Privatizing Space Exploration: Synthesis Essay

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NASA ended its space shuttle project in 2011. This decision stimulated the development of the commercial space exploration industry. The current commercial space exploration market is vast, but at the same time, the commercial space exploration industry faces many problems, such as the lack of sufficient customers. Due to the high cost of research and development, the number of companies engaged in the industry is small, and the opportunity cost is also high. However, in the foreseeable future, due to the development of space technology, near-Earth orbit missions such as satellites will continue to increase. At the same time, due to the limited resources of the earth, human beings will inevitably explore outer space to obtain more resources. Therefore, this market will continue to grow, and the business model will be more mature. In this paper, I will discuss the significant opportunities in the commercial space industry.

Achievements that the NASA shuttle program reached

According to the NASA Apollo missions history (Loff, ‘The Apollo Missions,’ 2015), in 2011, NASA ended its space shuttle project. The shuttle program of NASA started in 1981 because of the competitive pressure from the Soviet Union. During the 30-year life span of the shuttle project, there are many achievements reached.

Based on the information that came from the chronology of NASA (Barry, ‘A CHRONOLOGY OF DEFINING EVENTS IN NASA HISTORY, 1958-1998’, 2012), at the beginning of 1981, after ten years of research and development, the ‘Colombia’ was finally built successfully, and it was launched on April 12. It is the first space shuttle to transport astronauts and equipment between space and ground. Its first flight was to test its orbital and landing capabilities. It flew 54 hours in space, and then the space plane landed safely after orbiting 36 times the Earth. Before building the ‘Challenger space shuttle, ‘Colombia’ made four more flights. ‘Colombia’ flew a total of 28 times.

The most famous flights of ‘Colombia.’

During the sixth flight in 1983, it carried a space laboratory built by Europe and had ten days of research activities on it. According to the Spaceflight mission report of STS-61C (Becker, ‘STS-61C’, 2019), on the seventh flight in 1986, the crew included Franklin Chang-Diaz (the first American American astronaut) and Bill Nelson (the first US Congressman to enter space). The achievements of ‘Colombia’ also included the transfer of many civilian and military satellites into space, the recovery of satellites requiring repair, and further space laboratory experiments. By the end of April 1996, the ‘Colombia’ had already carried out 19 flights.

In 1982, the Challenger became the second space shuttle of NASA. The Space Shuttle (formerly known as the Space Transportation System) consists of an orbiter, a solid-fuel rocket propeller, and an external combustion chamber. During its various flight missions, the Challenger put the European Space Laboratory and several militaries and scientific satellites into orbit.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is the third space shuttle built by the United States. The first flight of Discovery was on August 30, 1984, for a total of 30 flights, more than any other space shuttle.

Eye-catching achievement

According to the NASA Apollo missions history, in 1995, the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope was probably the most famous of the missions completed by Space Shuttle Discovery. It flew over the ‘Peace’ space station under the control of the first female space shuttle pilot, Eileen Collins. The Discovery also deployed several military and research satellites (including satellites from other countries) and repaired the failed satellite.

In 1985, Atlantis became the fourth space shuttle of NASA. The space shuttle Atlantis weighed 77.7 tons and was launched on October 3, 1985. It carried out 26 flights between October 1985 and March 1996.

Some of the more eye-catching achievements of the space shuttle, including the ‘Galileo’ and ‘Magellan planetary probes, were sent into space. In 1991, Shannon Lucid entered Russia’s ‘Peace’ space station. Lucid stayed on the space station for six months, breaking the space. The record of the stay time, after which the ‘Atlantis’ space shuttle, took her back to the ground.

‘Endeavour’ is the last space shuttle orbiter built by NASA. ‘Endeavour’ is 36.6 high. It costs more than 2 billion US dollars. It was launched on May 7, 1992, and flew 19 times.

The Shut Down of the Space Shuttle Project

The space shuttle is the most advanced, sophisticated, and fully functional spacecraft ever built since human civilization. According to the FAQ of the space shuttle program page from NASA (Bray, ‘Space Shuttle and International Space Station,’ 2015), regardless of the space shuttle R&D and manufacturing costs, each space shuttle flight costs more than $500 million. Use the space shuttle to mail parcels from the ground to the International Space Station; the cost per pound will be 20,000 US dollars. This also makes the US space shuttle the most expensive project in the world space industry.

After the tragedy of ‘Colombia’ and ‘Challenger,’ plus that when Obama took office, the fiscal deficit and the financial crisis deepened., he stopped many kinds of space programs that cost a large amount of money, which made the new aerospace aircraft construction plan canceled.

