Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

372 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age
commercial revenues in space for the frst time surpassed all governmental
spending on space, totaling some $77 billion. this growth continued in 1997,
with 75 commercial payloads lofted into orbit, and with approximately 75 more
military and scientifc satellites launched. this represented a threefold increase
over the number the year before. Market surveys for the period thereafter
suggested that commercial launches would multiply for the next several years at
least. 55 In that context many spacefight advocates believed that the market had
matured sufciently that government control was no longer necessary. Instead,
they asked that the federal government simply “get out of the way” and allow the
private sector to pursue their eforts in space free from bureaucratic controls. 56
this critique has also found expression in the frst decade of the 21st
century. even as NaSa was given a new responsibility to return to the Moon,
conservative policymakers refused to appropriate the federal funds necessary to
accomplish the task. by 2007, accordingly, it had become highly uncertain that
the initiative could be realized. It appeared increasingly that this proposal would
follow the path of the aborted Space exploration Initiative (SeI) announced with
great fanfare in 1989 but derailed in the early 1990s. 57 Indeed, one candidate
for the presidency during the 2008 election, Senator hillary rodham Clinton
(D-Ny), has already stated her opposition to continuing george W. bush’s
vision for Space exploration should she become president. as reported in the
New York Times, “travel to the Moon or Mars ‘excites people,’ she said, ‘but I
am more focused on nearer-term goals I think are achievable’.” 58 It seems that
critics of human space exploration on the left were intent on ending this large
space initiative because they viewed it as taking funds away from more pressing
social needs while critics on the right were unwilling to put much funding into
it and emphasized greater private sector involvement.
55. tim beardsley,“the Way to go in Space,” Scientific American, March 1999, special issue on “the
future of Space exploration.”
56. Craig r. reed, “factors afecting u.S. Commercial Space Launch Industry Competitiveness,”
business and economic history 27 (fall 1998): 222-236; andrew J. butrica, “Commercial
Spaceports: hitching your Wagon to a ventureStar,” Space Times: Magazine of the American
Astronautical Society 37 (September/october 2000): 5-10.
57. frank Sietzen, Jr. and Keith L. Cowing, New Moon Rising:The Making of the Bush Space Vision
(burlington, ontario:apogee books, 2004); Craig Cornelius,“Science in the National vision for
Space exploration: objectives and Constituencies of the ‘Discovery-Driven’ paradigm,” Space
Policy 21 (february 2005): 41-48;Wendell Mendell,“the vision for human Spacefight,” Space
Policy 21 (february 2005): 7-10.
58. patrick healy and Cornelia Dean,“Clinton Says She Would Shield Science from politics,” New
York Times, october 5, 2007.