Build it and they will come.
DARPA opened the Internet in 1969. And people came. Slowly. Over the course of 20 years. Then those people built their own cyber dreams and gave us the Worldwide Web, the Netscape browser, Facebook, Google and Amazon. And what started as a dark and lonely place now has five billion users.
The same is beginning to happen with SpaceX’s 100 passenger rocket, the Starship.
The Starship is still undergoing testing for its first orbital launch. But 21 academics have published a paper showing how you could lay Starships on their belly on the moon and create permanent human living quarters. Luxury living quarters.
Students at the k-12 private Swiss boarding school the Institut auf dem Rosenberg are working on a 23-foot tall 3-d printed habitation module designed to be carried to the surface of the moon by a Starship.
And SpaceX Matchbox toys are coming from Mattel in 2023.
While NASA mounts its fatally flawed Space Launch System for its first flight August 29th, the word is getting out that NASA has thrown over $40 billion into this Frankenrocket. And each SLS launch will cost over $4 billion dollars.
For $4 billion you could buy 2,000 Starship launches. Enough to build permanent habitations on a dozen planets and moons. Yet NASA says that its program to land the first woman of color on the moon and to start permanent moon habitation will be carried out entirely by this $4-bilion-per-launch SLS. How long will this SLS delusion last?
What’s worse, we keep wondering what profit-making commercial opportunities are around the corner in space, and there’s one flying right over our heads, a constellation of 3,000 SpaceX Starlink satellites launched by 53 SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Starlink now has 400,000 customers for its high speed Wi-Fi access in 36 countries. That’s a pittance, but it’s a beginning.
And Starlink wi-fi saves the Ukraine daily, allowing the Ukrainians to use drones to target the enemy for Kiev’s artillery and rockets.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is taking giant steps toward its goal, to be a space transport company with regularly scheduled daily flights to space, as many as three a day. SpaceX has pulled off six Falcon 9 launches in seventeen days, more than one launch every three days. And it has had 33 Falcon launches this year, topping its record for all of last year and approaching its goal of 52 launches for the year. Which is close to the number of launches carried out by one of the biggest nations on earth, China.
Build it and they will come.
References:
Abdin, Adam & Amberger, Stefan & Apollonio, Emily & Bardi, Gautier & Bolmgren, Karl & Ciocca, Gianmarco & Ekal, Monica & García, Alan & Godeanu, Adina & Irrera, Damiana & Lidgard, Leonard & Lorini, Giorgio & Monat, Shay & Montenegro, Joao & O’leary, Aiden & Onn, Ori & Pauzié, Laura & Pouwels, Charlotte & Sokolowski, Alexandra & Za, Alberto. (2021). Solutions for Construction of a Lunar Base: A Proposal to Use the SpaceX Starship as a Permanent Habitat. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356285358_Solutions_for_Construction_of_a_Lunar_Base_A_Proposal_to_Use_the_SpaceX_Starship_as_a_Permanent_Habitat
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Howard Bloom has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his seven books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He is the founder and chair of the Space Development Steering Committee, a group Buzz Aldrin persuaded him to found. He’s the co-founder and co-chair of the Asian Space Technology Summit. And he’s on the Board of Governors of the National Space Society. Bloom does news commentary at 1:06 am et every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.institute.