The Consequential Frontier: Challenging the Privatization of Space - Hardcover

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, SPACE BELONGED TO THE GODS. Their names still loom large today—each planet in our solar system but our own is named for a Roman or Greek deity, and we continue to invoke ancient myths and legends through our spacecraft, from China’s Jade Rabbit Moon lander to the Ares rocket. But just as technology and scientific inquiry eradicates mythology and superstition here on Earth, the development of space technology like telescopes, rockets, and probes have increased our understanding of the cosmos greatly, and the gods have lost some of their power. Space is now the domain of humanity.

We first stepped out into the cosmos as explorers. We marched into the cold abyss of space in the name of science, as nations flung their best and bravest off our planet to find the truths of our universe. But the mission is changing rapidly. While exploration efforts continue further afield, the tiny band of space close to our home is fast becoming a place of business, profits, and private companies. Corporations could soon rule the cosmos, and for all the dramatic warnings in science fiction, nobody is paying enough attention to the consequences.

WHEN NEIL ARMSTRONG AND BUZZ ALDRIN FIRST PLANTED their boots on the surface of the Moon in 1969, humanity collectively paused to wonder at the achievement. An estimated 600 million people around the world watched the black-and-white broadcast of man’s first steps on a celestial body, the high point of a 76-hour mission there and back.1 The Moon landing opened up a host of possibilities in space, and many imagined the inevitable Moon bases, settlements on Mars, and manned exploration missions to the further reaches of the solar system that would surely follow. But over 50 years later they are still waiting. Extraordinary feats have been accomplished since—we’ve landed on a meteor, sent a probe out of the solar system, and put robots on Mars—but nothing has captured the world’s amazement like the Moon landing, and the startling pace at which America reached the lunar surface.

The race to the Moon was fueled by the Cold War—two world superpowers fiercely competing to reach the cosmos first and establish dominance in space. When relations between the United States and the Soviet Union thawed, the impetus was removed and progress stalled. Now that thrust has returned in another form. The commercial space sector has emerged, bringing with it reusable rockets, lower prices, and a different reason to explore space—profit. But when driven by money, mankind has historically made decisions that in hindsight reveal themselves to have been shortsighted and detrimental to the species. In space, the consequences of such decisions would be just as disastrous out there as here on Earth.

When we send humanity off this planet and out into the solar system on anything approaching a permanent basis, there will be two key questions: What do we take with us, and what do we leave behind? Spreading out into the universe allows the species to examine itself closely, to look at its faults, its mistakes, and its petty failings, and decide to start over without them. It’s hard to do that when the primary motivation for those taking us to the stars is making money back here on Earth.

Without careful thought, monopolies will be built, profit margins widened, and inequality spread. Space is a tricky topic to consider (and write about)—the industry is moving extremely fast toward goals that are a long way away. Focus too closely on the short term and you’ll find yourself behind the times, and look too far into the future, and you’ll be dismissed as another star-gazing science-fiction fan. The fact is that major changes are happening now, spurred on by the demands of industry and economics. And so we must decide if we want to hand over the fate of space to private companies, as we have done so problematically here on Earth. Money is driving this race. It’s fueling the rocket launches, funding the startups, influencing the right politicians, and buying access to the cosmos. With so much money involved, we should all hope that science, exploration, and the good of the species isn’t lost on the journey, or the effects back here on Earth will only be negative.

One of the principal arguments against going to space is that we should solve our earthbound problems first. It’s a simplification of a much more complex issue, and one I don’t subscribe to. There will never be a perfect time to move further into space, no utopian future on Earth where the only possible next step is to go beyond our terrestrial home. Space shouldn’t be viewed as a luxury to be undertaken after every other achievement is accomplished, and we must explore it for its potential to help with these problems. Nothing brings the species together with a sense of pride and victory like a major milestone in space—and anything accomplished off the planet, when done in the name of humanity rather than private interests, is a success for every person on the planet.

Many of the technologies being fired off into space already stand to benefit us here on Earth. The new wave of microsatellites can bring connectivity to people all over the world, a major factor in reducing inequality. Health breakthroughs in space can help millions, and even technology designed to keep us alive on other planets will come in handy as climate change continues to ravage ours. I hold a lot of hope for the future of humanity in space, and applaud wholeheartedly the efforts to become a multi-planetary species. But the potential to do amazing things for people here on Earth only makes it more important to get it right—and the commercial space industry is taking off so fast, it may be hard to catch up.

Just like a rocket blasting off the face of the planet, the commercialization of space has taken place in stages. The heavy lifting that got humans off the ground initially was done by NASA and the governmental agencies of Russia and Europe. NASA has probably done more than any other agency in the world to advance the achievements of humanity in space, but has struggled with a lack of funding, the dwindling attention of the American public, and bureaucracy. The Apollo program, which took Armstrong, Aldrin, and 10 others to the surface of the Moon, brought great success right up until it was ended in 1975, as the Russian and American space agencies began working together.2 It’s successor, the Space Shuttle program was approved by President Richard Nixon in 1972, and first launched in 1981. The Shuttle program’s main use turned out to be helping build the International Space Station (ISS), one of the greatest feats of global cooperation, which still orbits the planet today. Despite a long list of accomplishments, including becoming the first-ever reusable spacecraft and launching many satellites and telescopes into space, the Shuttle period of NASA disappointed because it failed to build on the successes of Apollo. It was also beset with problems, which twice proved to be fatal. The Shuttle program, with no real alternative, continued beyond its expected retirement date and flew its last mission in 2011.3

At that point NASA found itself in an odd position—for the first time since the 1960s, it had no way of reaching space. The next generation of NASA spacecraft was far off, and the agency was forced to do two things: one was to hitch a ride on Russian rockets headed to the ISS, the other was to seriously consider commercial launch partners to send resupplies, satellites, and astronauts into space. The door for commercial companies looking to establish themselves in the launch industry was now wide open, and in walked a couple of billionaires with different philosophies on space.

