The economic jackpot of space will dwarf the Internet, the automobile, and the Louisiana Purchase combined. Space mining will reap trillions. Scientific research done in space will cure countless diseases. Space Solar Power and space nuclear power will ensure American dominance of the global energy market for a century… if America gets there first.
China has big plans to utilize the resources of space. But America must be there first to guarantee that the rules of space reflect our values of democracy and human rights. America must be there first to ensure that the space economy benefits all humankind. Or, we could continue as-is, and hand it all to China and Russia on a silver platter.
Metals and minerals on just one asteroid, 16 Psyche, could be worth 70,000 times the Global Economy. And solar power harvested in space could be the Green New Deal. Space Solar Power could replace all the fossil fuels used for energy-generation and transportation on earth and could take us to net-zero. It could eradicate nearly all our emissions of man-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The Chinese plan to own the Space Solar Power industry by 2035. They also plan to lead in populating the moon. They plan to have a permanent research base on the moon by 2028. We have no such plans. We can’t let the Chinese take the lead. We have to get there first.
How do we get there from here? Says Howard Bloom, Founder and Chair of the Space Development Steering Committee and co-founder of the Asian Space Technology Summit: “We must fully embrace SpaceX’s Starship, which can carry 100 passengers to the moon, can haul 165 tons of cargo, and can even be used as a permanent moon base. Then we have to embrace any Starship competitors developed by SpaceX’s rivals.”
There’s more. Says Bloom, “Stop wasting money on NASA’s Artemis Program and its Space Launch System rocket — a boondoggle that the Government Accounting Office says is too expensive to fly. One flight of the Space Launch System costs four billion dollars. That’s the price of at least 80 Starship flights.
We must turn NASA’s budget to researching and building the equipment we will need to put up housing and to mine water on the moon. Water is the ‘gold’ of space. It’s essential for human life to flourish. Or it can be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen can be used as a breathable atmosphere. Or the hydrogen and oxygen can be used as rocket fuel
A simple legislative change at the Federal level could encourage private industry to lay out its own money to start the American Space Economy. This legislative approach is called “zero gravity, zero tax.” Which means that the government will not tax the income from investments private companies make in space. The Space Development Steering Committee has mapped out a zero gravity, zero-tax plan.
The Space Development Steering Committee calls on the U.S. Government to accelerate the development of space technologies and space infrastructure. We must act very soon, this year, if we’re going to beat the Chinese.