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FKE Space Program
The Private Imperative
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The FKE Space Program is being developed as a civilian business establishment, fully capitalized through private funding, and operated for the profit of its owners and investors. Our project will not be guided by the vagaries of political opinion or constrained by Congressional budgets and pork-barrel allocations. We expect to achieve substantial goals on time and within the budget available through private investor participation. This is the only way readily available access to space can be attained in the near future for the common person.
Although FKE's ultimate goals include such nebulous objectives as discovering how the universe works and exploring the far reaches of space, we recognize the need to repay our investors with a profit to provide an incentive for their participation: Real, long term economic growth can only occur if people can make money from investing the resources they have on hand.
A significant part of the reason the FKE Space Program is being developed without any government funding is the company founder's opinion of how governments get their money: The government, whether Congress, dictator, town council or king, decides who is going to pay how much, most often without consulting the people who are going to be expected to pay the bill. The public is then presented with a demand for payment, in the form of taxation, with a variety of penalties attached for failure to comply. In return (to pacify those who are expected to pay), goods and services are supplied "without charge," often to individuals that made no effort to contribute to the system in the first place. If a private organization were to conduct its affairs in a similar manner, they would be prosecuted as criminals attempting to perform extortion.
In government programs financed by "public" funding, the (often unwilling) investors in those programs have no control over how their money is spent, or the direction the projects take. An individual can complain to their peers or government officials about any problems they see, but those complaints are futile unless the "public servant" involved decides to side with the citizen. This will often not happen simply because the official is concerned about job security, more than upholding the public trust. Even if a politician is persuaded to make waves about something an individual wants changed, the effort could still prove to be a waste of time because of the organizational inertia found in government bodies that are more interested in preserving their existence than doing actual work.
Privately companies, financed by and operating for profits, however, cannot afford to ignore their investors and customers the way government agencies often do. If an investor decides they want to take their money out of a business, it could potentially make it impossible for the company to continue to operate: Businesses must listen to their investors to survive. When prospective customers decide to take their business elsewhere, companies that don't listen to the public's needs or that fail to provide the service expected of them lose their profits. Any company that continues to follow such a course will inevitably fail, leaving their former market to be exploited by more responsive firms.
The only legitimate mechanism which transfers money from one person or group to another is free trade voluntarily conducted by the parties directly involved. If one or both parties feel they are not getting a satisfactory deal, they may withdraw from the transaction, and the trade does not take place. Since governments do not conduct their affairs in such a way, we feel a moral obligation to decline any government business that may be offered.
Governments have been in the space "business" for many years, but access to space is still limited to a select few. The time has come for private enterprise to come along and say, "Look, guys, this is the way you do it."
Besides being a base upon which to build, land contains the resources needed to build the projects a company is working on. Real estate has an intrinsic value because of those two properties, and is an asset in its own right. Add to that fact the uses to which it can be put, and you have reasons enough for a firm to invest in the ownership of real properties. FKE, within its objective of building space colonies, of constructing the very property it is planning to own, will be making purchases of terrestrial properties as well, to be used to support the space program. Included among the planned purchases and developments are its offices and manufacturing facilities, the launch site it uses to gain access to space, and other such property as it deems necessary to further the end of successful development of a space program.
Technopolis is a development planned to be built around the company's launch facilities. It will grow to be a city of, for, and by technologists, occupied by a society that respects achievement, honors ability, and rewards honesty: a cooperative venture between FKE and other individuals and groups of individuals who wish to be part of it, and to include its ideals in their ideals. The citizens of Technopolis will probably be among the first to move to the space colonies; not because of any prejudice against the remainder of the world's populace, but since its inhabitants will be those with the most active interest in the effort.
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