Once the first stage of a rocket has spent its fuel and delivered its payload to a certain height, it falls away and the second and later stages take over. When NASA lost its ride into space, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had already made significant progress on their space startups, SpaceX and Blue Origin, and were eager to take over. The two entrepreneurs had made their fortunes elsewhere, but both carried a lifelong fascination with space and, over the years, developed vastly different ideas on how it can benefit mankind.

Musk has often spoken of his desire to retire on Mars and has made it his life’s goal. He heartily endorses the Plan B point of view, which was perfectly summed up by Carl Sagan when he said all civilizations either become spacefaring or extinct. Musk continues to be motivated by the fear of humanity here on Earth imploding or causing another dark age. “It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from Earth that it’s more likely to survive than a moon base,” Musk said onstage at the 2018 SXSW festival.4 “If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages.”

Bezos, on the other hand, believes humanity needs to go into space to save Earth, not humanity. “I hate the Plan B argument,” he said.5 “I think Plan B with respect to Earth being destroyed is make sure that Plan A works. We’ve sent robotic probes to every planet in this solar system, believe me, this is the best one. We know that. It’s not even close. My friends who say they want to move to Mars or something...I say, ‘Why don’t you live in Antarctica for a year first, because it’s a garden paradise compared to Mars.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin are not the only rocket companies in the game, but they attract the most attention due to their achievements and high-profile founders. This difference in philosophy has expressed itself in differing approaches to space. While Musk has made outlandish predictions, called for drastic measures, and celebrated each success with boyish enthusiasm, Bezos’s Blue Origin has been going about its task much quieter, preferring to make steady progress under the radar rather than flashy, live-streamed launches and ambitious timelines. In May 2019, Bezos bucked that trend slightly, when he unveiled the Blue Origin moon lander, and announced he wanted to move all of the Earth’s heavy industry and mining into space, to preserve our planet and fight off climate change. This idea would see Earth become “zoned” for light industry and residential purposes only. He also revealed his ambitions to launch a constellation of gigantic space stations where people would live, alleviating overpopulation.

In some ways these companies are extensions of their founders’ characters, with Musk the eccentric adventurer and Bezos the more calculating industrialist. If both were to carry out plans in space similar to what they’ve already achieved on Earth, Musk could recklessly strike out for Mars first, while Bezos would meticulously gain a stranglehold over crucial infrastructure closer to home. Neither situation is ideal, but if we’re going to make real progress in the solar system, it seems inevitable these two men will play a significant role.

TALK OF STORES, FACTORIES, AND TOWNS ON OTHER PLANETS raises comparisons to the emergence of economic hot spots here on Earth. Perhaps the most pertinent analogy, and certainly the most used, is the spread of railroads across America in the late nineteenth century. Railroad expansion was fairly slow until private companies were given the means and the resources to build links across the country and make huge profits in the process. The expansion was hailed as a great success for the private sector, pushing through a frontier with the full force of capitalism, and enabling the United States to grow into one of the world’s superpowers in a short amount of time. As with the new private companies in space, the transcontinental railroad brought down the cost of travel. It cost $1,000 to travel across the United States prior to the railroad being built, a figure that dropped to $150 after construction was completed.6 Where a station was built, a town would flourish, and train tracks also enabled the movement of goods across large distances, establishing a major advantage for the industrialized North during the American Civil War. But to say this was all due to the private sector’s money-making endeavors doesn’t tell the whole story.

“Everybody likes to point to the railroad and say that, ‘Oh, well back in the nineteenth century, when all this was all being built up, it was all built by the private sector.’ Well, hold on a minute,” James Vedda, senior policy analyst for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation, told me.7 “They didn’t do it alone because they were given huge amounts of land to lay their tracks and to build their stations. And not just a little strip of land wide enough for the tracks, they were usually given up to a mile on either side.”

The land grants were given to these companies by the U.S. government as part of the Pacific Railroad Acts of the 1860s.8 This made them a great early example of a public-private partnership. “I read one estimate that in the nineteenth-century development of the railroads, the railroad companies were given land grants that if you total them all up together were equivalent to the size of Texas,” Vedda added. “They sold off all that extra land [and] they found that they got to keep the money. Besides that, the U.S. Geological Survey went out and did this surveying for them and gave them the results for free so that is a significant cost that they didn’t have. So that was a great example of a partnership.”

In space, SpaceX and Blue Origin are the railroad companies, building a pathway into the beyond that others can use. The next wave of entrepreneurs are those who set up hotels, bars, and factories in places with easier access and increased populations. The private launch companies have worked closely with NASA and the government to get as far as they have. Obviously they haven’t been given any land in space, and that’s perhaps the greatest flaw of the analogy. But there are lessons to be learned regardless. The transcontinental railroad brought great economic prosperity to America, but not without a cost. The government gave away a huge amount of land that belonged to Native Americans, displacing them and also damaging wildlife. While there may not be any natives in space (that we know of), this colonial attitude can be dangerous, as I will explore in many chapters of this book.

It could be that only capitalism has the potential to put a permanent base on the Moon or people on the surface of Mars, but if that’s true, we need to ensure rules, regulations, and best practices are in place well before we reach these milestones. The startup world has long raged against such regulations, but these libertarian attitudes simply won’t work in the harsh environment of space, where safety and freedom are far from guaranteed. While nobody wants international regulation to limit innovation, there must be a balance.

To understand the commercial space industry, we must first look at its short history and the landmark moments that moved it from a frowned-upon concept to the bastion of progress many see it as today. The first chapter will take a look at the early promise of commercializati...