McKnight vs. the military-industrial complex

06/27/03 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

In his latest Spacefaring Web article , John Carter McKnight goes on a tirade against big corporations taking over space and knocking out all the little guys he loves, with the consequence that “the end of space's era of innovation is visible on the horizon.”

bq. “What was once the American military-industrial complex has become the infrastructure of global empire. Within a lifetime, it could spread through the Solar System, and any future space colony could look an awful lot like occupied Iraq…”

McKnight's argument seems to be based on a sharp distinction between the ominous “big corporations” and the small innovative start-up - but where is this boundary, exactly? If it's at some monetary revenue number, or some number of paid employees, how do you explain all those new entrants who cross every such boundary every year? Is it when you get your first big government contract? Wouldn't that disqualify SpaceDev, LiftPort, and any other company (TransOrbital soon?) that had some revenue from government grants? p. In reality, the worry I have is not that the US military-industrial complex will colonize space and stamp out all innovation there, but that no big corporation will be interested in doing anything new in space at all. Companies with billions in revenue and thousands of employees could, if they so chose, make an enormous difference in space development; just as wealthy private individuals have in the past. I'd much rather have a space colony run by a public company, answerable to shareholders, than one answerable only to a single dictatorial large investor. p. What small companies can do is provide the spark of ideas, the first proof that something might be practical - if a big company chooses to jump in and help out, fine - otherwise the small company that does it first will likely itself become big, just as the Boeing company did in the early days of flight, or Microsoft and Apple in the early days of personal computing. p. There is no monolithic corporate stranglehold on space; that's one thing the X-prize contenders are out to prove. In our capitalist system we have a huge mix of privately-held firms, competing, evolving, growing, shrinking; new companies are born, old ones die every day. Why not try and work WITH the big guys, instead of pretending they don't exist, or making them the boogeymen? Enough excuses guys, space is out there, and it's time for us to make it ours.