The Sad Legacy of the Apollo Space Program and Captain Kirk

02/17/03 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

On Saturday, February 1st, 2003, seven steely eyed missile men and women gave their lives to the dream of “exploring space”. Their names were added to the list of other heroes who died attempting what most think is still unbelievably impossible. But the true tragedy of their loss is that their mission did almost nothing to advance humanity's presence in space. In truth, their mission served to reinforce a mythos that has done more to keep man out of space than any perceived lack of technology or human limitation.

In the weeks that have followed the fiery re-entry of Columbia, there has been a great deal of debate about exactly what is wrong with the Shuttle program, the space program in general and why we seemed to have “lost our way” after the wonders of the Apollo space program. Some suggest scaling back manned missions in favor of robotic missions, while others support the Orbital Space Plane and some combination of Big Dumb Boosters (some even suggest Shuttle C!). There have been calls for investments in new technology in order to bring down launch costs. Others argue that a simple re-organization of governmental programs (i.e. NACA vs NASA) would solve the problem. Private space advocates put their faith in the XPrize to spur Cheap Access To Space.

It is useful to step back and look at the entire discussion from a demographic point of view. Nearly all of the participants are geeks who are either professional or 'amateur' engineers. We grew up reading Heinlein and Asimov and can usually point to those stories as our inspiration for wanting to go into space. For many of us, the Apollo program and Star Trek molded our dreams of what life in space would be like. Our view of space was one of “just build it and go”. And this is the legacy of the “Golden Age” of the American space program: a population that has grown up believing that the future of man in space is the combination of cutting edge technology, a heroic “steely eyed missile man” at the controls, and the urge to “just go”.

Its time for a little dose of reality: none of those silver bullets alone will ever get us (you and I) anywhere closer to space. America's true manifest destiny in space will not be possible until that Apollo era legacy is forgotten and the “space advocacy” community realizes that missile-men will not open up that new frontier. Instead it will be the “steely eyed business man”.

And that is because those business men understand the underlying economics that any sustainable program is built on. They understand, at a gut level, concepts such as net present value and the time cost of money. They understand that payoff for investment must be in reasonable time frames and directly correlated to the amount of risk involved.

The challenge to those in space advocacy is to learn those business practices and apply them to the space market. Learn basic finance. Find out what the best and brightest in business are saying. Read books such as The Innovator's Dilemma, Good to Great, and any of the Pocket MBA books. By simply reading business best sellers instead of science fiction best sellers, space advocates can begin to understand what it really takes to build something that is sustainable and profitable.

To do otherwise is to stick our head back in the sand of the Apollo era and refuse to admit that the world just doesn't work that way.