The Final Frontier: Keeping a Perspective

Thinking Clearly About Space Part II: Everybody Wants Space
By Monte Davis
National Space Society
posted: 24 August 2005

Who can resist the poetry of Humanity’s Timeless Outward Urge? Space is the endless frontier, we say—it’s in our genes. It’s the next inevitable step in evolution. It’s our species-level insurance against global disasters. It’s the spread of life and intelligence from a pale blue dot to the 99.9…% of the cosmos that isn’t Earth. Throw the bone, cue the music, match dissolve to orbit: thank you, Mr. Kubrick.

It’s all profoundly moving. It may even turn out to be true. But it’s an obstacle to progress, if talk of Humanity persuades us that most actual human beings share our enthusiasm. (Or would, if only there were enough Leadership, enough Vision, enough space advocacy conferences). Zoom in from evolutionary time to the United States, 1965-2005. There’s a consistent pattern in polls throughout those years. If people are asked "Should the nation do X in space?" a majority often says yes. But when asked to rank government activities by spending priority, a larger majority puts space way down the list. They did so at the height of Apollo (roughly 4% of federal spending), and they do so today (at the less than 1% typical of the decades since).

A lot of energy goes into lamenting that, and arguing over what went wrong after Apollo. Try Occam’s razor instead: perhaps we enthusiasts are part of a majority in thinking new achievements in space are admirable, but a minority in the priority we put on achieving them with tax money. Try facing facts: the pace from Sputnik through Apollo was an exception, not the norm. It was enabled by military missile technology that had already done the hardest part of the engineering. It was funded in a unique Cold War period when everything the US and USSR did was part of a global contest. And Apollo itself was aimed at a specific "flags and footprints" victory within that contest. It was never meant to be a foundation for sustained expansion into space, no matter how much we wish otherwise.

This is a perspective of acceptance of things the way they actually are. It's hard when someone else tells you what you should already know and be saying. Just because I consider Space Exploration one of the most important endeavors of mankind, doesn't mean everyone else should or does. It doesn't ease my frustration, just keeps it in perspective. More and better science and math education is a must for this society and could help to change this but not necessarily. I guess I'll just have to wait for my next life to play Star Trek...sigh!

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