Do governments have any cogent reason to not invest public money in developing the space sector? That is the question asked by Peter Hague, an astrophysicist, on X. He further states that “compared to our other government commitments, it would be literal pennies.” It is a valid observation, and the real question is actually how to convince the public.
Bureaucracy
For context, a good chunk of money spent by governments these days is actually on their bureaucracy, and on misaligned schemes that do not generate any long-term value. Governments are not keen on spending on research or on futuristic endeavours such as the space sector because the incumbent government almost always ends up thinking that spending money on such stuff will not provide immediate results in terms of increase in popularity or solidifying the voter base. In fact, the incumbents wrongly end up thinking that spending too much money on education or research would be viewed as a sign of weakness.
This is not the only problem. The common people, too, have no clue about what is going on in the realm of space. Though SpaceX has definitely popularized space, and many common folks do know about Starship, Starlink and other such endeavours, yet the confusion and misconceptions regarding the same are immense. There are many who still wrongly believe that SpaceX is not a profitable enterprise, and that there is no point in sending anything to space as we should solve the problems of Earth first and, once we have a utopian society here, only then miscellaneous expenditures on stuff such as space are justified.
Academia
Even the academia is not playing the role here that it should. Childhood should be built on curiosity, and if the importance of space is explained to kids from the beginning, the future society of humans will suffer a bit less from this lack of knowledge and vision. I am not saying that the entire community of academia is bad. There are definitely great professors, teachers and educators out there who are doing the heavy lifting, but my point is that academia is too plagued by the vice of bureaucracy. The teachers are more busy doing the government paperwork than doing actual teaching to students.
A.I. and Fearmongering
But that is a problem that could be discussed in a separate article. Coming back to space, it is indeed a big mindset problem, and the same logic is applicable in the AI sector too. Though the tech world is morphing rapidly and investing heavily into AI, the sovereign governments and their respective bureaucracies still feel confident that eventually they will find a way to “tame” AI. I know it is borderline foolish to think “AI” could be tamed, but many do think like that. Recently, Sabine Hossenfelder posted on X that she and many other content creators have been contacted and offered huge sums of money to fearmonger about AI.
With the current changes in the space sector and the AI sector, status quoists are the ones who are most rattled. For status quoists and bureaucrats, the opening up of space also breaks the myth that the left and the right need to be in a perpetual state of war for this world to be balanced. Space opens so many new possibilities that the existing narratives just collapse instantly. Combine the power of space with AI and this combo becomes even deadlier for bureaucracies, shoddy NGOs and anybody who wants to take advantage of the common populace by spreading fear and falsehoods.
Hope for the Future
The way forward seems to be the private sector in space. Let us hope SpaceX continues successfully and achieves new records with Starship, and that Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and the rest continue on a trajectory of growth. The private enterprise will force the government sector to invest more into space, because the government sector will realize that if it does not start investing in space, it will become redundant. Meanwhile, we need more space educators and more creators who make content on space to spread knowledge and awareness, and to do the work of convincing the public.