A tiny private group is sending a little rocket into space. They are doing it to win a prize.
Before long, space exploration will be done privately at far less expense than the giant government projects. Technology is moving fast and satellites have proven there is big money out there.
Only the government can get in the way. If the government can make regulations to protect anyone who takes a rocket into space, they can make it enormously expensive. Today’s government would never have allowed Lindbergh to cross the Atlantic. Several men had already died trying it, and he was in an overloaded craft.
The government would have stopped Lindbergh for his own good.
The government can set up requirements to make sure that only very expensive craft can be sent up, for the pilots’ own good.
And what happens when it comes back down? When governments sent up thousands of space craft, no one said they couldn’t do it because they could kill somebody when they came down, but private people sending up such craft is an entirely different matter.
This will be a lawyer’s bonanza. Soon there will be lawsuits requiring hugely expensive precautions to be sure those crafts come down in predictable places. Even dropping them in the sea might not do it. What about endangered animals?
Does this sound like a joke? I remember when the idea that California was considering denying benefits to illegal aliens was looked upon a joke. Before then it never occurred to anybody that illegal aliens had a right to public benefits.
The government and the lawyers can force anyone going into space to spend huge sums on pilot safety, affirmative action, flight paths for re-entry, and a long list of other things. By piling up regulations, government and lawyers can make space exploration prohibitively expensive for small businesses.
For their own good, of course.
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