Putting Business In Space
The commercialization of space has always been one of the goals of the space program and our science fiction is littered with lunar bases and colonies in orbit, but more than 45 years after Alan Sheppard flew on Freedom 7 into low orbit the space business is still largely the domain of NASA and other government agencies. The recent excitement around Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne and other private attempts to reach orbit has fueled new interest in non-government space activities, but too much of the focus has been on fantasy ideas like space tourism and not enough effort has gone into developing sustainable business models.
That may be coming to an end. Ed Grabianowski at io9 posted some interesting thoughts the other day about the impending retirement of the Shuttle fleet and NASA’s switchover to the Constellation launch system. The space agency says there will be at least a five-year gap (probably more) between the last Shuttle flight and the first Constellation mission, a period Grabianowski posits might be the window of opportunity for new aerospace carriers to get in the game.
“[The] market for crewed missions to conduct repairs on existing satellites or other sensitive missions isn’t likely to shrink. With all those aerospace engineers looking for something to do with their degrees, I predict we will see a burst of private space industry startups.”
Could the demand for satellite repair services be great enough to spur investment in viable launch systems? There are many communications and remote sensing satellites in low Earth orbit, within easy reach of repair missions. Communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit are currently out of reach of the Shuttle, but a private business could conceivably develop a vehicle to take a crew out to 23,000 miles. Providing these types of space services might require a permanent human presence aboard an orbiting space station — a repair station in space — from which crews could be dispatched more easily.
The really exciting part is, once one business establishes itself, others will likely follow. Some possibilities include manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other processing activities that could benefit from micro-gravity. And don’t forget the services industries likely to follow along if more and more humans are living and working in space.
If a viable business plan can be developed, suitable private investment will follow and our dream of becoming a spacefaring society could be on the horizon.
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