I've always been a fierce advocate for space exploration, I felt not only a personal commitment to it because of my own interests, but also for the very real justification of it as basic research and exploration. The whole point of those activities is precisely that you don't know what you're going to find. They are high-risk, but potentially high reward. Astronomy, far from being a head-in-the-clouds effete intellectual pursuit, has been absolutely essential to our development of physics, from Newton's Laws to Relativity. The tools developed for astronomical research, such as spectroscopy and the calculus, had enormous influence in science, both in our theoretical understanding of nature as well as in our practical application to engineering problems. Astronomy provides laboratories which cannot be duplicated on earth, but which can be observed remotely. Putting observatories in space will pay dividends in the future because they are looking at places and processes we can never visit close-up.

But that's how I feel about it. And no matter how well thought out or justified it may be, it does not give me the right to impose on society a space policy extrapolated from those subjective opinions. Space travel, especially manned space travel, is extremely expensive in money, human talent and effort, and natural resources. How much of those limited resources should be allocated to it, and how our priorities should be selected should not be up solely to me. I have an axe to grind, I am prejudiced, no matter how well-informed I might think I am.

Permit me an illustrative example. I have always felt that any enterprise requiring a specific geographical location should be subordinate to certain other considerations. In other words, if you want to build your factory or your highway on an archaeological site or threatened wildlife habitat, then you should have the burden of proof of why it should be placed there for community benefit. Your personal profit is not a good reason; and neither is public benefit. It is a community decision, a social one.

But when I hear a proposed site for an observatory is being blocked because it threatens Indian artifacts or some nearly-extinct ground squirrel, I feel an exception should be made. My judgement cannot be trusted when my own parochial interests are at stake. Neither can anyone elses.

If private investors seek to develop space travel for their own personal profit, I have no objection. Indeed, they should be encouraged to do so. It can be argued that the exploration and settlement of the New World was driven by the profit motive, but there are no
slaves, furs or spices in this new frontier, no souls to be saved. Neither is there any rich farmland suitable for the cultivation of tobacco or sugar cane. Whatever commodities or riches to be found there have not yet been identified. And I suspect that until they are, the free market will play little or no role in space exploration, regardless of how enthusiastically its advocates lobby for it. So far, the only commercial opportunities offered by space are the contracts issued by spacefaring states. In this respect, space exploration is like war, there may be profit in it, but its all subsidized by the taxpayer.

I am convinced space travel is important, even essential, to human progress. But that is my opinion, my interpretation of reality, my subjective assessment of the objective facts which are available to all of us. They are neither obvious nor self-evident.