This is how the space race was “privatized”

The first big step in this direction was taken by Obama in 2014. At the time, the world’s leading power was unable to send its astronauts to the International Space Station following the cancellation of the space shuttle in 2011. Russia. It is estimated that the Kremlin issued more than $3 billion in bills between 2006 and 2018 for this reason.

1.1 trillion market

It was not just a matter of money, it was a matter of pride and prestige. The solution was to open the door to private initiative. NASA signed deals with Boeing and the aforementioned Space X for $3.24 billion and $2 billion, respectively, to end this dependency.

Since then, the weight of the private sector has only increased. The owner of Tesla and X/Twitter is joined by another mega-millionaire such as Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who created Blue Origin. Both have received lucrative contracts from the US space agency and play key roles in both the return to the Moon and the subsequent jump to Mars. Spain has a company called PLD Space, which successfully tested Miura-1 a few months ago, placing our country among the dozen capable of sending a satellite into space.

Between transportation, tourism and space mining, analysts predict that the space market will grow from the current $469 billion to $1.1 trillion by the end of the decade. A number of data highlight this explosion of the space race. More spacecraft were launched into orbit in 2022 alone than in the previous 52 years of the space race. Globally, the Space Foundation indicates that budgets worldwide reached $107.3 billion in 2021, up 19% from the previous year.

In the case of the United States, companies such as Space X and Boeing compete to transport astronauts into space. Musk’s firm has a contract to land on the moon, while Boeing has built a rocket that will take the crew off Earth. Blue Origin, for its part, will test another one this year – New Glenn. In the meantime, NASA is devoting its resources to other research. “While commercial companies are focused on providing transportation services to Earth orbit, NASA can focus on building ships for deep space missions and preparing for the colonization of Mars,” the US space agency explains.

Chinese competitors

The United States’ great rival in space exploration is no longer Russia. China took its place. So much so that taikonauts are excluded from the International Space Station because American law prohibits NASA from sharing its data with the Eastern power. The communist giant also opened the door to private initiative. He did this in 2016, thirteen years after opening his own space agency, called the National Space Administration. According to Sina Finance, more than 100 companies are already participating.

Unknown in the West, some of them achieved great success. The most recent is the launch of Gravity 1, the most powerful solid-fuel rocket in the world. It was built by Orienspace, a company founded in 2020 by veterans of the government’s space industry. The other, Galactic Energy, has launched 19 missions since its founding in 2018.

“I don’t want China to get to the moon first and say, ‘It’s ours, go away,'” said Bill Nelson, NASA’s top administrator, who acknowledged that one reason the Artemis mission was delayed by one year was because of the program. that companies “need more time.” China has already announced its intention to send its astronauts to the Moon by 2030. The race continues. And that depends a lot on what private companies do.