Ever since humans learned to fly, reaching further and higher…
STOP STOP STOP! We’ve tried this once,
and we screwed up, as you nicely pointed out.
What we wanted to do in that video was explore this privatization of space-
but we got caught in the nostalgia, and my kid-dream of going to space;
and we ended up with a video that didn’t accomplish anything, and missed a few facts.
But this story is honestly too good to not be told,
so we are breaking our own rules and trying again:
Is it NASA or is it Elon Musk who will take the first human to Mars? It’s blurry.
When you look at a mission to space these days, it’s not immediately
obvious whose launchpad we’re looking at, or honestly… who is paying for the party?
In 2021 Space Tourism became mainstream again. It’s not the first time it happens. But behind all
of that, there are decades of private companies slowly but surely owning space exploration- and it
does seem that indeed, private companies, private innovation is spearheading the way to space.
So how did we go from this to this?
This story actually begins in the 50s, a few years after the end of the Second World War.
All of these countries, countries with massively different ideologies,
all had to join, coordinate forces to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan.
But this relationship would not last. As the war ended,
the world became this playing field to see who the next superpower would be: capitalism or communism.
This cold war had these two countries
‘indirectly’. fighting for control. Many of those fights would happen in the soil, and
with the blood of poor countries, and economies. But one of those battlegrounds would be space.
Yes, space is cool. The truth is out there. The answers about who we are, and where we come from
are out there. But in the 50s space was a race of ideologies. A true dick-measuring
contest between two rising superpowers trying to own the world, physically and politically.
In 1955 the US made a splash about them launching their first satellite to space.
And they were up for a nasty surprise. In what looked ridiculous at first,
the Soviet Union responded, just 4 days later, that they were planning to do the same.
The shock came when they achieved it.
Sputnik 1 became the first-ever satellite in space- beating the US’s Explorer by a full year.
This may not seem like a big deal now, but at the time this was a shock to the Western world.
Everybody went crazy. It’s regarded to this day as ‘The Sputnik shock’.
And just 4 years later a Russian cosmonaut would become the first
man in space- again, a whole year before the US.
At the beginning of the 60s, the Soviets were clearly winning
this cold war, and not just in space.
The president back then, JFK- met with the Head of NASA, James Webb (yeah, that James Webb),
desperate for options to turn the tide.
And James Webb told him that there was no way they could beat the Soviets on launching
a space station, orbiting or even landing an unmanned ship on the moon. That the only way
that they could maybe, perhaps, out-achieve them… was pushing to land humans on the moon.
And while we all know how that story ends, no one likes to talk about the context.
There was some massive backlash here because this mission would cost the US
some $28Billion dollars- which adjusted for today would mean about $280 Billion. That’s over $1,000
per US adult today- to fund this little race. A lot of people weren’t happy.
JFK’s deadline- a man on the moon by the end of the decade- would put both the US and the Russians
under tremendous pressure, which is not without consequences.
On the Soviet side, missions were being pushed without the proper tests and security checks.
Dozens of attempts to send probes to Venus failed.
And they saw their first human casualty as well. Vladimir Komarov knew his ship was flawed.
There are reports of him telling friends and family that he was probably not going
to make it. However, if he walked out, his replacement was going to be Yuri
Gagarin- and he didn’t want this national hero to die in his place.
He agreed to fly the Soyuz, which, as he expected, would start failing almost from
the moment it took off. The US picked up part of his transmission as he was crashing down.
This photo of his burned remains is a
crude reminder of everything that surrounded this launch.
But When the US finally did land on the moon, they did include Komarov in a
plaque that still sits there- of everyone that had died in the pursuit of space.
A sign of a truce to come. While these two governments
were battling it out, everybody else down here was dreaming about space as well.
Technology and culture were advancing hand-in-hand. Just look at a recent blockbuster,
Dune. The novel came out in 1965, and it coincided with the first images of Earth from outer space.
The novel tackled the environment, religion, and society fascinatingly. Plus, combined with our
first views of our planet, this book sparked a wave of interest in the future of space travel.
Images were fueling inspiration all around. Stanley Kubric fell
in love with NASA's high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface. In fact, these very images
inspired him and Arthur C. Clarke to finally write the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This movie even beat out the lunar landing by an entire year.
And, the Lunar Landing was huge. When man landed on the Moon in 1969,
everything became possible, from houses in space to living on another planet.
In fact, both the film and the Lunar Landing were so culturally significant
that some people said the lunar landing was also a Kubrick creation.
Then, there's Star Wars. In 1977, this movie changed the world's perception of space.
This movie was so important that it would influence actual space
exploration for years to come. After the US reached the moon,
a period of peace ensued.
We started to see the first collaborations between these . They signed treaties and
agreed to launch space stations together.
NASA even had some plans to land humans on Mars as soon as 1986- but this Space Race
was over. And so was the funding.
The money that allowed NASA to sprint to the moon came, in many ways,
thanks to the cold war. JFK used it as leverage to line up Congress behind this common cause.
But at the end of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union was collapsing… and
Congress didn’t want to spend too much money on space anymore. The rally was over.
This wouldn’t stop the rest of the world, though. France, India, North & South Korea, Israel, Italy,
Brazil, Japan, Iran, and China- all developed the capability to launch ships into space.
