The Commercial Space Industry is Exploding and Here’s Why
Are we in the midst of a galactic goldrush?
Commercial space industry investment has grown 600% in the last five years, and is expected to reach $10 billion by the end of 2015. The big players are led by Google and Fidelity’s recent $1 billion investment into Space Exploration Technologies, a.k.a. SpaceX. However, they aren’t alone: about 800 companies are involved in space related projects now.
SpaceX (along with Boeing) are already transporting cargo back and forth from the International Space Station and have plans to build the next “space taxis” to transport astronauts back and forth. President Obama proposed that the government spend $1.24 billion on the projects in his recently announced budget.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s next project is to deploy a network of satellites that would essentially offer low-cost Internet to us down here on Earth. That project alone could cost upward of $10 billion and could launch in five years. The entrepreneur also sees the project as part of his much larger long-term ambition: to create a human colony on Mars (yes, you read that right).
Entrepreneur Greg Wyler is launching a similar space Internet effort called OneWeb. With major investment from Qualcomm and Virgin Group, OneWeb could be up and running in 2018.
Meanwhile Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is testing its spaceships again. Its space tourism project suffered a major setback when a test flight of its SpaceShipTwo crashed in October, killing a co-pilot.
Space-tech startup Bigelow Airspace also just got the FAA’s go-ahead to possibly put an inflatable habitat on the moon by 2025. The company is planning to test a free-floating space habitat aboard the International Space Station this year. The idea is to offer orbital outposts (read: space offices/labs) to businesses, researchers, or potentially tourists.
It’s not just the private sector that has a rocket in this space race either.
China put a rover on the moon, and its recent moon orbit trips suggest that they want to try a manned mission. The Indian Space Research Organization sent a satellite to Mars — India’s first — and plans to land a probe on the moon in 2016. The European Space Agency landed the Philae probe on a comet in November. While they recently lost contact with the probe (some say its just “hibernating”), there are hopes it might wake up in May. Philae did send back data on organic molecules that have scientists intrigued about the origins of life. That, and other research has NASA scientists predicting that we will find extra-terrestrial life in the next 20 years.
The future is fast approaching and space looks to be the place.
Keep learning,
Brad Grossman and Team ZEITGUIDE
