Time for a NASA IPO!
I was listening to the Republican candidates’ debate in New Hampshire. The moderator asked about NASA and the closing down of the space program. The collective reply of the candidates was that if we had just let private business take over earlier we’d have had space stations ringing the earth and vacations on the moon by now—and show a profit.
I am just old enough to remember the beginning of the space race. I remember the Vanguard launchers inexplicably blowing up. I remember the “huh?” moment when Sputnik started broadcasting and the newscasters stopped denying it was really up there. And I remember when that great Texan, Werner Van Braun, successfully answered with our own satellite. I don’t recall if there were Rocket Science bubble gum cards or not.
It was not until I was way older that I realized that the successes were done with proven military hardware based on expensive, fear-stoked research by the US and USSR (and Germany if you begin with the V2). Space—the New Frontier was the warm fuzzy side of the Cold War. We gained the ability to soar with the same technologies and tests that had us digging fallout shelters.
Right now, we are told, businesses are sitting on mountains of cash that they are afraid to spend until the economy improves. And the economy won’t improve until they spend it on job expansion. And they won’t risk that until we lower business taxes to entice them to spend it. And we can’t lower taxes unless we cut spending on frills, like education, basic research, bureaucracies like NASA and the FDA, and oh, yeah, the EPA.
But what about research? No problem, American ingenuity and the market will handle it. That’s why big investors are so interested in taking over EDA and breaking them up for shareholder value. Why do you realize that some of them sponsor research that may not actually pay back this year, let alone next week? It’s really simple people! If those pointy headed morons where smart enough they would be starting up new businesses instead of groveling for grants.
So let’s cut to the chase and get back to the ranch. Let’s file an IPO for NASA, after all, like many successful new companies, it runs at a loss—a huge loss. Okay, a little speculation, a little Hard Headed Business Thinking may be in order. But programmable billboards in space will bring near immediate advertising revenue—why look down at your iPod when you can make the sky sizzle! Terraforming planets will make real estate values soar—except on earth of course, and the planets that wouldn’t work soon enough will make dandy dumping grounds for nuclear waste. Better yet, blast the trash clear out of the solar system. Why send ET “hello’s” in funny-sounding languages or gold plated Beatles songs when we can launch a steady stream of garbage and tea bags? Now that will tell Earth’s real story!