For decades, government space agencies such as NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and many others were funded by their respective national governments. These agencies were responsible for the race to space and landing a man on the moon. They are responsible for engineering marvels like the International Space Station, for landing rovers on Mars, and for flying spacecraft past distant planets. However, government space agencies are quickly being replaced by the private sector when it comes to innovations in aerospace technology.
Since the early 2000s, dozens of private spaceflight companies have emerged with the goal of making space flight more efficient and more frequent. However, these organizations may have a more negative impact in the long run. Agencies like NASA are funded by the nation’s government with taxpayer money. This source of budget allows an approach to spaceflight that is not too concerned about funding. However, the governmental budget allocated to a given project is frequently tight, causing potentially serious hurdles in the planning, construction, and execution of missions.
Private spaceflight companies, however, are not granted sums of money to use however they wish – they must find other ways to finance their flights, and these strategies get quite creative. Companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic offer flights to tourists looking to enjoy the wonder of zero-g and view the Earth from above, if only for a few minutes. Tickets to space cost anywhere from $450,000 into the millions, proving the tactic’s profitability, according to a Los Angeles Times article. But spaceflight is dangerous – it always has been. Just last year, a Blue Origin rocket carrying scientific payloads caught fire mid-flight, prompting activation of the launch escape system. While the mission was unmanned and the capsule was recovered undamaged and intact, the incident serves as a reminder that the possibility of a fatal accident is a very real one.
Some other spaceflight companies are financed through sister businesses, oftentimes functioning in a symbiotic sort of relationship. Elon Musk’s Starlink internet-providing company launches its satellites aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets – meaning the expense of the launches will repay itself in the form of subscriptions to the service. But with dozens of Starlink launches every year, each one containing up to and over 50 satellites, space in Low Earth Orbit is quickly becoming crowded with satellite constellations like Starlink or OneWeb, with prospects like Amazon’s Project Kuiper to join the mayhem in the coming years. This traffic-jamming of space, called Kessler Syndrome, is becoming a dangerous issue, yet another roadblock in the face of space exploration.
But it isn’t all bad news. SpaceX offers frequent missions to space, containing several satellites in only one launch. These ‘rideshare’ missions, as SpaceX calls them, enable easy access to space for research institutions, universities, and other groups that would be otherwise unable to place their payload in orbit. Launches start at $275,000 for a 50-kilogram payload into orbit, according to their website.
Not only does SpaceX offer space access to the public, but also to bodies like NASA. Several of the business’s contracts with the administration include those to resupply and deliver crew to the ISS, as well as to provide the landing system for the upcoming Artemis moon missions. This landing system, an adaptation of the wildly ambitious Starship vehicle, serves another point about the industry – despite the struggles for budget, when the funding is plentiful, development can progress at a rapid pace, rivaling government agencies.
SpaceX’s starship launched its very first prototype in July of 2019. Just under three short years later, in April of 2023, they launched their first full-scale vehicle on an orbital attempt, a development speed rivaling that of even the automotive industry in its heyday. With plans for another attempt this fall, the rapid development cadence is an obvious benefit of the industry, and most other companies are attempting to develop similarly groundbreaking technologies just to keep up. The billionaires are ushering in a new space age, a sign that private spaceflight may be the next golden era of exploration.
