The Privatization of Space Exploration

Business, Technology, Law and Policy

Lewis D. Solomon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351476348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Space was at the center of America's imagination in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy's visionary statement captured the mood of the day: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." The Apollo mission's success in July 1969 made almost anything seem possible, but the Cold War made space flight the province of governmental agencies in the United States. When the Apollo program ended in 1972, space lost its hold on the public interest, as the great achievements wound down. Entrepreneurs are beginning to pick up the slack-looking for safer, more reliable, and more cost effective ways of exploring space. Entrepreneurial activity may make create a renaissance in human spaceflight. The private sector can energize the quest for space exploration and shape the race for the final frontier. Space entrepreneurs and private sector firms are making significant innovations in space travel. They have plans for future tourism in space and safer shuttles. Solomon details current US and international laws dealing with space use, settlement, and exploration, and offers policy recommendations to facilitate privatization. As private enterprise takes hold, it threatens to change the space landscape forever. Individuals are designing spacecraft, start-up companies are testing prototypes, and reservations are being taken for suborbital space flights. With for-profit enterprises carving out a new realm, it is entirely possible that space will one day be a sea of hotels and/or a repository of resources for big business. It is important that regulations are in place for this eventuality. These new developments have great importance, huge implications, and urgency for everyone.

1

Introduction

Though millions brush it aside, we actually stand at the historical edge of humanity’s serious thrust into outer space. For historians of tomorrow looking back at the twenty-first century, one of [the] most important economic events of all may prove to be the colonization of space and wealth creation beyond our home planet.

—Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Revolutionary Wealth

For decades following Soviet Major Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight on April 12, 1961, human spaceflight remained infrequent and the prerogative of the public sector. Prior to June 2004, all space missions involved large, expensive governmental efforts. Then, on June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne, developed by Elbert (Burt) Rutan’s firm Scaled Composites LLC and financed by Microsoft co-founder, Paul G. Allen, became the first privately-funded manned spacecraft to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.¹

In October 2004, the momentum for change occurred, when Rutan-Allen won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for launching two human suborbital flights within two weeks. This achievement jump-started a private sector that went from nowhere to manned spaceflight to the edge of space. Winning the Ansari X Prize, which opened the door to a myriad of possibilities for the private sector space industry, changed the conversation; it got people excited to dream again about human spaceflight. Wealthy entrepreneurs began putting their faith and money into space endeavors. By pioneering in an affordable way through the atmosphere, the winners of the Ansari X Prize pierced the membrane that previously kept private enterprise anchored to the Earth.

Generations from now, if humans live in colonies in space, mine resources on the Moon and asteroids, and tap the sun’s power from space, they likely will look back at the SpaceShipOne winning the Ansari X Prize in 2004 as the spark that got them there. It excited those who wanted to dream and it showed that much more is possible than people previously thought.

Space exploration is, however, a risky endeavor, both technologically and financially. When you add legal uncertainty and bureaucratic barriers to the mix, willing investors become far fewer. Nevertheless, a new crop of entrepreneurs has popped up in America, hoping to turn a profit on everything from cheaper cargo launch systems to mining on the Moon and tapping solar energy to space tourism and even celestial hotels. These companies, and undoubtedly other lesser known dreamers, wait anxiously for more defined and nurturing laws as well as streamlined regulations which have been much needed, but long denied to the fledgling commercial space market.

Private exploration and settlement in outer space or on celestial bodies is legal, both in the American and transnational sense. However, the absence of or uncertainty with respect to transnational legal standards under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty² regarding property rights for commercial entities, including resource mining and extraction, nevertheless serves as a disincentive to private sector space enterprise. Business entities and investors who are unsure of their rights and lack assurance that their efforts and investments will receive legal protection are understandably hesitant to undertake the risks involved in developing new technologies and investing financial and human resources if they cannot be assured of some reasonable return. Further, uncertainty in the ability to market space resources shrinks the pool of investment capital. Like any other industry, the commercial space market needs a well-defined and minimally regulated legislative regime in order to get off its feet.