Conducive to privatization

The United States grounded space shuttle, on the surface, seems to be a major setback in the history of American space, but from an industrial point of view, this is a ‘transfusion’ type of development to the ‘hematopoietic’ type of development of the aerospace industry, will produce in the future Immeasurable benefits.

This will first allow more outstanding aerospace talents to flow to the mature private aerospace industry. The shutdown of the space shuttle project caused tens of thousands of people to lose their jobs, but private institutions absorbed most of them. On October 4, 2004, the first privately launched human-crewed spacecraft, Spaceship One, successfully carried out a suborbital flight, which opened the prelude to aerospace commercialization.

The Current Situation of The Commercial Space Exploration And Transport Industry

The private rocket manufacturing and launch service industry has grown significantly since 2000, especially the American Space Exploration Technology Company founded by Elon Musk, and the Blue Origin Company created by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. They have all made great progress. From 2002 to the present, the US Space Exploration Technology Corporation spent 17 years developing crewed spaceflight technology. Compared with the traditional American aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the emerging small aerospace companies that entered the market later reduced the production cost by the small number of personnel and institutions and won the favor of NASA. The data (‘How SpaceX and Boeing will get Astronauts to the ISS. A comparison of the Crew Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz and Space Shuttle.’, 2019) shows that space exploration costs about $60 million per rocket, but the average cost of launching a rocket by Boeing and Lockheed Martin is $435 million.

From the above data, we can see that there is a large number of funds that the government agency provides to private space exploration companies.

Commercial rockets take the order of payload as the primary profit model, commercial satellite orders and national satellite orders are the main targets of commercial rocket profit. In the future, with the differentiation strategy of different enterprises, military trade orders, and space station transportation will become potential profit points.

The commercial rocket development stage is even earlier, the industry barriers are higher, the business model is mature, and it is mostly a rocket supplier and accepts civil or military orders as the main profit model, which is suitable for investors to enter at this stage. In the future, as the number of rocket launches increases, the potential business opportunities will be enormous.

Global commercial aerospace investment and development stage is positively related to growth

According to Bryce Space and Technology’s Bryce_Start_up_Space in 2018 (‘brycetech.com,’ 2018), the global investment trend in the commercial aerospace industry is in three stages. From 2001 to 2005, an average of 8 investments per year; in 2006-2011, an average of 23 investments per year occurred. In 2012-2017, it jumped to an average of 110 investments per year.

The Future of Private Sector In Space Exploration

As the report from the NATO report expressed (Bockel, ‘ESC 2018 General report – The Future of the Space Industry’, 2018), commercial rocket launch is entirely driven by supply and demand. The demand for commercial satellite launches will increase significantly in the future, and at the same time, with the national policy and the development strategy of private rocket companies, the launch orders will keep rising with the breakthrough of rocket development.

In addition to NASA’s technical and personnel support, private space exploration companies’ rapid development also relies on US space policy initiatives. Since 2006, the United States has successively issued a series of laws and regulations, such as the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act and the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act, and specifically proposed to encourage and take practical measures to promote the commercial space transportation industry.

Conclusion

Based on the above analysis, we know that commercial aerospace will continue to thrive in the future, and with the development of technology and the continuous improvement of relevant laws and regulations, the commercial aerospace industry will have a better growth environment.

Commercial aerospace in the next few years will be based on near-Earth orbit transportation projects to research and develop long-range orbiters, and in the next few years, capital market investment in commercial space will usher in rapid growth, commercial aerospace will also Welcome a broader space for development.

References

Loff, S. (2015, March 16). The Apollo Missions. Retrieved October 13, 2019, from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/index.html.
Barry, B. (2012, January 3). A CHRONOLOGY OF DEFINING EVENTS IN NASA HISTORY, 1958-1998. Retrieved October 13, 2019, from https://www.history.nasa.gov/40thann/define.htm.
Becker, J. (2019, January 1). STS-61C. Retrieved October 13, 2019, from http://www.spacefacts.de/mission/english/sts-61c.htm.
Bray, N. (2015, April 28). Space Shuttle and International Space Station. Retrieved October 13, 2019, from https://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html.
How SpaceX and Boeing will get Astronauts to the ISS. A comparison of the Crew Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz, and Space Shuttle. (2019, February 22). Retrieved October 13, 2019, from https://everydayastronaut.com/crew-dragon-vs-starliner/.
brycetech.com. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2019, from https://brycetech.com/downloads/Bryce_Start_Up_Space_2018.pdf.
Bockel, J.-M. (2018, November 17). ESC 2018 General Report – The Future of the Space Industry. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://www.nato-pa.int/sites/default/files/2018-12/2018 – THE FUTURE OF SPACE INDUSTRY – Bockel REPORT – 173 ESC 18 E fin.pdf

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