Half a century after humans left footprints on the Moon space exploration, and exploitation, have entered a new era. Private space companies are developing new launch vehicles and spacecrafts, there is a sixth branch of the US military called “Space Force”, and international cooperation in space – whose greatest symbol has been the International Space Station – is replaced by renewed geopolitical antagonism. Space is becoming the next trillion-dollar industry. According to Morgan Stanley the space industry could generate more than $1 trillion by 2040, up from $350 billion today. This enormous economic bounty speaks to the wisdom of privatizing space, as established by the US Space Act 2015. As a result, innovation has flourished. For instance, we now have two novel ways of launching payloads in “Low Earth Orbit” (LEO) at relatively low cost: reusable rockets, and airplane-borne rocket launchers. LEO is a zone between 160km and 1000km above the surface of Earth, and is of particular economic interest because it is the place for broadband communication satellites, space tourism, and new space stations that can be used to launch missions beyond Earth. The Moon is next: NASA’s Artemis program envisions crews taking off a space station at LEO called “Lunar Gateway”, to be built by private company Space X; and travelling to the Moon by the mid 2020s. Elon Musk dreams of a permanent colony of a million inhabitants in Mars by 2050. And there are plans to colonise Venus too, using airships that will fly just above the poisonous Venusian clouds.
New launch vehicles are not the only breakthrough innovation that has resulted from space privatization. Beaming broadband from space can connect every human living on our planet, wherever they are, at very low cost. Humans have not left Earth’s orbit since 1972 – when Apollo 17 was last to land on the Moon – but now there is a clear path to returning to human space exploration, at least within the so-called “Goldilocks space zone” of our solar system, between Venus and Mars. Zero gravity can enable scientific and engineering miracles, like developing new drugs and therapies, as well as new foods and materials. Asteroid mining, particularly after the successful mission of Japan’s Hayabusa that collected and returned samples from an asteroid on Earth, is now more feasible that ever. All these breakthroughs have taken place within a relatively short time. This exponential rate of growth owes a lot to generous government subsidies and public procurement programs. For example, Elon Musk’s Space X has received multi-billion dollar contracts and hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies. Blue Origin, the space business owned by Jeff Bezos, may soon receive $10 billion of federal funds through the Endless Frontier Fund. These public investments have increased confidence that the nascent space industry enjoys the full backing of the US government, a fact that is expected to attract massive private investment in the next few years, as space companies demonstrate their financial viability in what is arguably a very high-risk environment to operate.
However, risks in space are not purely financial, or technological. There are also geopolitical, environmental, and socio-political. And it is perhaps a good time to reflect on those risks as well, as they are likely to inhibit further progress and reduce the obvious benefits of space privatization. Take for example the Space Act 2015 that has launched the privatization of space. Some legal scholars have argued that the Act is in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, an international agreement, also signed by the US, which is the basis of international space law. The Treaty stipulates that outer space, including the Moon and celestial bodies, “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. However, in a scenario whereby a space company claimed exploitation rights on, say an asteroid, it could only do so through a national court. A ruling by that court would imply national sovereignty on the asteroid, thus directly violating the Outer Space Treaty. It is therefore not impossible to imagine future conflicts in space over exploitation rights. As the West decouples from China and Russia in collaborating peacefully is space, such conflicts could spill over from the courts to the battlefield. It is therefore prudent for all international actors to address such risks early on, come to a consensus, and amend the Outer Space Treat accordingly by establishing an International Space Court.
The second major risk in doing business in space is environmental, and more specifically the generation of more space debris around Earth that would prevent future launches. There are currently an estimated 27,000 pieces of “space junk” orbiting Earth at high speed, posing the threat of fatal collision with space vehicles launching or orbiting. A recent European conference in space debris has warned that space junk in orbit could increase 50 times by the end of the century. It is therefore vital that private space companies are held responsible for ensuring the safe decommissioning of their space vehicles from LEO, or indeed for the collection and disposal of existing space debris, as part of their core mission and their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda.
Finally, there is the socio-political risk that space privatization may leave most humans behind. The “Last Frontier”, if left to become a “winner-takes-all” race between powerful private conglomerates, may result in humanity splitting in a “space-abled” minority who would be travelling in space and enjoying massive financial and scientific dividends, and a “space-disabled” majority stuck on Earth. Such a divide would be detrimental to the survival of democracies and, indeed, to humanity itself. We need to democratize space exploration and exploitation so that many more people, and their descendants, can participate in what is likely to become the most important industry of the 21st century. Replacing subsidies with US-backed private bonds may be a good way towards achieving such a goal. Pension funds, trade unions, professional associations, cooperatives, and individual citizens, could purchase these bonds and hold them in their investment portfolios. These bonds could include options to convert to equity after a few years, something that could improve the future governance of space companies. And they may also include lottery tickets that would enable winners to travel to space at no cost, so that not only the very rich but also everyone would have the possibility to experience the majesty of space travel.
