129 – Building America’s “Astral Highway” to promote American human spacefaring commerce

For generations, Americans have dreamed of space travel becoming commonplace, but this vision remains unfulfilled due to a lack of the astrologistics infrastructure needed to enable practicable commercial human spacefaring operations. To transform America into a true human spacefaring nation, the Federal Government needs to lead in building a robust national astrologistics infrastructure. This involves creating a network of spaceways throughout the Earth-Moon system, referred to as America’s “Astral Highway“, that will enable robust and profitable American spacefaring business development. The government should begin with building space bases and space habitats in low Earth orbit to provide locations for businesses to set up shop and to encourage the development of operationally safe commercial passenger spaceflight services.

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Establishing commerce in outer space is the key to enabling America to become a true human spacefaring nation. For six decades, NASA has treated America’s human spaceflight as its own personal fiefdom. It has resisted all attempts to open low Earth orbit to true commercial human spacefaring business operations. To be clear, I am not referring to space tourism flights to boost the egos of the ultra-rich, but the type of commerce that leads to settlement and self-sustaining commerce. To promote its own interests above those of America, NASA has let America’s hard-won global leadership in human spacefaring operations slide until communist China now has the lead.

To provide perspective on how NASA has let America down, let’s look back at American history. The American Civil War ended in 1865. That war was fought with muskets, cannon, and calvary.

Ordnance depot outside Washington DC during the Civil War

The film below shows building the locks of the Panama Canal from 1904-14, less than 50 years after the end of the Civil war. after France failed in its attempt, building the Panama Canal was undertaken by President Teddy Roosevelt to demonstrate to the world the great things America was capable of achieving. A century later, it remains a vital part of the American-built logistics infrastructure that enables global commerce.

Building the locks of the Panama Canal

America now needs to build transformational astrologistical infrastructure to permanently establish American commercial human spacefaring operations throughout the Earth-Moon system. This 7-minute video, from the Spacefaring Institute’s YouTube channel, explains how America can now build an “Astral Highway” of astrologistics capabilities to enable and encourage American businesses to “set up shop” in space.

Key points of this video:

America’s shared “spacefaring dream” has yet to be realized as America lacks the ability to “do business” in space.
What is holding America back is that American spacefaring businesses lack the ability to “set up shop” in outer space—the habitable space in which to locate and operate their businesses.
Throughout its history, the Federal Government has taken a leading role in building the logistics infrastructure to enable American commerce.
Using the cargo version of the Space Launch System—America’s Spacelifter—revolutionary astrologistics capabilities can now be built in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to enable business development.
As new LEO space bases and space habitats begin to be built, American passenger spaceflight enterprises will have the “market demand” needed to invest in developing airworthiness-certified true passenger spaceflight services to, from, and throughout the Earth-Moon system.
These operationally safe passenger spaceflight services will then enable America space commerce to grow from today’s robotic operations (e.g., communications) to true commercial human spacefaring operations.
The only thing holding America back NOW is the willingness to Make America Great in Space; America now has everything needed to get underway building America’s true human spacefaring future.

If you have not watched the related video on using the unmanned cargo version of the Space Launch System to build the LEO infrastructure, here it is:

James Michael (Mike) Snead is an aerospace Professional Engineer in the United States, an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a past chair of the AIAA’s Space Logistics Technical Committee. He is the founder and president of the Spacefaring Institute LLC (spacefaringinstitute.net) which is focused on space solar power-generated astroelectricity and the astrologistics infrastructure necessary to enable the spacefaring industrial revolution that will build space solar power energy systems. Mike Snead has been involved in space development since the mid-1980s when he supported the U.S. Air Force Transatmospheric Vehicle (TAV) studies, the National Aerospace Plane program, and the Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) project. In 2007, after retiring from civilian employment with the Air Force, he began to study the need for (and politics associated with) undertaking space solar power. Beginning in the late 1980s, he has published numerous papers and articles on various aspects of manned spaceflight, astrologistics, and energy. His technical papers are located at https://www.mikesnead.com and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Snead/research. His eBook, Astroelectricity, can be downloaded for free here. He can be contacted through LinkedIn or through email sent to spacefaringinstitute@gmail.com. Mike Snead also publishes a newsletter on LinkedIn called “U.S. Astrologistics”. This is located on the Spacefaring Institute page.

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