Should Space be Privatized? Script (Patreon)

On February 8th 2018, the eyes of the world once again fixed upon Cape Canaveral. This time, people watched with anticipation as SpaceX launched its new Falcon Heavy rocket. This was the first test of a rocket that may one day send people across the solar system. The near-simultaneous landing of its two booster rockets was like something out of a sci-fi flick. It looked like the future. The subsequent view of a cherry-red Tesla Roadster drifting through space was like something out of a Douglas Adams novel. The landmark launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket is a milestone in a new space race. One not between nations, but instead between private companies. Is this the best thing for the future of human space travel?

The private funding of space is not something new. In fact, this was the case in the very beginning of rocketry. Robert Goddard, the father of rocketry, funded his research out of his own paycheck. The idea of governments funding private aerospace companies is also not new. In fact modern commercial air flight is a direct result of this relationship. World War One spurred great leaps in airplane technology and manufacturing capacity. To encourage commercial use of this new capability, the US congress passed the Air Mail Act of 1925. Private companies quickly took over the airmail industry. This spurred more technological and business innovation. Before long, commercial passenger flights became a thing. A big BIG thing. 

Just as with air flight, the US government has taken steps over the years to pave the way for commercial spaceflight. Ronald Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 which, for the first time, made commercial launches legal. Under each of the following presidents, NASA’s monopoly on spaceflight was further diminished. The agency’s directive became increasingly focused on science and deep space travel, while private industry was encouraged to take over the day-to-day business of transport to Earth orbit.

To spur private competition, NASA implemented its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in 2011. COTS awarded government contracts for resupplying the International Space Station. This is where SpaceX made its grand entrance. Funded by COTS, its Dragon module was the first private spacecraft to dock with the ISS in 2012. Orbital ATK followed closely, and now both companies regularly resupply the ISS. The Sierra Nevada Corporation is expected to join the ISS private club when it docks its Dream Chaser spacecraft in late 2020. This is considered a big win for NASA. The shuttle program cost around four billion dollars a year, but these resupply missions run closer to fifty million a pop.

But what about private manned spaceflight? At some point both Dragon and Dream Chaser are expected to carry actual people to the ISS and perhaps beyond, but that hasn’t happened yet. To date, only one privately developed craft has carried a person to space. This was  SpaceShipOne. In 2004, the first private astronaut, Mike Melvill, blasted this rocket-powered plane into a suborbital trajectory, topping 100 kilometers in altitude and only just kissing space. But it counts. SpaceShipOne’s adventure won its maker, Scaled Composites, the cool 10-million of the Ansari X Prize. Virgin Galactic teamed up with Scaled Composites to form the Space Ship Company, with the plan to turn its SpaceShipTwo into a regular space-tourism vessel. That hasn’t happened yet, for reasons I’ll get back to.

So why hasn’t private manned spaceflight become a thing yet? Because … money. Almost all private companies are driven by the profit motive, and besides the distant dream of space tourism there isn’t much money in sending people to space. At least, compared to launching satellites. That’s where the profit is for the moment, and as a result there are many private companies in the business of slinging satellites into orbit. Private industry is also eyeing the heavens for its vast natural resources. In 2015, Barack Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which will allow US companies to own materials extracted from space. Asteroid mining seems likely to drive the next wave of private enterprise because the potential profits are astronomical. That’s a whole other topic though, deserving of its own episode.

So here we get to the main argument for public versus private space programs. It has long been perceived that, in order to do important but unprofitable work, we need collectively funded and administered agencies like NASA. Grand enterprises like the Apollo moon landings inspired generations but didn’t turn a dime. The Hubble Space Telescope and other space-based observatories have revealed the deepest mysteries of our cosmos and keep a watchful eye on our own fragile planet, but these will never excite shareholders. We’ve sent probes to every planet in our solar system and landed on several, but not a single CEO got rich doing it.

Government space agencies have done incredible things, but is their role diminishing, even for the big, low-profit stuff? There appears to be a new model emerging for some of these moon-shot ventures – private funding by idealistic billionaires. Elon Musk is getting the most press right now. He seeded SpaceX with cash from his first project: PayPal. Now that SpaceX has a working heavy launch vehicle with reusable boosters, Musk is eyeing colonies on Mars and beyond. But Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, and his Blue Origin company is neck-and-neck in the whole re-landing rockets thing. In 2015 his New Shepard rocket performed the first successful vertical landing after a spaceflight. SpaceShipOne was solely funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, while its successor, SpaceShipTwo is now owned by billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Then there’s Russian billionaire Yuri Milner with his Breakthrough Starshot program. His seed funding may put the first robotic probe in another star system.

But is this the way we want to go? Should our most grand enterprises be funded and operated collectively? Chosen by humanity, or at least those we vote for in elections? Or should cede these important decisions to individuals and private companies? There are arguments on both sides. On the one hand, private industry is less constrained by politics and public opinion. The last few US presidents have ordered NASA to redefine its goals at some level – first it’s Mars, then it’s back to the Moon, then Mars, then the Moon again. Massive human effort is wasted every time a large program is scrapped, often for poorly informed political reasons, or as publicity stunts. Government agencies are also a little more constrained by public opinion. For example the shuttle program was shut down for years after the Challenger disaster. Private companies can afford to take more risks.

SpaceX put out a video of how not to land a booster, and estimated that the Falcon Heavy had 50/50 chance of blowing up on the launch pad. Musk pushed the launch button anyway. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is still forging ahead, even after the fatalities of a test flight crash and an earlier tank explosion. Aerospace billionaires see themselves as the new Wright brothers, and see risk and sunk investment as necessary for true innovation, and they want to move quickly. They want to move quickly, not necessarily to turn a profit, but to see the fruits of their labours before they die! And this gets to what one of the main dangers in over-reliance on rocketeer billionaires. They won’t always be around to drive their vision forward.

Despite its struggles with shifting politics, NASA has been at the forefront of science and space exploration for 60 years, and its motto “For the Benefit of All” is still held dear. Will this be true of the space programs built by today’s billionaires after control slips to boards of directors, who are not known for their idealistic tendencies? And whether our aerospace executives are idealists or not, they have a huge influence on the future of our species. Should that influence be something you can seize with hard work and cash, but without a single vote in a public election? I’m not sure I know the answer. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Although I’m actually not sure we’ll have much of a choice in the matter. Private spaceflight is here to stay, and that’s pretty exciting wherever you stand on the issue. The next step may be to figure out how to best marry public will and private enterprise, so that we may ensure The Benefit of All in our next steps in exploring outer Space Time.