A New Space Race
The satellite-launching business is thriving, with American and foreign companies expected to spend billions of dollars orbiting more than 1,500 satellites over the next decade.
If present trends continue, however, most of the satellites will not be placed in orbit on U.S. boosters. Although the United States launched the vast majority of commercial satellites two decades ago, today its companies send up fewer than a third of them.
At the root of the setback are outmoded Cold War policies that coddled and over-regulated U.S. satellite launch firms in the name of security, making them now far more expensive and inefficient than their competition abroad. Satellite companies can launch their birds in Australia or China with an average wait of only 10 months, less than half the delay for a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or Cape Canaveral in Florida.
At recent congressional hearings, scores of experts identified these restrictive policies as a key reason why Loral Space & Communications Ltd. chose to launch a satellite it built for the Pentagon aboard a Chinese rocket on the Asian mainland. That decision, some critics claim, gave the Chinese access to highly sensitive U.S. military information.
Much posturing marked the hearings in Congress, with Democrats blaming the Reagan administration for authorizing U.S. satellite launchings on Chinese rockets in the 1980s and Republicans blasting the Clinton administration for its 1996 decision to transfer oversight of U.S. launchings abroad from the security-minded State Department to the profit-oriented Commerce Department.
The State Department is indeed better suited for monitoring launchings abroad--more skilled at differentiating between satellite launch firms in North Korea, South Korea, China and Australia, for instance, and more immune to influence from business leaders.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) brought the latter point home at a hearing last week in which he brandished a 1994 Democratic National Committee memo promising to include campaign contributors on trade missions for a donation of $100,000 or more. Can the Commerce Department “be trusted to make responsible decisions regarding national security?” McCain asked.
Probably not, which is why the Senate should approve a provision in the Defense Department appropriations bill being considered next week that would transfer oversight back to the State Department.
That provision, however, will do nothing to address the underlying problem: federal policies that discourage satellite businesses from launching their birds from U.S. soil.
Congress jettisoned a few Cold War anachronisms when it passed the Commercial Space Act last month--among them a prohibition on the reentry of any private spacecraft over U.S. soil. But many other outmoded and preferential laws remain on the books. Legislators will have to proceed carefully in exploring proposals to change those laws.
For example, Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) has suggested that Congress pour hundreds of millions of dollars into renovating the Cape Canaveral Air Station and Kennedy Space Center bases, which just happen to lie in his district. And a pending bill by Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) to extend federal loan guarantees to companies that want to build space launch vehicles lacks provisions to ensure that taxpayer dollars are allocated only for viable proposals.
Finding a way to protect national security while also inspiring competition won’t be easy, but it’s the only sensible answer for this important sector of modern industry.
