Posted 10/08/2004 05:56:00 PM by Douglas

Interesting, if not particularly inspired satire about the current state of space exploration.

This country was bounded to the West by a desert. One day a telescope built on one of the country's mountains revealed what looked like sea far away beyond the desert which would have to be crossed in order to discover if there was habitable land on the coast. So the politicians got together and established a government agency to send some people through the desert. They called it the National Agricultural Frontier Administration, NAFA for short, and charged it with a dramatic task to demonstrate the vigour of the nation: it would carry out a "mission" to send people right through the desert to the West coast of the continent and bring them back safely, within a decade.

What's ironic about this tediously extrapolated example is that America's westward expansion and the privately funded exploration of space are all bound by the same limits: Nothing. Well, not really, as everything has limits, but in the example they use, the exploration of the West coast, settlers had to have a way to get there and the balls to pull it off. As Rutan has exhibited, what's stopping anyone today from building and flying their own spacecraft? Nothing.

I don't think anyone would ever say with a straight face that the government (and NASA specifically) isn't wasting money, but that's no excuse for the privately funded expeditions to stop, is it? The sky is an awfully big place, and there's plenty of room for anyone who wants to go. Could it be that it's still a pretty damn complicated technical problem?

But don't blame NAFA because wagons are complicated and expensive, because the Western horizon is still going to be there when you're ready.