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The casualties of private space enterprise
The Casualties of Space Enterprise
By Jim Bowery
Our leaders in commercializing space operations have been dying
about one year after demonstrating they pose a serious threat
to the monopoly on space infrastructure held by NASA's Southern
Centers. For those of us involved in the effort to break up that
monopoly, the deaths of these leaders have been a particularly
grevious and frustrating series of tragedies. It is difficult to
rule out foul play given the history of anticompetitive practices,
both legal and illegal, exhibited by the Southern Centers and the
vast amount of money at stake (billions of dollars per year).
Our leaders who have recently died are:
Richard Challenger disaster investigator and leading physicists
Feynman who refused to go along with the Rogers Commission white-
wash and published his own, scathing and widely read, attack
on the Southern Centers. He died shortly after publishing
this attack.
Gerald Developer of the economical gun-launcher was, like West
Bull Germany's OTRAG, hounded out of the Western aerospace
community because Southern Center "scientists" didn't want
competition from his gun. When he, like OTRAG, found
refuge with a third world dictator who would provide him
with support for his project, he began actually building
a gun capable of hurling projectiles into space. He was
assasinated within a year.
George Fundraiser for and President of American Rocket Company
Koopman which developed hybrid rocket motor technology entirely
on private capital. After success appeared within reach,
the Southern Centers provided his competitors with government
funds to develop competing technology. He sued. Within
4 months he was dead in a single car accident on an isolated
desert road, just two month's before AMROC's first launch.
AMROC, itself, was a secondary casualty.
Malcolm Secretary of Commerce under Reagan who actually practiced
Baldrige the principles of privatization. He supported the early
work and promotion of the Commercially Developed Space
Facility which would have been developed on private capital
and for a fixed price lease, guaranteed early service for
microgravity experiments funded by government agencies.
The Southern Centers, believing this to threaten rather than
support their space station program, used all the political
tools at their disposal to silence Baldrige. Baldrige set
up an Office of Space Commerce to support ongoing efforts to
commercialize space services. He died within a year of
establishing this office. Significantly, two of the chief
political tools used by the Southern Centers were Scott Pace
and Sandra Adamson who used their positions of trust and
authority in the supposedly "grassroots" National Space
Society to suppress all efforts by the grassroots to support
CDSF. Sandra Adamson works on the space station. Of much
greater import, Scott Pace now occupies a key position
within the Office of Space Commerce established by Baldrige
where he will make critical decisions regarding the revival
of CDSF-like programs. His first publication from that office
on the financing of space businesses included several case
case studies which make no mention of the CDSF or of Koopman's
AMROC, while giving most coverage to "businesses" that
are closely affiliated with the Southern Centers and their
contractors.
Since foul play cannot be proven, no matter how many such coincidental
deaths occur, we can only recall Abraham Lincolon's warning that
the greatest danger to our freedom will come not from any foreign
agressor, but from pernicious internal powers, perhaps within our
own government. The most critical war to wage for freedom is right
here, on our home soil. San Diego L5 and other pro-space activists
can pride themselves in pulling more than their weight in this war.
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