Section 3: Sourcing-and Sustaining-Optimum Financing

Thanks to our discoveries and our methods of research, something of enormous import has been born in the universe, something, I am convinced, will never be stopped. But while we exhaust research and profit from it, with ... what paltry means, what disorderly methods, do we still today pursue our research. (de Chardin 1972, p. 137)

In words President George Bush quoted from a news magazine, the Apollo Program was "the best return on investment since Leonardo da Vinci bought himself a sketchpad" (Chandler 1989).

Admiral Richard Truly, NASA Administrator, concurs. He believes that no space program on Earth today has the kind of technology and capability that ours does. Our space program is an integral part of American education, our competitiveness, and the growth of U.S. technology. Compared with other forms of investment, the return is outstanding: A payback of $7 or 8 for every $1 invested over a period of a decade or so has been calculated for the Apollo Program, which at its peak accounted for a mere 4 percent of the Federal budget. It has been further estimated that, because of the potential for technology transfer and spinoff industries, every $1 spent on basic research in space today will generate $40 worth of economic growth on Earth.

The critical factor driving productivity growth is technology. The percentage of our national income that we invest in research and development is similar to the percentages invested by Europe and Japan; however, since our economy is so much bigger, the absolute level of our research and development effort, measured in purchasing power or scientific personnel, is far greater than Europe's or Japan's (Passell 1990). But our ability to sustain an appropriate level of investment in R&D is being threatened. We are overwhelmed by our national debt, our decaying infrastructure, and the savings and loan bailout, which alone is expected to cost the Government $300-500 billion, possibly more. To pay these debts would cost each and every American taxpayer. (A table illustrating the Expenditures per year by U.S. Citizens), between $1000 and $5000, and this is a payment that will not enhance national security, promote economic growth, or improve public welfare (Rosenbaum 1990). This obligation is orders of magnitude greater than the commitments U.S. citizens have made to their space program.

We have a military budget of $300 billion (compared to $200 billion per year spent on legal gambling), yet we are too broke to do anything (Baker 1990). Further, our return on investment in research and development is not as effective as it once was. It is possible that military spending is draining critical research efforts; it may be that the American emphasis on basic research has freed Japanese scientists to skip the gritty groundwork and focus on commercial applications; or is it that American corporations may not be good at turning research and development into marketable products? (Passell 1990).

Half of all Federal tax dollars go to the Pentagon. These large expenditures have hurt the competitive position of the United States and have kept the level of investment in the civilian economy, as a share of gross national product, lower than in Europe or Japan. For example, in 1983, for every $100 we spent on civilian capital formation, including new factories, machines, and tools, we spent another $40 on the military. in West Germany, for every $100 spent on civilian investment, the military received only an additional $13. And in Japan, for every $100 spent on civilian investment, a mere $3 was spent on the military. Military spending is 6 percent of GNP, but it pays for the services of 25 to 30 percent of all of our nation's engineers and scientists and accounts for 70 percent of all Federal research and development money, $41 billion in 1988 (Melman 1989).

A "peace dividend" is in prospect, if Congress will cut military spending. A peace dividend offers an opportunity for a political leader to capture attention and resources and do great good. The total dividend through the year 2000 could be as much as $351.4 billion (Zelnick 1990). How the peace dividend should be spent calls into play one's values. Many alternatives are mentioned (the savings and loan bailout, for instance), but NASA is never mentioned as an option.

Under this scenario of declining technological edge, constrained financial resources, and a budgeting process that subjects approved financing to annual revisions and potential cuts, how can NASA adequately source-and sustain optimum financing?

