Introduction
In late summer 2094, as the world was waiting for the maiden warp-flight of the Alcubierre, the first spaceship ever endowed with faster-than-light capability, two opinion pieces, published in two different papers, illustrated two opposite conceptions of the conquest of space at the time.
The first Op-Ed, published in The Wall Street Journal, had been written by Michael Vahlroos, CEO and founder of the Vahlroos Corporation, holding company of the now booming subsidiary, V-Space. It was entitled A Tribute to Elon Musk:
At the origins of the conquest of space lay fierce competition. In the aftermath of World War 2, and during the subsequent Cold War, it was mostly a competition between countries and governments. Us versus the communist East. In 1957, the Soviet Union was first to put a satellite in orbit, thus demonstrating their ability to send nuclear ballistic missiles anywhere in the world. This put the pressure on us and the USA were first to land a man on the Moon in 1969.
Competition between countries has its virtues but also a lot of inconveniences. Back in the 1960s, 4% of the nation’s wealth was spent or, I would rather say, ‘wasted’, on NASA. And how was it financed? Through unacceptably high taxes. Wealthy people like myself had to pay up to 80% on their marginal income. No wonder Richard Nixon was elected in 1968!
The end of the Cold War in the 1990s led to another pitfall: cooperation. Cooperation removes the incentive to surpass one another. As a result, the whole space race lost its intensity. In the 2010s, the situation was so bad that US astronauts were compelled to board unsafe Russian rockets to reach the International Space Station. And what were they doing up there, in space? Making the world a better place? You bet they were not! They were wasting the tax payers’ money to do uninteresting or even bogus experiments with no other purpose than to man the station.
Luckily, Elon Musk changed all this. As one of the first space entrepreneurs, he showed the world that private corporations were the right players to boldly do what no one had done before. In the 1990s, Musk had been very disappointed to see that NASA had no immediate plan to go to Mars. Later, after becoming a successful IT entrepreneur and billionaire, he founded Space X and, using his charisma, had world powers resume their ambition to reach the red planet.
Without Elon Musk’s audacity and tenacity, mankind would certainly not have taken its first steps on Mars in 2053. It is only a pity he had to wait until after his 81st birthday to see it. That was due to a series of financial setbacks and unfortunate events: the burst of the artificial intelligence bubble in the early 2020s; the hostile take-over by a competitor of his car company, Tesla, which was in financial difficulties and the spectacular failure of his hyperloop prototype on the Californian coast, obliterated by the Big One earthquake in 2033. However, his tunnel boring machines, or at least adaptations of them, have eventually proven quite useful on the recent Moon Base. A pity he is not here with us to see it.
A pity also he is not here with us to see the first warping of spacetime. In a few weeks, the Russian, Chinese and Japanese space agencies will test the Alcubierre, the first spacecraft able to travel faster than light. Equipped with compact fusion reactors developed by my subsidiary V-Fusion, the Alcubierre is able to generate a negative energy field around it and resort to the Casimir Force to warp spacetime.
Should the test be successful it will open a new era for space entrepreneurs. Elon Musk has been the pioneer. We should build upon his legacy. Mining celestial bodies at an affordable cost will become a reality, enabling us to bring much needed resources back to our overpopulated earth.
Now, more than ever, private corporations are the right players to dynamize the Outer Space economy for the greater good of mankind.
Though acclaimed among entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, this first opinion piece by V-Space’s CEO Michael Vahlroos had been judged by some as displaying an excessive faith in the virtues of the market economy.
It had led The Guardian to publish another Op-Ed, written this time by a UN diplomat, Ralf Åhman, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). While Vahlroos’s column radiated passion and enthusiasm, the diplomat’s response had been drafted in an insipid manner. Not that diplomats were necessarily boring as individuals but, on the public stage, they had to act like it. It was part of their job description. His piece was entitled An urgent need for space regulation:
The office of which I am the director, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), was created in the heat of the Cold War to assist the General Assembly’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). It has been a quite successful office. Not only has it supported the COPUOS in establishing major space treaties, from the Outer Space Treaty to the Moon Treaty, but it has always strived to keep a high standard of cooperation in outer space affairs, regardless of the geopolitical differences between the nations of this world.
And it has succeeded, not only in terms of cooperation between nations or between their respective space agencies but also in terms of cooperation between nations and private space corporations.
However, claiming that private corporations are the right players to boldly do what no one has done before is a daring statement.
When Martian soil was stepped on for the very first time on 9 March 2053, this was the result of a joint mission by the various national space agencies at that time. Though it has to be conceded that the assembly in orbit of the mission spaceship back in 2050 was mostly due to Space X’s rockets.
After the cancellation of the Martian exploration program in 2057 due to lack of public funding, it was a private corporation which established the Martian colony at Elysium Planitia in 2075. The seventeen couples taking part in that experiment were meant to stay on the red planet, waiting for the colony to grow, while their lives were broadcasted on Earth in what was called The Martian Show.
Except that no further colonization waves arrived. The Martian Show Corporation had proven unable to raise additional funds. Supplies sent to the Martian colony became scarcer. The colonists building the colony exposed themselves to too high solar radiation doses until they all developed some form of cancer. They had the instinct to keep their children inside their compounds, protecting them from the sun, but most of them suffered from lack of vitamin D and bone reinforcement medicines.
Did it occur to the Martian Show Corporation to organize a rescue mission and bring the survivors back to earth? No, they filed for bankruptcy. There is now only one survivor left at the Martian colony and it is my office, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, which is coordinating her rescue. Why? Because all other players have failed to take their responsibility.
If successfully tested, the Alcubierre will soon be put to use to repatriate the last Martian colonist.
It will not take long, however, before private space corporations launch their own spaceships with warp technology. Given the current space legislation, it could have tremendous consequences for all of mankind.
I therefore believe that the time has come for the nations of this world to turn to the UN and negotiate a new treaty to regulate space activities.
Yes, private corporations have had a positive influence on the claiming of outer space by mankind. But no, their space activities should not be permitted without additional regulation.