All of these governments saw the importance of space exploration,
either to demonstrate their power, their economy- or just to not get left behind. And space became
this collaboration ground between governments: sharing knowledge, jointly funding space missions…
But for the longest time, space was a military, government operation, an expense in the name
of science (or power), maybe a long-term investment- but most certainly not a business.
Money was being made, mind you. But not from going to space. Between the 80s and 2000s,
we saw a lot of companies, conglomerates, and even state-owned commercial agencies make
tons of money working for the governments, as contractors building ships, and components.
So while you saw that space shuttle with that big
NASA patch, it wasn’t NASA who build it. It was all outsourced.
As time went by, funding for NASA decreased,
and when the shuttle program ended, the US even lost the capability to launch spaceships.
For most of the 2000s, the missions to re-supply the US astronauts
in the international space station were operated by Russia.
But years before reaching that point, the US understood that private capital,
private innovation could unlock the next step in space exploration.
In 1984 they changed one very critical clause in NASA’s mission statement;
So NASA’s job is no longer just space exploration, but space commercialization.
This was the first key factor in this transformation.
The other factor was, actually, the Internet.
The 90s gave us a new wave of entrepreneurs with the vision,
and the funding, to start companies especially dedicated to Space exploration.
The companies that worked with NASA in the 80s and 90s were conglomerates, mergers of mergers,
defense contractors… but in the 2000s these tech entrepreneurs suddenly figured that it
was possible to line up venture capital behind a space startup.
Now, as of today, these are all the privately-owned companies
that have the tested capacity to launch vehicles into Orbit.
And these are just a small sample of a much bigger group, of companies working in either engines,
propulsion, sub-orbital vehicles, or that still don’t have successful tests.
But let’s focus on the ones with actual orbital capacity. You’ll notice Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
is missing here, because despite all the fuzz they’ve never launched a vehicle to orbit.
In the weeks surrounding their launch with space tourists. Bezos threw some
shade at Branson because his ship was the one crossing the Karman line,
(the line that divides space) while Branson’s didn’t- so they
weren’t technically astronauts. But Branson’s company, established in 2017
was able to ship their first commercial payload in mid-2021, after just 4 years.
So we drew that in this diagram. First United Launch Alliance and Northrop Grumman
are massive defense contractors that have been working for NASA and the military for decades.
They are both coming up on 100 successful commercial launches,
with billions of dollars in revenue.
But I wanted to focus on the new ones, this 2000s space race.
Like I said, Blue Origin has been working on this for over 20 years! Bezos founded
Blue Origin in the year 2000s (yes with all the money he made around the dot-com bubble), and
is yet to send anything to orbit. Some passengers barely leaving the atmosphere, but not to orbit.
Virgin Galactic comes as the fastest. Branson established in 2017,
and it took them just 5 years to launch a successful, contracted mission.
RocketLab doesn’t get a lot of publicity on this side of the world,
but they are part of this race as well. Founded by Peter Beck in New Zealand,
it took them 12 years to finally land a contract- but they have been taking contracts since 2018.
They are the first Southern Hemisphere private company to reach space and now have 12+
launches in queue for 2022, all contracted.
And of course the cool kid on the block here is SpaceX. We can’t
argue with Elon’s popularity and how he’s embedded himself in pop culture.
It took 8 years for SpaceX to do their first commercial flight,
and out of this new generation of space startups, it is the largest by revenue.
SpaceXs popularity and reusable rockets have allowed it to establish itself as
the spearhead of innovation here- and they are clearly far ahead.
They are already deploying Starlink, to provide Satellite Internet- you can hire it if you want.
Today SpaceX is also the only one with a vehicle that can transport a crew
into orbit- which has been hired by NASA to ferry astronauts to the Space Station,
but also used to put tourists in orbit.
Today it’s the only US vehicle that can ferry astronauts, but others are coming behind.
Boeing is expected to have their Starliner vehicle ready this year,
and compete with SpaceX. But the planned flights they have so far are commercials-
tourists to the ISS, we have not seen that since Guy Laliberté went there in 2009.
Boeing is also collaborating with Blue Origin and other companies to launch their own
space station, Orbital Reef. And they aren’t the only ones,
Axiom space, established in 2016 is developing an annex to the ISS to just use for tourists.
The moment investors, and not governments are the owners of the ships,
people with deep pockets are bound to become the new astronauts. .
In the 90s, there was one single company taking tourists to space, and they essentially leveraged
government agencies to fly the astronauts. Like a Travel Agency.
This new generation of companies understand that people want to go to space.
They understand that there are enough people to pay for this, and turn it into an industry.
But back to the original question, who will take us to Mars?
A lot of companies have tried, and failed.
Right now there are just two active efforts- NASA and SpaceX: separately!
As much as they are friends, partners, customers- this is a race, just like before. NASA has
their own team of people working on going to Mars, and using the Moon as a stepping stone.
But when Elon Musk talks about Mars, he’s not talking about a NASA contract.
SpaceX is using about 5% of their budget to realize their own vision of colonizing Mars.
Plans to land an unmanned ship as soon as 2024, but get this, it is not funded by NASA
or by any agency- it’s funded with their profits, and their investors.
There is money to be made in Space. It’s not just exploration, it’s profit.
When this finally happens, there might be more than one flag
in that planet. For the first time, it’s a company, not a country that might conquer these
worlds beyond. And if the governments don’t want to fund it, why shouldn’t investors be able to?