Under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty the private sector’s efforts and investments may not be legally protected. Now, some forty years later, increased respect exists for market incentives and for the commercialization of previous public sector activities. Nations seeking to encourage private sector space activities ought to revise the Outer Space Treaty (or enter into ancillary treaties) to provide clear transnational legal protection for private property rights and mineral exploitation in outer space. The importance of this one change cannot be over-emphasized. It will not only obviate future disputes but also serve as a prerequisite to outer space development, including solar power generation, lunar mining, and permanently located space habitats as well as lunar and orbital scientific research and manufacturing facilities.

Taking a Step Back and Forward

Space was at the center of America’s consciousness in the 1960s. In a memorable September 12, 1962 statement, President John F. Kennedy asserted: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”³ In the spirit of the early 1960s, the United States chose to do the hard, big stuff. Apollo’s success in July 1969 made almost anything seem possible, but it did not happen.

The Cold War made spaceflight the province of governmental agencies in the United States. When the Apollo program ended in 1972, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) basically became a jobs program and a means to funnel money to a handful of big aerospace firms. NASA could not break away from a launch system based on military technology; it was unable to implement a plan for reliable, safe, low-cost access to space. With high costs have come a slow pace.

Entrepreneurs are now seeking to rescue human space exploration, from NASA’s stagnant, decades-long monopoly. By unleashing entrepreneurial activity, it may be possible to change the space paradigm from the historic province of NASA and several giant aerospace firms and lead to a renaissance in human spaceflight. The private sector, not governmental agencies, such as NASA, will likely energize the quest for space exploration and shape the race for the final frontier.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, private enterprise is bubbling away, threatening to change the space landscape forever. Individuals are designing spacecraft, start-up companies are testing prototypes, and reservations are being taken for suborbital space flights. With for-profit enterprises seeking to carve out a new realm, the exploration and commercialization of space, the development of space as a tourist destination will likely soon become a reality.

The Significance of Space Exploration

The era of space exploration will start when private sector vehicles, developed for this purpose, start taking passengers on suborbital flights, with reusable space travel systems based on low cost, coupled with reliability and safety, but not the highest performance. Suborbital space tourism will provide a starting point and a significant driver for other private sector space endeavors. It offers the potential to create profits, bring in more investors, provide the groundwork and increased funding for research in other space applications, such as low gravity research as well as lunar and asteroid mining, and lead to broader public participation in orbital space travel. Because people would like to spend several days or a week or more in orbit, in addition to economical launch vehicles, the demand for space exploration will drive the construction and operation of space hotels.

The development of passenger space travel turns on the low cost, reliable, safe access to space by means of reusable launch vehicles (RLV). Similar to an airplane, a RLV, as its name indicates, can be used many times. However, a rocket-powered RLV can go into space. Launch cost savings for a RLV seem likely because of three factors. First, reusable passenger launch vehicles will be simpler than the current U.S. Space Shuttle, discussed in Chapter 2, because they will not perform multiple tasks. Second, these crafts will benefit from progress over the past thirty-five years in a number of areas, including materials technology, structural analysis, computer-aided design, and reliability engineering. Third, these vehicles will serve a large market, permitting “airline-like” operations. The increased scale of activity will lower costs and enhance efficiencies. Private firms have incentive to maximize the use of their vehicles by finding more customers, thereby amortizing their nonrecurring costs across an ever expanding consumer base.

The market for space tourism varies, of course, with the price per ticket, with the main obstacles being development of vehicles to fly passengers in a safe, low-cost manner. Surveys show a sufficiently large market in the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and some other Western European nations of those desirous of thrill-seeking recreational experiences to support not only research and development but also business opportunities for reusable launch vehicles.⁴ By 2020, estimates indicate that 100,000 individuals a year could be taking suborbital space rides.⁵

Today’s space entrepreneurs believe that if you build and operate safe, low-cost vehicles, the market will be there—the customers will come once the transportation systems exist. Large-scale space tourism, beginning with suborbital flights and then visits to the International Space Station or a similar entity would achieve several goals. First, through space exploration middle-class individuals, not multimillionaires, could explore the unknown. Second, it would convince the public that spaceflight is viable—it is safe. Third, it would drive spaceship developers to create even more cost-effective launch vehicles, thereby igniting further corporate interest in space. Fourth, it would create revenue-producing, profit-making businesses, particularly in the field of intellectual property and its spinoffs, which could fund future spacecraft development.

