The Importance of a Backup Plan: Why the "Space Settlement Prize" Is Needed NOW
by Douglas Jobes - December 2005
The general public and most of the space community place their faith entirely in NASA for getting us back to the Moon to stay. Perhaps that is because NASA was so successful in the 1960’s and 1970’s during the Space Race. But all these folks should take a cue from industry - disasters and complete system failures can happen to anybody. What is the backup plan if NASA’s the Moon-to-Mars initiative crashes and burns (bad metaphor), especially financially or politically? The concept of protecting an outcome by creating redundancy (i.e., backing things up) turns up in many places.
For example, the September 11 attacks were a wake-up call to many, and afterward many businesses began taking the concept of a business backup plan more seriously. The article The Importance of Backups: Endorse an Insurance Policy for Your Data in Smart Computing Magazine that appeared at about that time makes the point:
Backups are data insurance. Real-world insurance policies protect your home, car, and health from financial disaster. Likewise, data backups protect the work you do on your computer.
Mere "data loss" isn’t the risk with space, though - the possible loss of entire space programs is, including the loss of human lives. Recent budget woes with NASA’s Shuttle program could be the harbinger of major problems for the Moon-to-Mars initiative. The lead for the Washington Post article Bush's Space Plan in Danger published November 24, 2005 says ominously:
A large deficit in NASA's troubled shuttle program threatens to seriously delay and possibly cripple President Bush's space exploration initiative unless the number of planned flights is cut virtually in half or the White House agrees to add billions of dollars to the human spaceflight budget.
Cut the remaining Shuttle flights in half, or add billions to the budget! As the article explains, neither of these are very good choices, especially the latter with the federal government running record deficits. What is our backup plan in the face of such lose-lose scenarios?
The private sector is the only logical place to look for a backup plan for the Moon-to-Mars initiative. And they would provide it, too. Maybe not the full plan exactly, but they would certainly like to have the transportation and lunar facilities in place to do business. Just look at the ideas for near space and lunar businesses being discussed these days - solar power generation, mining platinum group metals, space tourism, satellite propellant manufacturing, and many more. The problem is lack of investment capital to get it all started.
The good news, as a recent SpaceDev study concluded, is that private industry would be able to accomplish a return to the Moon at a fraction of what NASA would spend. Unfortunately, even a fraction of NASA’s $100 billion is still a lot of money.
This simply reflects one of the many chicken-and-egg problems faced by any major new human endeavor. We have private companies interested and willing to build space transportation systems and even build permanent lunar facilities, many of which could eventually turn huge profits. Some of their ideas could go a long way toward solving some of our global problems like energy and pollution. But the technology is not quite there, and the basic space infrastructure does not exist. The venture capitalists are supposed to step in at this point - but it is still too risky and expensive. (A traditional role of government has been constructing infrastructure and funding efforts with very long payback times that private enterprise can't handle.)
It seems like a conundrum, and the thought of private industry paralleling NASA’s efforts at establishing a permanent presence on the Moon still seems farfetched - but only because there is a lack of investment capital, not because there is a lack of will or technical ability.
This is where a multi-billion dollar prize like Space Settlement Prize legislation can fill the vacuum. Note that this legislation would cost the U.S. Treasury nothing. Pass a bill in Congress stating the U.S. courts will officially recognize the huge lunar land claim of the first private industry consortium to build a permanent Moon base and transportation system. To accommodate the rules of international space law, add in specific requirements such as participation by international corporations and even Third-World countries. Base the recognition on Civil Law’s “use and occupation” standard (a standard that is in fact far older than the Common Law “sovereignty” standard) to make it clear the U.S. itself if not claiming any territory.
Then the investment dollars and venture capital can roll in, the idea being that investors will recoup their up-front capital and reap a huge windfall profit after a permanent lunar base is established and the land claim verified. If the claim were allowed to be 4% of the Moon’s surface surrounding the base (about the size of Alaska), then real estate sold from this vast region could easily generate $10-$40 billion on the investment and speculative real estate markets (at a conservative $25-$100 per acre).
Throughout human history, real estate has always been valued as a hard asset and commodity and a good investment. Land values only go up with time. Once a permanent settlement is established on the Moon it will be true there as well. But to kick if off, we need the Space Settlement Prize right now as the catalyst - and as our backup in case NASA’s hands eventually become tied.
For information about the lunar land claims recognition concept, see the Space Settlement Initiative, including the Questions & Answers section on that website. A summary is also available on the Institute's LCR Abstract page. Draft legislation, ready for consideration by Congress, is also posted online.
