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The true adventures of a space buccaneer | page 1, 2, 3
An early computer enthusiast, Benson earned a degree in geology from the University of Missouri in 1971 and took a programming job in Washington the next year. A neighbor gave him a copy of a study called "The Limits to Growth," an apocalyptic warning about the consequences of global warming and the depletion of natural resources. Already disillusioned by the Vietnam War, Benson's eyes were opened to conservationism and the potential future uses of space as the escape route from a doomed planet. He quit his computer job and went to work for the Solar Energy Division of ERDA, the Energy Research and Development Administration, forerunner to the Energy Department. He helped analyze President Gerald Ford's National Energy Plan and gave it poor marks for ignoring the potential of solar energy, and he later advised Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign on environmental issues. At the newly named Energy Department, Benson began to clash with superiors, and left government work to become an independent computer programmer. He founded Compusearch Software Systems in McLean, Va., in 1984. The company pioneered commercial PC-based full-text searching, a precursor to today's Web search engines. It was profitable every year until Benson sold it in 1995 for several million dollars and moved to Colorado with his wife. But Benson grew restless. So he started reading up on his old avocation, astronomy, and began looking for ways to meld it with his business acumen. "I've always liked science and technology and I've always liked astronomy, ever since I saw the rings of Saturn through a department-store telescope," he told me. "I've been a businessman all my life, so when I think about space, I think about business." Benson did the first thing any good businessman would: He defined a market, realizing that the NASA budget represented "one or two billion dollars" that taxpayers were forking out annually "to collect data in space," since missions mainly produce material for scientists to analyze. Benson decided to re-allocate some of those funds. At the same time SpaceDev was forming, NASA was looking for ways to get out of routine space matters and into forging new technologies expensive enough to require government funding. As a start, NASA had begun to transfer oversight of its shuttle missions to a private consortium called the United Space Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. NASA administrator Daniel Goldin is spearheading a cost-cutting campaign with a series of "Discovery" missions, small-scale spacecraft designed to proceed from development to flight in three years or less and cost under $150 million. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR), NASA's ongoing mission to the asteroid Eros, is the first of these. Benson finds NEAR to be "a good mission to try to emulate." NEAR won't land on the asteroid, but will orbit around Eros for a year once the two cross paths a second time, in February 2000. (The first time, NEAR failed to fire its main engine, missing an earlier opportunity to orbit.) Benson's mission, he hopes, will do more for less, landing on Nereus for under $50 million.
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