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Empire-building isn’t out of fashion. At least not for Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, the world’s first private company dedicated to exploring space. Benson is a retired IT millionaire. With the help of senior ex-NASA staff, he plans to send missions to near-Earth objects and then claim them as his own. The idea is to clarify laws on property rights in space and get some publicity. But there’s a catch, or three: the launch date for his first mission has been put back, the target asteroid has been abandoned, and Benson has only managed to sell one payload out of eight. But, as Stuart Clark discovered, he has no intention of giving up.

How did you start SpaceDev?

I made my fortune in microcomputer software. I designed and sold software products to the US government. When I sold my software companies in 1995, I thought I would be able to retire. But I found myself totally bored after six months. I am consumed with the need to accomplish things and I have loved science, technology and astronomy since my earliest memories. In 1996, I found myself in the financial position to do whatever I wanted and I chose space business. I need a challenge in order to exist and this is the challenge that I have taken.

Who are your heroes?

I do not have a specific hero, more a pioneering spirit. The US is and has been full of pioneers, and as children we were raised on stories about them, such as Lewis and Clark and their expedition to the Pacific in 1804. Not to detract from Ferdinand Magellan and Cecil Rhodes-even the Vikings. Many adventurous Americans are descended from Vikings. My family is from Sweden.

Why have you put back your first launch date by five years. Is the dream over?

I’ve been talking to NASA for three years about private missions. The agency agreed to fund instruments for commercial missions, like our Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP). Universities around the US proposed three science instruments on NEAP. But all were rejected during NASA’s technical review process, forcing us to slip the launch date back until sufficient funding is found to make the mission economically feasible. We are still working on the mission, but at a lower priority level.

What is NEAP designed to do?

It was modelled after NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission (NEAR). I believe in keeping things simple and doing things that have already been done, but using existing equipment and technology in innovative ways. So the NEAP would fly to a near-Earth asteroid and, in addition to collecting scientific data while orbiting or hovering above the asteroid, we would eject one or more scientific instruments and collect valuable data from the surface. We found that such a mission can be flown at approximately one-fifth the cost of the NEAR. This was borne out through studies in 1997 at three universities in the US, and then by Tony Spear, project manager for the Mars Pathfinder mission, who acted as a consultant to SpaceDev. There is really no doubt that such missions can be done by the private sector for under $50 million.

How can you undercut NASA by a factor of five?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in national space programmes whose only job is to attend meetings and criticise mission and spacecraft designs. That is why government missions cost about five times more. I am taking an important concept into the space arena. This is to use standard microcomponents to get the size and the costs of spacecraft down. I’d use off-the-shelf hardware and software, as in a personal computer. NASA tailor-makes everything for each mission.

Why did you abandon Nereus as a target asteroid?

It’s simply a matter of launch windows. When we first started NEAP in late 1996 and early 1997, only about 350 near-Earth objects had been discovered. Now there are over 1000. The figure increases every week, so we have more and better targets than ever to choose from.

Is there much demand for private missions? You have only sold one payload out of eight.

Three proposals for NEAP instruments were sent into NASA mission programmes and for one reason or another all were rejected, even though one of them had perfect scores in the review process for scientific merit. I believe mid-level bureaucrats found a number of excuses not to fund that one because they fear that private deep-space science missions threaten their jobs and their reasons for holding these meetings, conferences, oversight panels, review committees. When you look at our personnel, they have been involved in 33 Earth-orbiting missions and 16 deep-space missions, going all the way back to the Apollo programme.

The only payload taker for NEAP so far is a company that plans to send human DNA samples into space. Are you sure this is a good idea?

We do not regulate or censor what our customers want to send from one location to another. Our primary concern is to make sure that it is not dangerous to other payloads or the mission itself, so we don’t really have any comments on what we are delivering. We are like a delivery service where somebody pays us to move a package from one location to another. That organisation is asking us to fly a package about the size and shape of a CD-ROM box from Earth to wherever we happen to be going.

But aren’t you worried about the biological contamination of space?

