Imagine our world expanding to a base on the moon.
Or an internet that comes from space.
It all might come Sooner Than You Think.
The biggest thing keeping humans from invading space is the cost of rockets.
Historically, getting to orbit has been pricey.
Somewhere between 100 million and 300 million dollars a pop.
And that’s kept the pace of launches stuck at only around 100 per year.
But if you look not so far into the future, there are signs that number will go up. Way up.
SpaceX proved that private companies can get to space on the cheap. And also come back home.
They’ve brought the cost of launch down from hundreds of millions to tens of millions.
In the process, they’ve ignited a 21st century rocket revolution.
And now about ten startups are chasing them to space.
The leader is Rocket Lab, a company that launched for the first time this May from the coast of New Zealand
with a rocket forged from carbon fiber and powered by 3D-printed engines.
They hope to fill their small rockets with tiny satellites
and charge customers around $5 million for on demand access to space.
They plan to start launching rockets once a week and then every day.
But there’s just one problem with all this: economics.
Someone’s going to have to buy rides on all those rockets.
That demand for space rides will come in the form of nanosatellites, the tiny offspring of traditional satellites.
Companies like Google, SpaceX, Samsung and others
have big plans to send thousands of these cubes into space to beam internet back to the entire planet.
These small spaceships would form massive constellations
that encircle the globe with at least three times more satellites
than humanity has launched in its entire history
And it will take a lot of rockets to get them there.
There’s also buzz of a private moon base that would cost around $5 billion.
That’s a hefty sum.
But if you happen to be the richest man in the world and own a rocket company,
it probably won’t bankrupt you.
And getting all that stuff to the moon? Then we're talking even more rockets.
Right now, the supply and demand of space are stuck in a bit of a stalemate,
a staring contest to see which will move first.
But the cost of launch is dropping, and fast.
When the demand curve and supply curve meet,
100 launches a year will become 365,
a launch every day, and maybe more.
That’s when we’ll become a truly space-faring species.
And it may happen sooner than you think.