The national security implications of commercial space are enormous.  The fantastic capabilities of the NRO’s marvelous spy satellites are, in effect, a kludge, because we couldn’t put observers in orbit.  Two intelligence specialists in a Bigalow-style inflatable habitat in a low altitude polar orbit would have very nearly all the capabilities of a modern spy satellite.

Further, the iron laws of orbital mechanics mean that if you are in space, you have a signicant energy advantage over those still on the ground.  The old rods from god concept takes on a new level of danger when anyone can send a payload up into orbit.  It’s a lot easier to put together something like that than a nuke.  I’m not saying Al Quaida is going to do it, but other nations, using space technology developed here, could.

Another thing that occurred to me while reading Ken’s post.  Often, space enthusiasts have pointed to other transportation technologies in an effort to explain why space travel hasn’t taken off in the way that they hoped.  The Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, but it was decades before commercial aviation was big business, for example.

But what if we imagine that Great Britain, locked in a cold war with a newly formed Germany in the late nineteenth century, started an air race?  Some German engineer makes an airplane on a government contract (since the German military planners realized that competing with the Royal Navy was nothing but foolhardiness), and it’s clearly designed as a weapon.  The British race to come up with one of their own.  And so on, through the 1880s and 1890s, aviation is developed at great government expense.  Airplanes are large, sophisticated devices requiring the most advanced machining and precision manufacture.  Mechanical computers are devised to calculate the fluid dynamics needed to optimize the designs.

By the turn of the century, there is in both nations a thriving industry of airplane manufacturers making airplanes to government specifications.  What is the future of aviation in this world?  Aviation was brought into existence far in advance of it’s “natural” time, and its development is forced down odd paths by the requirements of international rivalry and bureaucracy.  How long before a commercial aviation industry can take off, when everyone knows that airplanes are huge bombers that can only be built with the resources of one of the great powers?

I think that’s some of what happened in our past, with space.  Technology was probably ready for reasonable commerical space development by at least 1980, but investors and high tech industry had been conditioned by the exigencies of the space race to feel that it was inherently out of their reach.  Also, government agencies jealous of their perogatives both on the civilian and defense sides – actively prevented commercial development.

And Ken, I think I want Indian cuisine.