The model T Ford was not the only car of its day. It was far from the best car, either. It was, however, inexpensive and reliable. There were no magical factors involved—the clever application of simple production-line techniques by people like Henry Ford who put quite a bit of care and personal effort into doing things right created a new market for personal transportation—a market taken for granted in much of the Western world today. It has been 20 years since man first set foot on the moon, yet the west does not have reliable, inexpensive and accessible ‘model T’ launchers to fly to space. Paradoxically, the Soviet Union is doing relatively well in this area—while the West stubbornly refuses to consider using old, proven technology for utilitarian space flights. The crux of the problem is that the necessary rate of innovation is impossible without more general access to space. High cost, bureaucracy, and a fear of failure combine to exclude the unknown and unconventional. Yet the transistor, the laser, cyclosporin and fiber optics were invented largely in spite of conventional wisdom, not because of it. Our views on space activities must change if we are to innovate in space and reap the economic and social benefits of such innovation. The personal computer is a cogent example to discuss here. Jobs and Wozniak built personal, desktop computers at an affordable price in their garage at a time when it was generally believed that all serious computing had to be done on mainframes, by government supported computer scientists, working on extremely specialized applications. This parallels the most common arguments for having government supported specialists supervise space exploration. Personal computers were considered to be little more than toys for quite some time. Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC changed that. The PC was not a popular product when it was first introduced, since there appeared to be little serious use for it. The very simple 1-2-3 program made the PC a serious tool with practical utility, heralded a new era, and dramatically increased the market for personal computers. Mainframe computers, the high technology of 15 years past, are now in danger of becoming obsolete. These exemplary innovations took previously complex and expensive technologies and simplified them to the point where economies of mass production decreased costs, which increased accessibility, and ultimately led to a continuous spiral where increasing capabilities expand markets enough to pay for further capability expansion. These innovations were neither predicted nor predictable, came from unlikely sources, and were fraught with error in their early phases. There is little encouragement for a similar approach in space industry. High costs and government backing have been accepted as the norm, and alternative approaches are simply not considered. Space commercialization, research, and exploration must be removed from their shrouded pedestal and brought into the public arena where any entrepreneur, businessman, student, academic, basement techno-wizard, or other interested party can attempt to make a contribution.
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