650 million people around the world watched as Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's vision. Just a few decades before, the United States had seemed impossible. A man was sent to the moon.
On that historic day, the entire world came together to celebrate the enormous accomplishment as a voice boomed from our television sets: "That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
In just eight years the US, led by our extraordinary scientists, engineers and astronauts at Nasa, had opened up a new world for humanity. There was a special joy and pride in our country because this was an American project. It was our financing, political will, scientific ingenuity, and courage that made this possible. The international space race and the creation of unthinkable opportunities for all of humankind was what we had done.
As a result of a huge effort to privatize space exploration, I am concerned that Nasa has become little more than an ATM machine to fuel a space race between the two wealthiest men in America.
The American people are going to have to make a very important decision after billions of dollars of taxpayer funding. Who will control the enterprise if we send more humans to the moon and eventually to Mars? Will the goal be to benefit the people of the United States and the world, or will it be a boondoggle to make billionaires even richer and open up outer space to corporate greed and exploitation?
If you can believe it, Congress is considering legislation to give a $10 billion bail out to Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin space company for a contract to build a lunar lander. Blue Origin lost a competitive bid to Musk's company.
Bezos is worth a lot of money. He hasn't paid federal income taxes in a year. The owner of Amazon has not paid federal income taxes for a year after making billions of dollars in profits. There is enough money for Bezos to own a $500m mega-yacht, a $23m mansion in Washington DC, a $175m estate in Beverly Hills, and a 14-acre estate in Maui.
At a time when over half of the people in this country live paycheck to paycheck, when more than 70 million are uninsured or underinsured, and when 600,000 Americans are homeless, should we really be giving a billion-dollar taxpayer handout to Bezos to fuel his space hobby? I don't think so.
Let's be clear. The issue goes beyond just one contract for Bezos to go to the moon.
The space economy is already very profitable and has the potential to become even more profitable in the future. According to Bank of America, the space economy will triple in size over the next eight years.
Private corporations made over $94 billion in profits from goods and services used in space in the last year, thanks to generous subsidies and support from the taxpayers of America. The business is growing fast. Over the next few years, Starlink will launch tens of thousands of satellites.
In addition to the launching of new satellites, corporations like SpaceX will be making substantial sums from the space tourism business. Three extremely wealthy individuals paid $55m each to visit the International Space Station. There are some exciting travel opportunities for billionaires if they are tired of vacationing in the Caribbean. American taxpayers are subsidizing some of that trip.
While it may seem like a bad science fiction movie today, the real money to be made will not come from satellites or space tourism but from those who discover how to mine lucrative minerals on asteroids.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has predicted that the world's first trillionaire will be the person who figures out how to exploit natural resources on asteroids.
Over 12,000 asteroids are within 45m kilometers of Earth and contain minerals. Platinum is worth over $5tn on a single 3,000ft asteroid. The rare earth metals could be worth more than $20tn. There are twenty-trillion-dollar checks up there, waiting to be cashed, according to the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Diamandis.
The taxpayers of this country who made it possible for these private enterprises to go into space will get a 0% return on their investment
Who will be cashing those checks? Who will benefit from space exploration? Will it be a small group of billionaires or will it be the people of our country?
Private corporations are able to own all of the resources that they discover in space thanks to the 2015 Space Act, which passed the Senate with virtually no debate. The taxpayers of this country who made it possible for these private enterprises to go into space will get a zero return on their investment.
There is a need for a serious debate in Congress and throughout the country on how to develop a rational space policy that doesn't simply socialize all of the risks and privatize all of the profits. Whether it is expanding affordable high-speed internet and cellphone service in remote areas, tracking natural disasters and climate change, establishing colonies on the moon and Mars or mining asteroids, the scientific achievements we make should be shared by all of us.
Space exploration is very exciting. It is possible to improve life on planet Earth. It has the potential to make the richest people in the world richer and more powerful. Let us not turn a few billionaires into trillionaires by taking that next giant leap into space.
The chair of the Senate budget committee is a US senator. He is from the state of Vermont.
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