“Space is Hard”
If you have ever heard an interview about space you probably heard the phrase SPACE IS HARD…
We need to stop saying that. Its an excuse. One that if we intend to become a multi-planet species we must change.
The history of space flight is short, roughly ~ 70 years at the time of this writing and in that time we have had many failures. These repeated failures have instilled the modality that space is hard. That’s because it has been hard, for many reasons: lack of funding, immature technology, and lack of infrastructure. The list goes on and on.
However, that is not the case these days. Rocket launches were once only the purview of Governmental entities, and now are being done routinely at a fast rate by private companies with a fraction of the resources.
Space Stations, another exclusivity of governmental entities are now being developed by private companies. Astroid mining, power technology, manufacturing, fueling, software, and more are being developed at an extremely fast rate. A massive amount of funding, 14.3 Billion in 2021, is pouring into the Space economy and is growing.
The extraordinary individuals who created the technology that is the foundation of everything being built now had it hard. They built things with literal paper and pencils, a fraction of the computing power, and in some cases duct tape. It was hard because there were no resources in orbit that could help in times of crisis. If things missed up, you were on your own, think Apollo 13 and others.
Now, however, that is not the case. We now have resources to deploy that those pioneers could only dream of and as we launch more resources into orbit, the ability to get help in times of crisis will become massively easier.
Much like in the past, when traveling across the oceans carried a high probability of death, now we do it all the time without a second thought. We will do much the same in Space. We are building the ability to make space easy and commonplace.
Yes, it will take time, however, we are rapidly approaching the time where traveling into space is becoming routine.
Thus, it is time to start changing the phrase “Space is hard” to something more accurate.
Ad Astra