Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extraterrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: Diamond Joe’s vision of space, transportation in pandemic times, and Mars 2022?
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Who cares what Joe Biden thinks about space policy?
Well, the readers of this newsletter, hopefully. But it is safe to say that “moon or Mars” is not the defining issue of the 2020 presidential election. The former vice president’s campaign declined to talk to Quartz about Biden’s space policy or share who is advising him on what to do with NASA and the nascent US Space Force.
But the next president will face key decisions that will shape not just space exploration but also American technological and economic superiority, and the topic deserves scrutiny. In an insightful May analysis, one writer called Biden a “space policy enigma,” which is true, but perhaps a better descriptor is a space policy void.
Biden the politician is defined by his Senate career, and most lawmakers only dig into NASA if the space agency or its contractors have facilities in their district. Biden’s home state of Delaware does not, hence his transportation interests lay more with Amtrak than SLS. There is little record of his involvement with space policy as Barack Obama’s number two, but he did play a role in wringing funding from Congress.
Since taking over, president Donald Trump’s space policy has largely adopted the Obama space agenda. The key difference has been accelerating a plan, dubbed Artemis, to return US astronauts, including the first woman, to the lunar surface, now by 2024 instead of 2028. Trump has also begun an international push for a new legal understanding of what can be done on the moon that might inspire more competition with China than consensus. Biden, a longtime foreign policy maven, has said in the past that the US should work more closely with China in space.
Otherwise, the biggest trend in space under the Trump administration has been continuing to integrate public-private partnerships and fixed-price contracts into the space program. The ongoing demonstration mission of SpaceX’s crew Dragon capsule at the International Space Station offers the best example of this.
Trump has also championed the Space Force, a new military service that will aggregate American space power under a single command. But switching the uniform patches over was the easy part. The next president will face harder decisions about how the service purchases and designs its expensive hardware, and what kind of new duties it will take on as geopolitical posturing increasingly takes place in orbit.
Still, amid a pandemic, a trade war, and a likely global recession, whoever arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day next January will not have space at top of mind.
If it is Biden, that likely means Congress takes a bigger role—and that in turn could spell trouble for the goal of reaching the moon in 2024, and those commercial partnerships. Some influential Democratic lawmakers have been skeptical of the public-private approach, despite ongoing troubles with traditional contracts. The head of the Aerospace Industries Association, Eric Fanning, attracted some attention for endorsing Biden, a move that could harm relations with the Trump administration. Some say the former Obama official chose his personal politics over AIA’s corporate members, but perhaps there is more overlap in interest than first appears.
Without leadership from the executive branch, the space-industrial complex may win out over more innovative arrangements. Much may rest on the next NASA administrator, which could be the current incumbent, Jim Bridenstine, regardless of the election outcome. Bridenstine has proven himself adept at politics inside the space agency and at Congress, managing to push innovative programs without stepping on (too many) toes or becoming closely associated with Trump’s toxicities. Biden may find it easier to keep him, as Bill Clinton did with George H.W. Bush’s NASA administrator, Daniel Goldin, in the 1990s.
Given the timelines involved with building space hardware, much of NASA’s policy is path dependent—officials are reluctant to give up on expensive programs even if that means throwing good money after bad. But it is fun to imagine what an administration with more interest in space could do with the National Space Council, an organ for coordinating space activities across the government that was re-established by the Trump administration.
A space program focused on earth science and climate change, which the public tends to prefer? Rebuilding the exploration program completely around public-private partnerships and economic development in low-earth orbit? A sustainable moon base? Joint exploration missions with China?
Let me know your favorite wild ideas.
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Imagery Interlude
Speaking of presidents, here’s a shot from president Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. A NASA Orion spacecraft passes by the White House review stand, accompanied by an astronaut escort. The next president might see Orion fly with astronauts inside—emphasis on “might.”
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It is easy forget that rockets are just transportation systems, on the same spectrum as planes and buses and your feet. That’s one reason to consider how the coronavirus is changing the way people in cities use terrestrial transportation—sometimes, the arguments can feel very similar to debates about going to the moon:
“Public transit has two big functions and you can look at it from two sides of the spectrum: on a very cynical neoliberal side of the spectrum, you can say public transit is a funnel for workers to get from lower-income areas into their office buildings so that they can serve capitalism. On the very other side of the spectrum, you can say public transit is the thing that makes opportunities accessible to everyone in a very equitable way.”
“Both things are true. It’s vital both for both of those reasons.”
Alexis Perrotta, a lecturer specialized in urban transit and housing at City University of New York is just one of the many academics, researchers, commuters, and cycling enthusiasts that we spoke to as part of our last field guide. From Paris to Tokyo to Johannesburg, read about the revolution happening in commuting as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
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SPACE DEBRIS
The clock ticks for Perseverance. NASA’s next ambitious mission to Mars is watching the sand run through the hourglass. Mars 2020, which aims to put a new rover on the Red Planet (along with a helicopter drone,) has faced a series of delays and is now expecting to launch on July 30. The problem? If it doesn’t launch by August 15 or a little after, the mission will have to wait another 26 months for the Earth and Mars to properly align before it can take off.
ThreePS. We talked about China’s new sat nav system last week; this week, the US has announced another third-generation GPS satellite onboard a SpaceX rocket. The new satellite will mainly benefit military users with enhanced anti-jamming features, but civilian users can expect a more accurate signal as well. The mission was performed by SpaceX, which is currently leading the global launch league tables and on pace to break its previous record of 18 launches in a calendar year.
Don’t jam me up. The travails of Ligado, a US company that wants to set up a terrestrial wireless network, are just beginning. Though it won approval in April from US telecom regulators, the Department of Defense is still waging war against the system because officials believe it will interfere with GPS signals. At the military’s behest, lawmakers are working to ban the company from defense contracts; a federal advisory committee called its approval a “grave error“; and a new trade group has emerged to lobby against its work.
Russian space adventures. New US spacecraft are expected to leave Russia with empty seats on flights to the International Space Station. Roscosmos says it will partner with a US company to fly two tourists to the station in 2023, with plans for one of them to make the first ever spacewalk by a non-government astronaut.
Your pal,
Tim
This was issue 55 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send your most ambitious space policy visions, what you’d do on your first luxury spacewalk, tips, and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.