US wants own space

THE US President’s Commission on the future of the aerospace industries concludes we can stop worrying about both Communists with a dud ideology and terrorists with dud theology. It says the main threat in our collective future is asteroid attack. Phew. Not aliens then.

The American space contractors include some of the most ingenious minds available. It is both poignant and funny that the conclusion of their intelligent deliberations is the usual one - a subsidy, please, Mr President.

The Commission must be correct to argue we will soon explore the solar system first by robotic techniques and then by human colonisation.

There may be a morsel of truth in the argument small populations of homo sapiens on other heavenly bodies might preserve the species in the event of the Earth’s destruction by an asteroid.

It would be better and more honest to argue that there are awards in space - profits - and that subsidies are therefore not necessary. Who envisaged the possibilities of satellite communications when the first sputnik went up?

The future is not NASA, a nationalised industry even more inept at containing costs than the Scottish Parliament, but private companies.

The Americans envisage the moon as a sort of extra state for their Union.

The rest of us might bridle at that but, for the moment, the USA is so dominant in the aerospace industry it is easy to see why they forget the rest of us. The moon’s destiny is surely as a tax haven for the mega-wealthy. It is the tourism industry that will open up the moon. A few days at Tranquility Base will be the perfect honeymoon location.

The President’s Commission talks only of the mineral rights on the moon. This is banal. It is true vast gold seams will provoke a rush but if there is that much gold the price will fall. The case of space is adventure. Spending unimaginable billions to zap a passing asteroid is real space fiction.

The strands in the report that may be more tangible is the argument America should open up its routes to foreign airlines and enhance its air traffic control systems.

The higher ambitions soar the more prosaic and earth bound the practicalities seem to be.

Electric shocker

WE all thought British Energy would be the first power company to evaporate but it is TXU that has gone into administration first.

"Exceptional service" was the advertising boast, but TXU failed to service its debts. Owing 50 million to the Drax power station in Yorkshire for October’s supplies, the courts were invoked. Goodbye TXU.

The market assumes that Drax will now be sucked under too, or rather AES its owner. There will be calls to either change the new power-trading regime or for direct subsidies.

But Callum McCarthy, the regulator of our electricity industry, says the collapse is only the measure of misplaced investment.

It does seem that the engineers in many power companies were in love with the latest technology, but oblivious of the falling prices of their rivals.

The power companies are now trading customers more enthusiastically that their electricity. The average price seems to be 300 per household. This seems to mean that for all their cries of anguish the electricity companies still see the future as lucrative.

The closures that will now ripple after TXU have no implications for power supplies. The fairy lights on our Christmas trees will go on.