Launching the Penny For Space Campaign

The Penny for Space petition and site are now live

The petition I have submitted to the UK government asking them to increase spending on space to 1% has now gone live. The goal is to have one penny out of every pound of government spending go to space, through a combination of science, colonisation, and military objectives.

You can sign the petition here.

If the petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government will give a written response. If it gets 100,000, it will be considered for a debate in Parliament. Neither of these things are likely to result in any change in government policy - but they are part of entering the national discussion. We want people to understand that this is an option and its one worth considering.

What Is the Case?

I did an X space tonight to launch this campaign, and got some good questions about the campaign.

First, and most pressingly, how do we ask for more taxpayer spending on anything at all in such financially stressed times? There are cuts coming across almost all government departments, and the proposal is to create a new chunk of spending?

My answer to this is that even in the most troubled times, we must put aside something for the future. At an individual level, we pay into pension schemes with money that we would happily spend on more immediate needs. On a civilisational scale, we should do likewise and always put aside something - just 1% - in order to make sure that by the next century we are still a significant power.

Secondly, the success of private space companies such as SpaceX surely means that government spending on space is not needed. We should just instead construct a favourable regulatory and tax environment and allow private space businesses to grow on their own.

This I think overestimates what can be done right now in the private sector. Space is still very expensive and takes a long time. SpaceX themselves required large contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense to get started, and its unreasonable to expect that we would see any great space success stories of that kind in the UK if we don’t have contracts of comparable size available.

Finally, there is the question of the amount. Am I pushing for too much? How could we even spend that much money in the UK right now?

The amount is a target, and one I think is realistic in the long term, but I would expect it be ramped up to that level over time. Psychologically, I think a 99/1 split between the urgent needs government meets such as healthcare and pensions, and preparing for the future, is a good spot to aim for with the public.

I’ll be continuing to flesh out the case over the coming months, in terms of how this could benefit the UK economy through providing jobs and such, but ultimately this is making the case for our values. Who are we as a country? Where are we going? What must we do to get there?

For some specifics about the sort of things the UK could do in space, you can read this post:

How We Will Be Promoting

I’ve been fortunate enough to have people volunteer their help: Ben Dunn Flores and Daniel Ramer we have produced a website to promote it, at pennyforspace.org. Daniel has also produced some great posters, with QR codes linking to the petition.

A way you can support the campaign is by buying merchandise at the store, based on the art provided by Daniel, or becoming a paid subscriber here. All money I raise in this way for the near future will be put towards the campaign - the first order of business being to commission a public poll.

This will be aimed both at measuring public receptivity to the message, and also testing out how easily moved on it people are. I’ll hopefully be having lots of conversations with the public trying to make this case, and will report what I find out here. In the meantime, I’d ask my readers to start having those conversations themselves, and spread the word!

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• The history and current state of the art of partial gravity research, important for building human colonies on Mars or the Moon.

• How the UK squandered an early promising space program

• How the threat of ASAT weapons and satellite constellation technology could lead to a militarisation of space.

• And my overarching philosophy for human expansion.

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