Should Space be Privatized? | Space Time

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Matt O'Dowd (0:59)

Thanks to CuriosityStream for supporting PBS Digital Studios. On February 8th, 2018, the eyes of the world once again fixed upon Cape Canaveral. This time people watched with anticipation as SpaceX launched its new Falcon Heavy rocket. The near simultaneous landing of its two booster rockets was like something out of a sci-fi flick. It looked like the future.

The subsequent view of a cherry red Tesla Roadster drifting through space was like something out of a Douglas Adams novel. The landmark launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket is a milestone in a new space race. Not one between nations, but instead between private companies. Is this the best thing for the future of human space travel?

The private funding of space is not something new. In fact, this was the case in the beginning of rocketry. Robert Goddard, the father of rocketry, funded his research out of his own paycheck. The idea of governments funding private aerospace companies is also not new. In fact, modern commercial air flight is a direct result of this relationship.

World War I spurred great leaps in airplane technology and manufacturing capability. To encourage commercial use of this new capacity, the US. Congress passed the Air Mail Act of 1925 Private companies quickly took over the airmail industry. This spurred more technological and business innovation, and before long, commercial passenger flights became a thing, a big, big thing. Just as with air flight, the US government has taken steps over the years to pave the way for commercial space flight. Ronald Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, which for the first time made commercial launches legal. Under each of the following presidents, NASA's monopoly on space flight was further diminished. The agency's directive became increasingly focused on science and deep space travel, while private industry was encouraged to take over the day-to-day business of transport to Earth orbit. To spur private competition, NASA implemented its commercial orbital transport services program in 2011 COTS awarded government contracts for resupplying the International Space Station. This is where SpaceX made its grand entrance. Funded by COTS, its Dragon module was the first private spacecraft to dock with the ISS in 2012

Orbital ATK followed closely, and now both companies regularly resupply the ISS.

The Sierra Nevada Corporation is expected to join the ISS private club when it docks its Dream Chaser spacecraft in late 2020 This is considered a big win for NASA. The shuttle program cost around $4 billion a year, but these resupply missions run closer to $50 million a pop. But what about manned spaceflight? Well, at some point both Dragon and Dream Chaser are expected to carry actual people to the ISS, and perhaps beyond, but that hasn't happened yet. To date, only one privately developed craft has carried a person to space. This was Spaceship One. In 2004, the first private astronaut, Mike Melville, blasted this rocket-powered plane into a suborbital trajectory, topping 100 kilometers in altitude, and only just kissing space. But it counts. Spaceship One's adventure won its Maker Scaled Composites, the cool $10 million of the Ansari X Prize. Virgin Galactic teamed up with Scaled Composites to form the Spaceship Company, with the plan to turn its Spaceship Two into a regular space tourism vessel. That hasn't happened yet. For reasons I'll get back to. So why hasn't private manned spaceflight become a thing yet? Because money.

Almost all private companies are driven by the profit motive. And besides, the distant dream of...

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