Keynote Address: A Trajectory to Commercial Microspace

Abstract

Norm Augustine when he was CEO of Lockheed pointed out that the history of aerospace companies in pursuing commercial business is one “unblemished by success”. A factor contributing to this record of perfect failure is our pursuit of space as an arena for technology development. Little in space addresses the customer’s desires, maybe because they seem impossible to satisfy. For example, we have so far been incapable of delivering a product affordable by individuals and on a time scale of hours or at most weeks. What is needed is less a technological miracle, than a shift in focus away from the next technological frontier, and toward finding within our technological repertoire applications which generate more revenue, more consumer value, than they cost to produce. Examples are given in space communications, transportation and entertainment.