For years, private enterprise has been poised to explore outer space and deliver benefits to people on earth — from perfecting new life-saving medicines to creating new food crops and operating floating factories for high tech innovations. But NASA
’s bureaucracy has been floundering, erecting legal and regulatory barriers to entrepreneurs wishing to take advantage of operating in space.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. At that time, most Americans found it difficult to imagine that the vision presented in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey
would not be in our future. Many thought that by 2001 there would be regularly scheduled commercial flights to orbiting hotels, but no such flights have materialized. In fact, fewer than 500 human beings have ever ventured into space. And the International Space Station is billions of dollars over budget and radically scaled back from its initial design. What has happened in the past three decades to delay mankind’s full exploitation of space?
The cause of the problems is found in public policy. Civilian space efforts have been dominated by NASA
, a bureaucratic agency that has retarded activities in space as much as it has facilitated them. Yet, at the same time that NASA
has been lost in space, entrepreneurs on earth have given birth to the computer and to telecom and Internet revolutions. Private markets are the answer.
In Space: The Free-Market Frontier,
leading experts analyze how we can move from the current situation of limited access to space and truly make space a place where people can work, play, and live. This book considers how we arrived at our current situation, what signs hold the promise of a free-market future, and which policy changes might enable space to become the next free-market frontier.
Edward L. Hudgins
Rep. Bob Walker
Robert W. Poole
David M. Livingston
Tidal W. McCoy
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Rick N. Tumlinson
James E. Dunstan
Press Release: Space