• Potential sources of funds
• Opportunities for sustainable collaboration
• Life cycle of NASA's funding responsibility

The stakeholders in the various space development activities can and increasingly should be called upon to participate in the financial risks and enormous potential rewards of innovation that is driven by the "consumers" of Planet Earth, our need for advanced technological capabilities, and our desire to develop livable destinations in space. These stakeholders include

• The national space agencies of leading industrialized (and some other) countries around the world typically have a space exploration and development budget representing about 1-6 percent of their GNP.
• Major corporations and minor entrepreneurial companies have a new product or process development budget or an exploration budget that is allocated for high-risk, wealth-creating innovative activities.
• Private investors, whether individuals or pension funds, have a portion of their savings portfolio dedicated to highrisk, potentially high-return investments in stocks-and even some bonds (i.e., junk).
• The users of catastrophic pollution causing products or processes are recklessly risking the health of our planet in our lifetime-and we are not sure that the damage is reversible. Such reckless users could be assessed a pollution surcharge to fund breakthrough research on nonpolluting new product and processing technologies.
• National/State/City infrastructure agencies and international development agencies receive funding to provide particular life support basics, such as water, power, waste disposal, and schools, to their communities or developing nations. A well-honed, functional infrastructure maximizes productivity, enabling the creation of wealth by its residents. Elimination of overlap of effort and global coordination could free up massive amounts of investment money to achieve more effective results.

Opportunities for Sustainable Collaboration
Examining how these capital resources are allocated, we can readily see that there are billions of dollars being invested in research, design, development, and improvement efforts which overlap and duplicate each other among organizations in the United States, as well as around the world. Many efforts fail to achieve any significant technological advancement precisely because funds are not adequate or scope of authority is not sufficient to make any significant change. For example, if it were decided that automobiles were too heavy, causing the serious deterioration of our nation's infrastructure, and that our automobiles and roadways should be redesigned to achieve a major technological advancement, such an agenda could not be decided on by General Motors alone or the U.S. Department of Transportation alone. Technological advancements of such scale, and more importantly of such global significance, need to be mounted under leadership so engaging and with a vision so encompassing as to ensure that all the key players involved make their capital resources, technological expertise, and access to market demand available to the project.

To take the discussion of our transportation networks one step further, the facts make it clear that the need for technological innovation is not hypothetical but quite real:

• Our national transportation infrastructure has gravely deteriorated, requiring $3-5 trillion to reconstruct.
• Our auto industry has lost its competitiveness-at home and abroad, and we are struggling to regain a reputation for quality that remains elusive.
• The outlook for transportation vehicles' being able to move to the local speed limit is dimming, as roads are becoming increasingly clogged and overburdened. Such approaches as computerized traffic control screens within vehicles are being tested.
• The carbon monoxide released from combustion engines in autos and their petroleum-based fuels is presenting a grave hazard to the global ecosphere.
• And numerous projects are on the drawing boards around the world to break through our current Propulsion barriers, preparing the way to travel at higher rates of speed.

An inter-organizational consortium can be formed to address such a problem, whether pertaining to elimination of pollution or development of technology, infrastructure, or resources. Shared risk and responsibility can be established through negotiation and cross-contracting to define the vision, pool capital, share technology, and create market demand of sufficient magnitude to bring such megaprojects to fruition.

Since all prospective players are currently citizens of Planet Earth, the scope of their consortium collaboration can be international as well as national. The scope is determined by the scale of explanatory causes to be uncovered or effects to be achieved through project development. Consortia can be assembled to achieve five possible purposes:

• Planet Earth protection consortium: A global R&D fund could be established, supported by taxes assessed on users of pollution causing products or processes. The funds could be used to identify causes of pollution (thereby further increasing the funding base) or to seed technology innovation that would provide the same effect while preserving the environment (i.e., government-sponsored technological leaps).
• Technology development consortium: A mix of designers, manufacturers, and prospective users of a technology should be assembled early on to get the design criteria correct. Seed money could be a mixture of government and private capital. The intent of this consortium would be to involve the companies which would be most likely to develop the spinoff products early, so that their design requirements and insights are fully considered and taken into account. A spinoff surcharge or tax could be assessed as a means of funding the seeding of subsequent generations of research and development.
• Space exploration consortium: Exploration is extremely costly and high risk. In the oil business, those who explore and find oil then achieve lucrative payback from either extracting and selling the oil themselves or selling rights to the field. Exploratory missions to neighboring planets could involve a consortium of resource development companies who would be interested in undertaking some of the enormously high risks in exchange for enormously high potential paybacks.
• Infrastructure development consortium: It is important that the water, food, power, waste, oxygen, and gravitational systems be compatible in space-to allow for maximum interchange and cooperation among players from diverse nations who might be colonizing space. Agreement on standards is critical to interchangeability of goods and services among participants from different nations. Once standards are set, a vast array of players can begin to develop and market their products and services.
• Resource development consortium: Consortia of resource extraction, processing, and manufacturing companies; contractors; builders; equipment suppliers; insurers; and so forth would need to be marshaled to achieve the scale and scope of people and resources required to implement the establishment of a resource based colony in space. Agreements to fund the costs of installation with loans to be paid back by users or residents of the facility would off-load the burden from the national space agencies to the global business community.