In short, suborbital space exploration would create a new business sector with potential to generate a significant revenue and profit streams, recapture the U.S. public as a large constituent group supporting space programs, and increase the safety and reliability of space vehicles and lower unit costs. By generating the revenues and offering a high volume traffic model needed to justify the capital investment to reduce the cost of space access, the public utilization of space ultimately offers the possibility for large-scale space exploration and utilization as well as the expansion of human settlement into colonies in space.

The Rationale for Space Exploration, Use, and Settlement

Beyond the development of space tourism and the value of exploration for its own sake—humans want to explore and expand into space because they want to—human space exploration serves nine needs—economic and humanitarian.

First, there exists a great potential for significant space-based research projects and technological innovation, including scientific and research laboratories for certain types of physical and chemical phenomena, including microgravity research experiments and agricultural production facilities. With privately-funded launches, companies can keep secret their research and information far easier than with publicly-funded flights.

Outer space provides a near vacuum, little or no gravity, and temperature extremes, offering unique prospects for various chemical and manufacturing processes. Vacuums are useful for industries requiring the crystallization for certain products, such as microchips and pharmaceuticals. The near perfect vacuum of space allows the enhancement of crystal formations, thereby aiding the commercial development of semiconductors and drugs. The near vacuum and weightlessness of space would also aid in manufacturing new and improved pharmaceuticals.

Second, there is the possibility for significant commercial development of the Moon, including tourism, the mining of the lunar surface for minerals and metals, and serving as a laboratory and then a base for long-duration space flights to Mars.⁶ With the successful development of low-cost, safe suborbital passenger spacecrafts, lunar tourism, requiring orbital vehicles, could grow as people go to the Moon in ever increasing numbers. Some observers see the growth from suborbital to orbital services taking perhaps ten years, with the step from orbital to lunar travel being even quicker because companies are already studying how to provide lunar tourism services and a strong demand exists based on the attraction of the Moon.⁷

Using the Moon, first as a laboratory and then as a base, rests on readily available lunar resources. Oxygen extracted from lunar rocks and the Moon’s polar ice could be used for life support and as a propellant. Hydrogen taken from lunar polar ice could be used as fuel and in various industrial processes. Dealing with a lunar environment different from the Earth’s, for example, its low gravity and the exposure to solar and cosmic radiation, seems surmountable.⁸

Apparently, minerals are in abundance on the Moon,⁹ either directly on its surface or located only a few feet below. For example, iron is relatively abundant on the Moon and could be separated to a high level of concentration relatively easily. Other lunar materials could be separated into their component elements, such as aluminum, titanium, and magnesium, through various chemical techniques, using some processes similar to those used on Earth and others consisting of novel adaptions. Lunar silicon could be used to construct large solar cell arrays. The isotope helium-3, available on the Moon’s surface, is a potential fuel for use in nuclear fusion reactors on Earth or in space. Because of the inefficiencies and the costs associated with launching large amounts of earthly raw materials into space, lunar mining, excavation, and processing operations could generate materials for the construction of large spacecrafts and space stations either on the Moon or fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Rise, Stagnation, and Possible Revitalization of NASA
• 3. Building on Winning the Ansari X Prize: Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC; Scaled Composites, LLC; Virgin Galactic Airways; and The Spaceship Company
• 4. From Space Travel Broker to Joint Venturer: Space Adventures, Ltd.
• 5. The Quest to Reduce Launch Costs: Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
• 6. Developing Space Habitats: Bigelow Aerospace Inc.
• 7. The Legal Environment for Private Sector Space Enterprises
• 8. Conclusion
• Index