The United States is “in a space race with China to return to the moon,” says NASA chief Bill Nelson.
In an interview with the BBC, Nelson says he wants to make sure “we get there first”.
His comments bring back memories of the 1960s and 1970s, when NASA was in the space race with the Soviet Union. But half a century later, NASA is commissioning private companies to do far more work.
Nelson says they are critical because they allow NASA to share huge costs and harness “the creativity of private sector entrepreneurs.”
He points to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which won a $3bn (£2.4bn) contract in 2021 to build a lunar lander and has also developed the most powerful rocket ever built.
Other private companies are also feeling the benefits of the space race. Earlier this year, the agency signed a $3.4 billion contract with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, also to build a lander, but for later lunar landings.
These are just two companies that benefit from billions of dollars in government funding. At least some of that money is being spent to try to stay ahead of the much broader tensions between the world's two largest economies.
At the end of August, India became the fourth nation to make a soft landing on the moon and the first to reach the lunar south polar region.
Despite this success, China's space program is the one that NASA follows most closely.
China is the only country that has its own space station, it has already brought samples from the moon to Earth and plans to reach the polar regions of the lunar surface.
This worries Mr Nelson: “What worries me is that we find water at the south pole of the moon, China comes there and China says this is our territory. You can’t come here, it’s ours.”
Mr Nelson argues that China's moves to build artificial islands to claim sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea support his concerns.
Nelson also points out that China has not signed the US-led Artemis Accords, which are intended to serve as a framework for best practices in space and on the moon.
China says it is committed to peaceful space exploration and has previously dismissed U.S. concerns about its space program as a "smear campaign against China's normal and reasonable efforts in space."
The rivalry leads to huge investments by NASA. For the year ending September 2021, the agency said spending totaled $71.2 billion to the U.S. economy, up 10.7% from the previous year.
While big names like SpaceX might grab the headlines, NASA's spending flows much more heavily into the economy.
“A quarter of our spending goes to small businesses,” says Nelson.
That money can accelerate the growth of small businesses, especially startups, says Sinead O'Sullivan, a former NASA engineer and now a space economist at Harvard Business School.
The government often acts as the first customer for startups, and such contracts can allow them to approach private investors and raise even more money, he says.
The race back to the moon may attract a lot of attention, but it has helped fuel an explosion in other space activities that could be much more profitable.
In 1957, Russia became the first country to put a satellite into orbit, while also joining the United States in the original space race. According to the European Space Agency, there are currently just over 10,500 satellites orbiting the Earth.
Chad Andersen, founder of investment firm Space Capital, credits SpaceX with boosting the industry over the last decade.
“The only reason we’re talking about space as an investment category today is because of SpaceX,” he says. “A little over ten years ago, before their first commercial flight, the entire market was really dominated by the government.”
According to analytics firm BryceTech, about half of the satellites currently in orbit were launched in the last three years.
This is primarily due to just two companies, One Web and Elon Musk's Starlink.
“The space economy is much broader than rockets and satellite hardware. It is the invisible backbone that drives our global economy,” explains Mr. Anderson.
As the number of satellites in orbit grows, he says, more and more companies are finding new uses for the data they provide, including in the agriculture, insurance and shipping industries.
New Zealand-based
RocketLab is another major player in the space economy.
, SpaceX's competitor, has already conducted 40 launches for customers including NASA and other US government agencies.
founder Peter Beck went from rags-to-riches engineer to launching rockets into space, and he says that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to financial opportunities beyond Earth.
“The launch is about a $10 billion opportunity. Then there's the infrastructure, like building satellites, that's a $30 billion opportunity. And then there are applications, and that's an $830 billion "millions of dollars" opportunity.
He's not the only one making big claims.US investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that the global space industry could be worth more than $1 trillion a year by 2040.
What could be next for private space companies?
Mr. Beck is cautious about the opportunities on the moon, particularly in mining.
“Right now it is not economically viable to go to the moon, mine it and bring it back to Earth.”
NASA's Bill Nelson sees opportunities in medical research.He points to useful research into crystal growth conducted on the International Space Station in 2019 by pharmaceuticals firm Merck, which helped developed a cancer treatment.
He also says fibre optics might be manufactured more effectively in zero gravity.
“We often talk about venture capital and private equity, but governments are just as important, if not more so,” says Ms O'Sullivan.
“What we will ultimately see is a lot of entrepreneurial activity in low Earth orbit.”
Post a Comment