0191-9067/83 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ® 1984 SUNSAT Energy Council EARLY HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EAST INDIES COMPANY: A PARALLEL TO THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF SPACE AT SPACE STATION RAMON E. LOPEZ* Rice University Department of Space Physics and Astronomy Houston, Texas 77251 In his State of the Union address President Reagan gave NASA the go ahead to develop and deploy a space station within a decade. He also gave strong encouragement to private enterprise to involve themselves in space industry. These events are the herald of a new era for man: the industrialization and colonization of space. Yet we should remember that in recorded history there was another great age of exploration which was followed by commercial development and colonization, of which America and her works are an echo. And so to put these recent developments in historial perspective, let us look back to the time when England, under the strong and astute monarch Elizabeth 1 and in the guise of the British East India Company, began her unprecedented rise. The key element in European expansion in the late fifteenth century and afterwards was the new naval architecture which produced a ship capable of sailing anywhere in the world. This ship, the carvel, was a combination of the Mediterranean lateen-rigged ship and sturdy square-sailed cog of the Baltic and northern Europe. The earliest voyages of discovery were state sponsored affairs. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal was determined to find a route to the East Indies and circumvent the Arabs and Venetians in the spice trade. Thus successive voyages of exploration set out until, finally, Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope. These early voyages were no simple matter and were frought with dangers, both real and imagined. It was believed by some, for example, that the equatorial heat was such that it would burn men alive, while scurvy was an ever present scourge. Similarly the voyages of Columbus were state sponsored journeys of exploration to find a westward route to the east. Yet, Columbus' famed voyage of 1492 would have ended in catastrophe had it not been for the Americas lying in his path. England, however, was cut off from the trade, which was dominated by the Iberians. The destruction of the Armada in 1588 gave new impetus to commerical interests in Britain which wished to send voyages to the East Indies. Encouraged by the profits of Dutch merchants, on the 22 September 1599 a number of merchants committed themselves to £30,133 6 s. 8 d. for such a voyage (1). On the 25 September a *Mr. Lopez is currently a graduate student in the Space Physics Department.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==