I am actually in favor of all of the above. I seriously doubt that there will ever be any resource imports from Mars to the Earth for the reasons that you state. To me the Moon will be the manufacturing hub of the inner solar system for space hardware. Mars will be the second anchor of a solar system spanning civilization that helps to enable asteroid mining as if you have Mars and the Earth as as places to buy and sell things, the orbital dynamics of asteroid mining become much easier.

A truly sustainable Space based society should be involved with Asteroid mining.

After that comes new markets which it is reasonable to anticipate:
– NASA willing to purchase some of its future propellant needs,
– circum-lunar tourism,
– satellite servicing,
– large GEO communications complexes,
– manned missions (NASA & others)
– lunar surface tourism

I understand what you are saying, however there is a difference between the development of a lunar industrial base and the space station itself. Space station’s original justification was as a staging ground and platform for exploration. The old dual design and even going as far back as Von Braun’s space station ideas of the 1950′s. The problem with station, as you well know, is that when exploration was killed in 1993, NASA shifted the justification for station to microgravity research. The problem with the microgravity research is that the two things that were needed to make that work (frequent access, and low cost access repetition for experiments), never materialized. There is also almost no production capability on the station with NASA actively discouraging production type operations.

However, in the more expansive scenario that I postulate for the Moon, ISS then becomes a valuable asset, a staging ground for vehicles going and coming from the Moon and beyond. ISS becomes a transportation hub, not a microgravity lab. This is actually the way that you reduce the cost of the lunar effort. The Mike Griffin era NASA wanted to ignore the station’s potential because it rendered moot the investment in the huge heavy lift launch vehicle, which is the antithesis of frequent access to space. Today we have vehicles from five nations that are capable of bringing payloads to the station, and in concert with other outposts, such as L1 and the lunar surface ISS will reach its original design potential.

The growth I see will build on the existing, successful business models built around remote-sensing and communications, and improving their on-orbit technology in terms of performance and serviceability.

Yea, I agree with that but there is no conflict between the two, actually lunar industrialization enables the emergence of an entirely new generation of platforms in GEO and other orbits that make today’s systems look primitive.

I agree with everything you’re saying Dennis. These are all the right steps to take to ensure the long-term survival and prosperity of humanity. I just don’t see it happening anytime soon. The growth I see will build on the existing, successful business models built around remote-sensing and communications, and improving their on-orbit technology in terms of performance and serviceability.

I could be wrong and I hope I am. I’ve just seen too many grand plans, strategies and reports come and go to think anyone can produce any persuasive argument in today’s social and economic environment that is going to be any more successful than past recommendations by the likes of the 1986 National Commission on Space (The Paine Report) and the 1987 Sally Ride report, “Leadership and America’s Future in Space,” to name a few. At this point I would be ecstatic if we could just have the same primary NASA mission survive the change of political administrations! At least then we’d stop wasting taxpayer money.

I believe that the establishment of a cis-lunar transportation infrastructure based upon the exploitation of lunar ice is something that can be accomplished at much less cost than most would assume. Yes, it would serve and expand existing markets and likely open new ones. However initially, it could be justified by the fact that it would supply needed propellant to NASA itself at a lower cost than currently. That plus NASA has a legitimate interested in seeing the establishment of a permanently manned lunar base. Although the economic rationale for such a base would be to maintain and expand a telerobotic mining workforce, NASA would benefit by the propellant produced, experience in establishing off-Earth bases, and the science more easily done from such a base.

To do so runs the risk of finding ourselves in the same situation as our friends to the north in Canada. Their civil space agency, CSA, has the leadership role for all aspects of Canada’s space activities. So for example when the Canadian military wants to develop a satellite, historically it had to work through CSA and CSA would be the one running the show. The problem is that while CSA is given the job of coordinating all space activities, it doesn’t have the mission to conduct all space activities and its sight picture and culture is solely focused on things like exploration, science, and human spaceflight. Thus it doesn’t always execute to the best of its abilities when it is “leading” on projects outside of its sight picture, such as national security.

So in my mind, you cannot ask NASA to come up with a “broad national space policy” and answer those questions because it does not represent all of the aspects of national space policy. You could task NASA with coming up with a national human spaceflight policy, or exploration policy, but if you wanted it broader you need to work with all the other space actors across the US government.

Absolutely, there is an intimate relationship between economic power and military power, which is what Mahan was talking about. Interestingly his position that a nation is incomplete without the private sector on the sea is where we are at with space. However, just like the Panama Canal, the National railroad, and the early canals, there is a role for government for what used to be called “internal improvements” that facilitate commerce.