I was 20 years old and a member of the 7th Cavalry near the DMZ in South Korea when the first Space Shuttle was launched in 1981. The launch took place, not intentionally, on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s orbital mission. American astronauts had not been to orbit since Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 when they shook hands with cosmonauts for the first time, and previous to that the last crew had left Skylab in 1974. Four years and nine months after this first Shuttle flight came the Challenger disaster, about six months after the premier of the most popular IMAX movie ever made, “The Dream Is Alive.”
The genesis of space flight was the war between fascist Nazi Germany and the Allies followed by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Human space flight began as a battle for technological superiority during this cold war fought between the forces of totalitarian communism and liberal democratic capitalism. As I watched the Shuttle launch on television at our base, courtesy of the Armed Forces Network, I was not a space fan, and my only previous interest had been when my elementary school class watched Apollo 13 splashdown on a large black and white wheeled into the classroom. In those four years between the first Shuttle and Challenger, I went from tanks in the Cavalry to helicopters in the Coast Guard. Like the Shuttle, specialized conveyances.
In the early 1970s, as Apollo ended, several scientific papers warned of climate change and, in his 1976 best-selling book, “The High Frontier”, Gerard K. O’Neill mentions space solar power as a way to prevent the overheating of the planet. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter’s science adviser also warned him of catastrophic climate change in the next century. As I watched that first Shuttle launch, the Reagan Revolution was underway and any hope for a change from fossil fuels to renewables was quickly disappearing. By 1991, climate change denial, funded by the Koch brothers and propagated by conservative think tanks and personalities like Rush Limbaugh, was in full swing. Funding for NASA also dried up and the Reagan years saw taxes for the wealthiest go from 70% down to 28%.
Shortly after the turn of the century I finally became interested in space by way of my wife. She asked me for help on a situational ethics paper and I suggested nuclear war as a topic. She told me to find her the reference material. In the library, I happened to flip through “Project Orion, the true story of the atomic spaceship,” which turned out to be one of the most fascinating reads of my long life. I then went on to read stacks of books on space. And I began to comment on forums on the internet, and quickly became infamous for my criticism of newspace. Now, in my 60s, I find all my worst fears have come true. Launch technology, which always fascinated me, has stagnated into only what lifts satellites. There is no real funding for any human space flight beyond Earth and lunar orbit. The dream has certainly ended.
Dreams should end and ultimately be subordinate to reality. The threat we face at this time is essentially the same totalitarianism threatening to wreck civilization a century ago. Except this time, as a species, we may not survive to pick up the pieces and start over. We only get so many chances and our narrow window of opportunity to expand off-world and avoid extinction may be closing. Oligarchy is the proven path to fascism and then destruction. The oligarch does not combine with others for the common good. Wealth concentrates upward to fewer and fewer until inevitably a very few own everything and everyone. There is no truth, no justice, no community; only oligarchs telling us only they can save us and, if we do not let them do what they will, then the world will end. No travel to other stars guaranteeing our generations will survive and, eventually, our world really ending — in extinction.
The path to salvation was foreseen by Gerard K. O’Neill half a century ago. The threats to our species are societal collapse and climate change — and the solution is space solar power by way of lunar resources. A “New Green Space Deal” would reinstate the 91% tax rate on billionaires and build a fleet of reusable hydrogen-burning ultra heavy lift vehicles. A hydrogen propellant will cause the least harm to the upper atmosphere as the fleet enables the transfer of factory tooling to the moon. By relocating the energy industry to the moon, the self-defeating feedback loop of trying to meet demand by manufacturing renewables on Earth is avoided. This multi-trillion-dollar multi-national energy project would beam down energy from orbital stations, powering civilization carbon-free — ending the threat of anthropogenic climate change. This industrial base will also enable space colonies built with lunar resources. Some of these cities in space to eventually be accelerated with beam propulsion, powered by the solar infrastructure, out of the solar system to other stars. Avoiding extinction.
What now? The recent Trump inauguration speech did not contain any specific reference to climate change but certainly emphasized energy policy as important to the new administration. While the rest of the planet struggles with how not to produce greenhouse gases while manufacturing renewables to stop those same harmful agents, only America has the resources to circumvent these difficulties. We can, with the support of a succession of administrations and our space industry expertise, take the necessary steps to create a cislunar infrastructure that will completely power the planet, electrifying the entirety of human civilization. According to the International Energy Agency , meeting the world’s growing need for energy will require more than $48 trillion in investment over just the next decade, according to a special report on investment released by the World Energy Outlook series.
Now imagine not just the developed world but the entire world near the end of this century with a peak population approaching 10 billion, and every nation seeking a Western standard of living. Even with a 91 percent tax rate, the major shareholders of the companies powering a lunar and space-based civilization will be trillionaires. America right now has the opportunity to win this prize and become the most powerful of all nations in the history of the world, literally powering the world, with little risk of being displaced for at least the next century. If we do not pursue this venture, then China certainly will. The new administration may have thrown a “Green New Deal” away prematurely, but they can change direction toward the goal of American industry in complete control of all energy used on Earth.
Gary Church is a military retiree having served in the enlisted ranks in the U.S. Army and then the U.S. Coast Guard and then as a military contractor overseas, and after a short career as a private investigator, finishing as a civil servant. Having come from a military family with his grandfather, father and three brothers all having served, he draws from a broad range of experience in very different occupations. His formative years were spent troubleshooting systems in armored vehicles and helicopters and as an armored cavalryman and rescue helicopter aircrewman. He currently serves a Presbyterian church in the Midwest with his wife.
