2023: A Space Race Odyssey | Private enterprise pushing us further

Thanks for joining us this morning.
 
Last month, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine exploded 10 seconds after launch.
 
One might recall a headline-grabbing explosion of an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket in April and conclude the billionaires are going tit-for-tat in their competition for commercial space dominance.
 
That might sound reasonable except for this fact: Musk’s reusable rockets have been flying payloads to space for years. Bezos’s rival vehicles, according to the Wall Street Journal, haven’t even flown yet.
 
Indeed, SpaceX dominates the rocket market. In the first two quarters of 2023, SpaceX rockets accounted for 88% of all customer flights from American launch sites, up from 66% last year. And to the extent any rivals really compete with SpaceX right now, they’re using soon-to-be-obsolete rockets set for phase-out.
 
What exploded in April was an early test flight of SpaceX’s new Starship vehicle powered by its Super Heavy rocket booster, capable of carrying heavy payloads to low-earth orbit and, perhaps, beyond. Planetary scientist Tanya Harrison, a fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Outer Space Institute, told Reuters after the test flight failure, “It wouldn’t surprise me if we had humans on Mars with Starship in the next decade.”
 
American space flight has become increasingly privatized since NASA decommissioned the Space Shuttle program in 2011. We’ll explore the implications of that dynamic, but one thing is clear: SpaceX is leagues ahead of its competitors, and that’s a good thing for NASA and America.
 
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The Space Shuttle program saw its final flight on July 8, 2011, after 135 missions. At the time, no clear replacement existed. With public finances still recovering from the deep recession a few years prior, NASA’s future was uncertain.
 
But the market for rocket launches was growing. What was once an international spectacle turned into a routine occurrence as companies and governments launched satellites (for internet or GPS or spying) and astronauts went back and forth from the International Space Station (ISS).
 
Who would control space travel after the shuttle program, cash-strapped NASA or private companies?
 
In recent years the answer has become clearer: both.
 
The government would contract to private companies more routine tasks like launching satellites and delivering astronauts and cargo to and from the ISS, freeing up NASA to focus on longer-term space exploration.
 
Scott Hubbard, an adjunct professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and a former top official at NASA, told Space.com in 2018, “I see it not only as a cooperation or a collaboration, but maybe even interdependence…And I think using the way in which the private sector has demonstrated they can reduce costs, through more nearly assembly-line production techniques, is really critical to sustainable space exploration in the future.”
 
Hubbard is right that private enterprise has created massive efficiencies that the federal government could likely never achieve.
 
According to 2017 Congressional testimony, SpaceX developed its Falcon9 rocket – used today for many of the company’s space launches – for just $390 million from 2002-2009. NASA’s own 2010 report says it would have cost the agency up to $4 billion to do the same work.
 
Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg estimates SpaceX’s rockets, which are more efficient and reusable, deliver payload 700 times cheaper than the first family of NASA rockets and 44 times cheaper than the Space Shuttle program.
 
Some have described private industry’s foray into space travel – and Musk’s dominance thus far – as “dire” and “flawed.” The federal government has approved a de facto monopoly, and SpaceX is reaping profits using decades of government-funded research as its starting point.
 
The argument invites this question: If a private company might profit from government-funded research, should policymakers withhold that research – and all the downstream benefits to society it might bring?
 
The reality is government and private industry can be symbiotic, as is surely the case with NASA and SpaceX right now.
 
Flyvbjerg, the Oxford professor, put it well: “The success of SpaceX is the success of NASA because NASA is the largest user and hence beneficiary of SpaceX’s platform strategy, together with the U.S. Department of Defense. Conversely, SpaceX owes its very existence to contracts and revenues from NASA.” It’s perhaps the best contemporary example of a fruitful public-private partnership.
 
Like most dynamics, the interplay between government research and private enterprise has a sweet middle ground.
 
Based largely on private commercialization of government-funded research, America grew into a superpower. Life for her citizens – all of them – improved: Near-universal access to information. Life-saving drugs and other medical breakthroughs. National wealth that sustains a safety net unheard of when our grandparents were children (just read the first paragraph of Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier).
 
That symbiosis is a feature of American capitalism, not a bug.
 
Trillions of today’s dollars went towards rocketry R&D. Today, Elon Musk and others have built upon that work and made it even better – stronger, cheaper, more efficient.
 
American commercial dominance in low-earth rocketry is still American. Innovators like Musk, together with the policymakers and publicly-funded researchers who came before him – deserve shared credit. Imagine where we’ll be going in 2033…