Today is the 50th Anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech at Rice University, in which he called our the reasons for landing a man on he Moon. Kennedy’s speech remains one of the most famous and rousing bits of oratory in US history. Unfortunately, it was also one of the most misguided, and his words have helped to malform space policy for half a century.

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…

Rousing as the oratory might be, does this statement actually make any sense? We should not flinch from performing necessary tasks, even when they are hard, but what  rational person does something because it is hard? Charles Lindbergh did not fly the Atlantic “because it was hard.” He did it to win the Orteig Prize. He built the Spirit of St. Louis because it was the easiest way to win the prize. If he knew an easier way to accomplish his goal, he would have used it.

NASA went to the Moon because Rice plays Texas at football? Does that even make any sense?

It should be noted that that September 12, 1962 was not the first time Kennedy called for landing a man on the Moon, nor the first time he used such rhetoric. That came in a speech before Congress on May 25, 1961:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

Kennedy chose the Moon landing, over the other options presented to him, because it was the most difficult and expensive to accomplish. That made a certain amount of sense, by Cold War logic. A difficult, expensive project would show the world (and the Soviet Union) what America could do and how much money it could afford to spend (even, cynics would say, to waste). In that sense, it worked. Apollo accomplished what Kennedy intended for it to do. It proved to the world that our socialists were better than their socialists. (Despite occasional Cold War rhetoric, free enterprise played little part in the Apollo program.)

What it didn’t do was open the space frontier. As Apollo revved up, projects like the X-15 and X-20 DynaSoar, which pointed the way toward fully reusable launch systems, were canceled. America sent astronauts into space in capsules on giant rockets, not because it was cost-effective but because it was expensive – and because it was quick. Beating the Soviets to the Moon was the only priority. “Waste anything but time,” was a slogan often heard at NASA.

The remnants of that wasteful, expensive approach are still with us today. America had the technology to build low-cost, fully reusable launch vehicles in the 1960’s, but we chose not to. Cheap launch would have paved the way to the routine use of space for commercial, military, and scientific purposes. We chose not to do those things, not because they were hard but because they were easy.

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Today, a number of companies are developing reusable vehicles for suborbital spaceflight. Lacking government funding, those companies chose the suborbital approach. Not because it is hard, but because it is easy – or, at least, easier. Because no other project would less difficult and expensive to accomplish. That is the sort of cost-benefit decision that’s routinely made in business, but rarely made in government.

Citizens in Space has chosen to focus on suborbital spaceflight for the same reason. Companies like SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Bigelow Aerospace are helping to ensure that America retains access to orbit in the near future. At the same time, however, suborbital spaceflight promises to be an order of magnitude cheaper. Our goal of opening up space for large numbers of citizen scientists and citizen space explorers will be achieved more easily, more cheaply, and more quickly through this approach. We don’t have access to an unlimited Cold War budget like Kennedy did. (Even NASA doesn’t have that sort of budget anymore.) Cost-effectiveness is a priority for us.

Forced economy is not a bad thing. When you start out doing something expensively, it’s hard to learn how to do it cheaply. The first microcomputers were not built on million-dollar budgets. The first airplanes did not fly from New York to Australia non-stop. They flew once or twice around the field. But those airplanes opened up the skies to thousands of people and gave birth to the aviation industry we have today. If the Wright Brothers had tried to build a 747, instead, they would have failed.

There are those who still say America needs to spend more money on space and announce a grand goal like landing another man on the Moon or Mars or Europa – not because it is easy, but because it is hard. They would have America spend more and more money to send fewer and fewer humans further and further into space. We don’t believe that is realistic in the current fiscal climate, but we wish them luck. We’re more interested in approaches that make it possible for more people to fly in space, for less money.