitics, then as a source of national pride? Do they want to do science? Sara Seager: I think it depends on which country. I mean, surely for many countries, civilian space science is like the tip of the iceberg, you know, where the other part of the iceberg we don’t know what’s going on, and so they like to showcase their prowess. There are, though, many, many countries now that, because of the revolution in very small satellites, like namely CubeSats, have now standardized parts that are cheaper than having to make everything custom. It’s enabled all kinds of countries to be able to go to space to do science, like Ecuador, Vietnam, or places you normally wouldn’t think of as spacefaring nations. And even on a larger scale, it’s not kind of there yet. And it’s not just the companies you mentioned, but it’s Rocket Lab wanting — you know, planning to go to Venus. It’s Virgin Orbit, who you saw with that spectacular launch of the airplane, that want to next go to Mars or Venus. And that will enable countries to literally buy those launch services and be able to do more science than they ever could. James Pethokoukis: Do we — and anyone can answer this — do we get a sense that Americans are interested in space? I’m sort of assuming that I’m interested, and everybody sort of in this panel is, at one degree, you know, fairly interested. I mean, how interested were they back in the ’60s? In the ’60s, were they very interested in going to the moon, or was it really wrapped up in that Cold War rivalry? Tim Fernholz: I think, historically speaking, we sometimes overstate the public response to the Apollo program. I think most of the time there was general approval, but this was also during the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the civil rights movement.