55 Years Since Man First Walked on the Moon

Are We Witnessing a New Space Race?

The traditional competition between West and East from the Cold War is already a thing of the past. However, what we see at the moment is a kind of new race between the Collective West (USA, Western Europe, Israel, South Korea) and the BRICS countries (Brazil, China, India, Iran, Russia).

Is there a new space race between West and BRICS?

What differentiates today’s race from the past is the involvement of private space companies such as SpaceX. These companies have a significant impact on the whole industry.

Birth of the Space Flights

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 (which translates to satellite), the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This event marked the beginning of the space age and had profound geopolitical, scientific, and technological impacts.

The launch demonstrated the Soviet Union’s advanced capabilities in rocket technology, catching the United States and its allies off guard. This “Sputnik Shock” initiated the space race, leading to significant investments in space research and technology and the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958.

Picture of Sputnik 1, the first human probe in space. Photo from Wikipedia, Autor: NSSDC, NASA[1] — http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1957-001B, Public domain

The Space Race

The space race between the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War was a period of intense competition to achieve significant milestones in space exploration. Key achievements included:

1. Sputnik 1 (1957): The first artificial satellite.
2. Sputnik 2 (1957): Carried the first living creature, a dog named Laika, into space.
3. Explorer 1 (1958): The first successful American satellite discovering the Van Allen radiation belts.
4. Luna 2 (1959): The first human-made object to reach the Moon.
5. Yuri Gagarin (1961): The first human to orbit Earth.
6. Alan Shepard (1961): The first American in space.
7. Alexei Leonov (1965): Conducted the first spacewalk.

Conquering the Moon

After losing to the Soviet Union in the initial stage of the space race, President of the USA John Kennedy delivered the famous speech at Rice University in September 1962, stating, “We choose to go to the Moon.”

In the following years, both countries focused themselves on the Moon.

1. Luna 9 (1966): First soft landing on the Moon by the Soviet Union.
2. Surveyor 1 (1966): First successful American soft landing.
3. Apollo 8 (1968): First manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
4. Apollo 11 (1969): On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, while Michael Collins orbited above.

Conquering the Moon essentially culminated in the space race. A symbolic end of the space race is considered the Apollo-Soyuz flight (1975), the first international human space flight in which an American Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. However, mutual competition in space exploration continued to a lesser extent until the end of the Cold War.

The Apollo–Soyuz in the National Air and Space Museum, By Toytoy at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5

Space Flights during the Space Race

The chart below displays the trend of space flight from 1957 to 1975. The main protagonists are Russia (USSR) and the USA, but other countries also started their space exploration during this time.

Soviet Union had a clear dominance in space flights at the end of the space race

Modern-age Space Flights

As of 2024, humanity has already conducted over 5,000 space flights. GoodData’s forecasting shows that the flight frequency is expected to grow even further.

The amount of space flights is forecasted to dramatically grow in the next years

Space Flights by Countries

Russia and the USA have the most space flights, but they have been in the game the longest.

Russia is still the country with the most space flights, although it lacks in the recent years

Space Flights by Countries in the Last 10 Years

The rank noticeably changes when we focus solely on the last 10 years.

In the last 10 years, USA and China overtook Russia's top position in the space flights

Trend of Space Flights of the Top 3 Countries

Further focus on the top 3 countries shows us recent growth in China and especially the USA.

Russia stagnates, while China and especially USA dramatically increased their amount of space flights

So far, we can conclude that:

• Russia’s golden era of space exploration was during the Cold War.
• The number of space flights has dramatically increased in the last few years.

Space is Getting Commercialised

The eye-catching increase in flights delivered by the USA is not driven by NASA. Space is getting commercialised.

Number of Private Companies Operating the Space Flights

Number of Private Companies Operating Space Flights in the Selected Countries

Birth of the Commercial Space Travel

The commercialisation of space is a long-lasting process. Private companies began conducting launches into space in the 1980s. A world-famous milestone was twenty years ago when Scaled Composites won the Ansari X Prize of $10 million. Their SpaceShipOne could fly 100 kilometres (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface twice within two weeks.

Picture of SpaceShipOne and its mother ship White Knight, By Photograph by Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0

Top 10 Private Companies by Their Number of Space Flights in the Last 20 Years

So, how have space flights changed in the last twenty years? The biggest private space travel companies are almost exclusively headquartered in Western countries. The only exceptions are:

• ISC Kosmotras, a joint venture between Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, which practically ceased to operate in 2015 due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
• Galactic Energy, a private Chinese company founded in 2018.

West has a long-lasting experience with private space companies

Most of you probably heard about SpaceX and Blue Origin. Both companies are symbols of commercial space flights.

• SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to reduce space transportation costs and ultimately develop a sustainable colony on Mars.
• Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Its goal is to radically reduce the cost of access to space, harness space resources, and inspire the next generation to enable millions of people to live and work in space for the benefit of Earth.

SpaceX vs. All Other Companies Including State Agencies

Speaking about the number of flights, SpaceX (blue) is able to compete even with state-owned agencies like China’s CASC (yellow) or Russia’s Roscosmos (red).

SpaceX is dominating the space flights in the recent years

When looking at the absolute number of space flights in the last twenty years, 6 out of 10 launch service companies are private.

SpaceX overtook even China's space agency (CASC). ULA stands for a consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. MHI stands for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Conclusion

From the data we see, there is a new ongoing space race between West and BRICS. This current space race however shows a clear difference in strategies between the blocks. The West depends on private companies for space exploration, while BRICS nations still rely on state-run space agencies. However, this could change soon with companies like China’s Galactic Energy.

The data I use for the analysis comes from https://nextspaceflight.com.

All the analytics were done using GoodData. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can try GoodData’s free trial.