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Speech by Keith Calhoun-Senghor, U.S. Department of Commerce
July 21, 1997 Cheap Access to Space Symposium |
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Keith Calhoun-Senghor at the CATS Symposium.
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Good morning. I usually don't like to disclose my legal background in a room full of non-lawyers – I usually try to pretend, at least, that I have some technical grounding on this. But I've been uncovered, so I'll try to make the best of it by not boring you with anything that's related to law. I like to say that I'm a recovering lawyer. (Sometimes you can't help it.)
I want to say that it's a pleasure to be here today. I always find these kinds of conferences – and particularly this type of conference that deals with launches – very exhilarating. It's an important issue, and I want to thank the Space Frontier Foundation – and particularly Charles – for the invitation to be here. It is actually our honor to be one of the honorary co-chairs, along with Patty Smith of the Department of Transportation. This is because, from our point of view, we are at a fairly pivotal point in this industry's development. A lot of very exciting things have been happening over the past – well, I'd say from about 1990 on, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War – and it has simply been accelerating over time. In the four and a half years that I have been in this position, I have seen a dramatic change, and I think that change is going to accelerate. One of the features of this industry is that change is probably the only constant, and I expect that conferences like these give us an opportunity to talk and think about what's happening and to get ahead of the curve, and therefore to help policy-makers and those in business anticipate where the future will be heading.
I want to give you a context, if I may, as to why we at the Dept. of Commerce – and, I think it's fair to say, this Administration – think that launch is so important. It's a pivotal industry in terms of a much larger aerospace industry, and it's pivotal in terms of a larger and fast-growing information industry, although I think it has not been thought of traditionally as an information industry. Many of the satellites that are going up – the remote-sensing satellites, the GPS satellites, the telecom satellites – are really an extension of information technologies, and the launch industry in particular is the way to get these products there. And so it becomes critical that Cheap Access To Space becomes a reality.
When I first took this job, I used to be able to joke that "commercial space" as a term was an oxymoron, because it was very difficult to put the two together since it was so heavily dominated by government. I think it is true that in the short time that I've been involved in this area – and many of you here were here at the birth, at the creation – I think it is the driver for what space is going to be in the 21st century. I have a term that I've coined because it helps me remember it: "New Space", the concept that we have entered a new era of space, one that has transitioned away from government-dominated and largely science-dominated space – not that it's separate; it's just increased the distance between those endeavors which are scientifically oriented and those which are commercially oriented. I think that when the history is written on this particular chapter – years or decades from now – this period that we are now in will be remembered as a time when "New Space", commercial space, became a reality.
There's an analogy, an image I like to use, about how the evolution has taken place. If you think about trade and commerce as essentially starting off at the village and community level, and you trade with individuals within your village and then your city and then your nation, the expansion of that went beyond national borders, and then it eventually became one of the driving forces for exploration – certainly European exploration, and I think exploration in all cultures – across the ocean. So a lot of the early voyages of discovery were essentially voyages to find ways to make it economically feasible to do trade. The Northwest Passage, and a lot of the routes around Africa to get to India, were alternatives to very expensive and very hazardous land routes. But the circle, the zone, the sphere of commerce constantly expanded. I think that if you look at that analogy, and if you look at where the Law of the Sea was until very recently, the territorial boundaries outside your coastline were essentially what you could defend from a battleship; so you had zones that were, first, three miles offshore, and now 200 miles – and the expansion and extension of the economic zone of commerce has increased.
I see the fact that we are now talking about really doing commercial activity in space as a logical extension of expanding the zone of economic activity off the planet. It is as natural as getting in a boat and sailing beyond the horizon to see if there's somebody else out there to trade with. And if you think about a lot of the telecommunications satellites and remote-sensing satellites and other types of satellites that people talk about as being commercially viable, it is a very logical – and, I think, inevitable – expansion of the zone, the sphere, of economic activity off the surface of the planet.
If that's the case, then it becomes critical that we have what was absolutely necessary in the early days of navigation; and that is the technology to get off the planet, the same way people had to have the technology to move and navigate offshore and find their way back – ship designs that allowed you to take advantage of wind conditions and be seaworthy on the high seas, and to make it affordable for you to take a voyage sailing west to try to reach east. So therefore, in my opinion, the commercial launch industry is the pivotal industry as to whether we are going to extend that zone, that sphere of economic activity, off the planet. And there is certainly no reason why we should stop in the immediate area surrounding the planet – why it cannot extend to near-Earth asteroids, or to the Moon, or Martian exploration projects. The fact is that it's solely a function of finding a cheap way to get there. And so from our perspective, it's not the launch industry by itself which is critical; it's the launch industry as a critical component for taking advantage of the economics that lie beyond the planet. You know, one of the things that is true about extending the economic sphere is that more often than not the people who are financing that expansion are on the planet. I mean, let's face it; the fact is that a lot of what was being financed – it's a different analogy, I understand, so the economists out there please bear with me on this one – but the Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company were financed by people who basically sat in London and said, "I think I can make some profit off this", and so they basically financed it. The money, the economic activity, the jobs – well, certainly the capital that was created and was deposited – largely went back to London.
In this case, the economic effect of extending the sphere of activity off the planet is of direct benefit for us here on Earth. So, therefore, I think it's critical that we do what I think Winston Churchill did. I love this quote, so for those of you may have heard it before, you'll have to forgive me – Churchill led England during World War II, and after his death one of his biographers asked one of his close friends: "What was it about Churchill that made him great? What was his single greatest contribution to winning World War II?" The person thought for a second, and then he said, "He talked about it. He talked about the importance of winning the war. He talked about its importance in terms of Western civilization. He talked about it in terms that average people could relate to and could therefore get fired up about." And I say that all the time: I think people underestimate the importance of engaging in a public dialog about things that are important. And I think we have to talk about launch, not just in the context of itself, but in the context of 21st-century jobs for this country; in the context of keeping the U.S. technologically ahead, not just in launch technology, but in space-based information technologies also.
Therefore I think this is a very, very important gathering. I certainly welcome the opportunity to be here. I did not know – I heard Charles mention at the end that H.R. 1702, the Space Commercialization bill, was something that he had made reference to earlier – to me that's a perfect example of how things that really matter need to be brought to our attention. Regardless of how you feel about the bill, the fact remains that it is a commercial-space bill – which is now moving through the House – that will have real impact on this industry as well as other industries. And symbolically it's significant in terms of how Congress and the Administration relate to those provisions. So I say that anyone who has an interest in this should take the time to take a look at it and see whether or not it affects your interests.
I'm out of time, so it was a pleasure to talk with you today, and I wish you a good conference. Thank you very much.
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