I do not know of anyone who has suggested that spacecraft going to the Moon or to lifeless near-Earth objects need to be sanitised in any way. NASA’s NEAR was not, and they are planning on crash-landing the satellite on Eros at the end of its mission. Human ashes have been orbited around Earth, and Gene Shoemaker’s were sent to the surface of the Moon on the Lunar Prospector. Other missions will be flown like that. But sending something to Mars-that may be a different question.

Is there any payload you would refuse?

That’s a difficult question. We would refuse any payload that was illegal, or dangerous to the mission, to the spacecraft or other passenger packages. I cannot think of anything specific other than thinking in terms of legality and safety. We will deal with it as it comes up. Package delivery services like Federal Express don’t ask their customers what’s in their little box.

Why do you want to claim ownership of an asteroid?

Primarily for fun and for publicity, to get the public and children excited about space. The UN’s Outer Space Treaty of 1967 pre-dates the concept that commercial companies would go out to utilise the natural resources that are in space. It contains no concept of property rights in space, yet property rights on Earth are fundamental to the functioning of modern Western societies.

What about the Moon Treaty? Doesn’t that forbid private property rights in space?

Well, it’s a treaty, but it is totally ignored. It was not ratified by the US or any major spacefaring nation, primarily because it attempted to declare that anything of value in space belonged to all of humanity and that any profits made in space needed to be distributed to all of humanity, thereby forever closing the door on any kind of commercial development in space. Property rights in space, to my mind, are a necessary ingredient to encourage humanity to break away from its cradle and climb up off the surface of the Earth. NEAP will be going out to a small lifeless body, of which there are millions, and we will claim ownership in order to set a precedent. I think that is a very positive thing to do. There are very few people against it except UN bureaucrats as far as I can tell.

Will you have to land on an asteroid to claim ownership?

Well, there is no legal entity in the world that has standing in space, there are no precedents or procedures, there is no legal body to which a claim can be made. All commercial activities beyond Earth orbit are unprecedented, including property rights. I am sure the lawyers and attorneys will have a field day with it for decades, but someone has to get it started. I’d like to get it started so that the public can participate and voice their opinion democratically.

Did NASA view you as a threat?

Absolutely, but only in the mid levels of NASA. Not only do they view us as a threat-we are a threat. The commercial space industry needs a transition period where the parliaments and congresses of the world look at the old mandates they have given to national space agencies and modernise those. Essentially, they must reallocate resources so the agencies work only on advanced, expensive, highly technical and somewhat risky technology, as well as missions to the distant outer planets and beyond. What is out there is a very, very important role for space agencies to play, it just doesn’t happen to be among the inner planets of our Solar System. There is no reason for governments to be flying missions to the inner planets.

How has your perception of NASA changed since you incorporated SpaceDev?

I have found it more difficult to deal with the agency than I had anticipated, but I believe that the upper-level people at NASA, from Dan Goldin down through about a third of the agency, are very capable, honest and hard-working people who have been very supportive in many ways of what we and others are doing. However, when you are in business you need to be flexible. In addition to space science revenue, we have found we need to look at entertainment revenue sources. We are now thinking of providing a live stream of high-definition TV images from an orbit close to the surface of the Moon. The public can participate in that mission by controlling the camera, by sending e-mail via the mail server on the lunar orbiter. We’ll also put a couple of scientific instruments on as a secondary revenue source.

Where do you think SpaceDev will be five years from now?

SpaceDev is only three years old and is growing. We have business worth about $6 million. We are designing and building CHIPSat, a NASA mission scheduled for launch in early 2002. It will carry one science instrument, the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectometer. We’ll be doing mission control on the satellite for a year. We have now received about $1.5 million in four contracts to design an orbital manoeuvring transfer vehicle that can go inspect satellites or grapple with them and move them from one orbit to another. We’ll start test-firing those motors before the end of 2000. In five years, I hope that SpaceDev will be flying multiple simultaneous commercial, profitable missions beyond Earth orbit, under its own financing and with key partners.

A final thought-what if in the future you do claim an asteroid, and someone else lands on it? Will you declare war?

No, I think the best thing to do would be to welcome them and offer hospitality because space is like a dangerous wilderness. Anybody who can make it from one location to another deserves a lot of respect. It would be fun to charge someone a dollar for landing rights, though.