If NASA's leadership role is to be the exclusive herald of the vision, if its financing role is limited to research and development, and if its charter is clearly defined as syndicating involvement in space exploration and development activities with the private sector, a more realizable long-term agenda emerges (see figure 14. This table illustrates the LIfe Cycle of NASA's Funding Responsibility ):

• Phase 1(1990-2000): Seed multipronged mission initiatives. This phase requires the greatest amount of independent funding from NASA, but it plants the seeds for user fees and spinoff fees to begin to return in phase II. During the next 10 years Planet Earth monitoring will be initiated; our basic exploration projects will be under way, including the Hubble Space Telescope; more sampling missions will be targeted for the Moon and Mars; heavy funding of the national aerospace plane and controlled ecological life support systems will be provided; and syndication of ownership to enlarge the sphere of producers in space will be promoted.
• Phase II (2000-2010): Develop an infrastructure support system and do intensive planning. While some of the initiatives launched in phase I will continue (e.g., Mars sampling missions, capability-driven research), closure on the techniques to be used to support life in space should be achieved. Closure will enable manufacturing companies to begin to produce and market products needed to support humans in space. If these companies were effectively integrated into the early R&D, NASA should begin to collect royalty fees from spinoffs to finance subsequent seed technologies requiring Government-funded nurturing. Once the infrastructure technologies and exploration investigations reach closure, mega-planning can begin for colonization of the Moon and Mars. It will take years to develop detailed designs; negotiate the sharing of risk, responsibility, and rewards; and let contracts. This process may require oversight by NASA, but fees can be charged for bid packages and other services to allay some of the costs.
• Phase III (2010-2020): Establish colonies on other planets. This phase should be largely funded by participants, with funds flowing back to the owners and providers of the infrastructure-if it is not an integral part of the project. As colonization begins, products and services-on Earth and in space-should be completely revolutionized, leading to a planetary wealth beyond our wildest imagination: There will be an abundance of resources available from space, new products developed to exploit space, and an abundance of demands that can be met here on Earth as a result of the expanded resource base.

There is new expertise to be honed, new products to be invented, new processes to be engineered. The reality of geotechnology, "which spreads out the close-woven network of its independent enterprises over the totality of the earth" (de Chardin 1972, p. 119), suggests that there is not much point to going it alone technology is meant to spread like wildfire.

The specific mission objectives sketched out in this paper may not endure; the objectives may change, or from the resulting innovations may come small steps that lead to a higher insight. Advances in our ability to move swiftly and surely up the learning curve are as critical to our future success as our specific achievements. How business systems can be redefined to protect the planet, how technologies can be pushed to their highest performance levels, how new technologies can be created, how sites can be developed in a more humane fashion, how a massive multiorganizational endeavor can be coordinated as if it were a single body, these are the methodologies we are in search of perfecting, equal in importance to the truths we are striving to uncover.

Less than microscopic creatures from the vantage point of the Moon, totally dependent on our 1-pound brains and less-than-1-pound hearts to navigate us toward the unknown and decipher its messages, we human Earthlings have no more powerful resource at hand than our ability to visualize, commit, lead, and actualize-truly incredible abilities that effectively create our future. Our willingness to center ourselves in a common vision-a shared notion of greatness-will abundantly energize us toward fulfillment of even our most elusive goals.

References

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