Private companies are launching a new space race – here’s what to expect

The space race between the USA and Russia started with a beep from the Sputnik satellite exactly 60 years ago (October 4, 1957) and ended with a handshake in space just 18 years later. The handshake was the start of many decades of international collaboration in space. But over the past decade there has been a huge change.

The space environment is no longer the sole preserve of government agencies. Private companies have entered the exploration domain and are propelling the sector forward more vigorously and swiftly than would be the case if left to governments alone.

It could be argued that a new space race has begun, in which private companies are competing against each other and against government organisations. But this time it is driven by a competition for customers rather than the urge to show dominance by being first to achieve a certain goal. So who are the main players and how will they change the science, technology and politics of space exploration?

Put the phrase “private space exploration” into a search engine and a wealth of links emerges. Several have titles such as: “Six private companies that could launch humans into space”, “The world’s top 10 most innovative companies in space” or “10 major players in the private sector space race”. What is immediately apparent is that practically all these companies are based in the US.

There is a big difference between building and launching satellites into low Earth orbit for telecommunications and sending crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and beyond. Private companies in several nations have been engaged in the satellite market for many years. Their contributions to the development of non-governmental space exploration has helped to lay the trail for entrepreneurs with the vision and resources to develop their own pathways to space.

Today, several companies in the US are looking very specifically at human spaceflight. The three that are perhaps furthest down the road are SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. The main goals of all three companies is to reduce the cost of access to space – mainly through reuse of launchers and spacecraft – making space accessible to people who are not specially trained astronauts. One thing these companies have in common is the private passion of their chief executives.

SpaceX Crew Dragon docking with the International Space Station. SpaceX

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a charismatic entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. The ambition of SpaceX is “to revolutionise space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets”. To this end, the company has specialised in the design, manufacture and launch of rockets, providing direct competition to the United Launch Alliance (between Boeing and Lockheed Martin) that had been the contract holder of choice for launch of NASA and Department of Defense rocket launches.

Its success has been spectacular. Having developed the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, it became the first commercial company to dock a spacecraft at the ISS in 2012. The firm now has a regular run there, carrying cargo. But so far, no astronauts. However, the Falcon Heavy is comparable to the Saturn 5 rocket that launched the Apollo astronauts, and SpaceX has designed its vehicle with a view to sending astronauts to the moon by 2018, and to Mars as early as 2023.

On September 29, Musk refined his plans, announcing the BFR project (which I like to pretend stands for Big F**king Rocket). This would replace the Falcon and Dragon spacecraft – and would not only transport cargo and explorers to the moon and Mars, but could also reduce travel times between cities on Earth. Musk calculates it could take as little as 29 minutes to fly from London to New York.

Whether the company succeeds in sending astronauts to the moon in 2018 remains to be seen. Either way, a lot could be going on then – 2018 is also the year when Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the technology and retail entrepreneur behind Amazon, aims to launch people to space. But its ambition is different from that of SpaceX. Blue Origin is focusing on achieving commercially available, sub-orbital human spaceflight – targeting the space tourism industry. The company has developed a vertical launch vehicle (New Shepard, after the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard) that can reach the 100km altitude used to define where “space” begins. The rocket then descends back to Earth, with the engines firing towards the end of the descent, allowing the spacecraft to land vertically. Test flights with no passengers have made successful demonstrations of the technology. The trip to space and back will take about 10 minutes.

But Blue Origin has got some competition from Virgin Galactic, which describes itself as “the world’s first commercial spaceline”. Founded in 2004 by Richard Branson, also a technology and retail entrepreneur, it plans to carry six passengers at a time into sub-orbital space and give them about six minutes of weightlessness in the course of a two and a half hour flight.

The technology differs from that of SpaceX and Blue Origin in that the launch into space is not from the ground, but from a jet airplane. This mothership flies to an altitude of about 18km (about twice as high as regular aircraft fly) and releases a smaller, rocket-powered spacecraft (SpaceShip Two) which is propelled to an altitude of about 100km. The programme has been delayed by technical difficulties – and then by the tragic loss of pilot Mike Alsbury, when SpaceShip Two exploded in mid-air during a test flight in 2014. No date is yet set for the first passengers to fly.

There’s also the Google Lunar XPrize competition, announced in 2007, with the tagline: “Welcome to the new space race”. The aim of the prize is to launch a robotic mission to the moon, place a lander on the surface and drive 50 metres, sending back high-quality images and video. The competition is still in progress. Five privately funded teams must launch their spacecraft to the moon by the end of 2017.

Powerful international ties

The changes are taking place against a backdrop of tried and tested international collaboration in space, which took off in earnest at the end of the space race. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the US and Russia space programmes complemented each other beautifully – though perhaps not intentionally. Following the cessation of Apollo in 1975, the US space programme focused its efforts on robotic exploration of the solar system.

The Voyager probes gave us amazing images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The Mariner and Viking missions to Mars led to Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Messenger orbited Mercury and Magellan orbited Venus. When New Horizons launched to Pluto in 2006, it was a mission to visit the last planet left unexplored in the solar system.

Pluto as seen by New Horizons. NASA

Russia, on the other hand, pursued the goal of human spaceflight, with its incredibly successful Mir orbiting space station and its programme of flights to transfer cosmonauts and cargo backwards and forwards to Mir. Human spaceflight in the US revived with the Space Shuttle and its mission to build and occupy the International Space Station (ISS). The list of nations that contribute to the ISS continues to grow. The shuttle programme finished in 2011 and, since its successor Orion (built in collaboration with European Space Agency, ESA) is not due to come into service until at least 2023, the international community has been reliant on Russia to keep the ISS fuelled and inhabited.

Today, as well as the US and Russia, there are strong, vibrant and successful space programmes in Europe, Japan, India and China. The European Space Agency was established just two months before the historic handshake of 1975, following many years of independent aeronautical engineering research by individual nations. Similarly, the Chinese, Japanese and Indian space agencies can trace their heritages back to the 1960s. A number of smaller countries including the United Arab Emirates also have ambitious plans.

Of course these countries also compete against each other. There has been widespread speculation that the entry of China into the field was sufficient to introduce a fresh imperative to the US space programme. China has a well-developed space programme and is currently working towards having a space station in orbit around the Earth by about 2020. A prototype, Tiangong-2, has been in space for almost a year, and was occupied by two astronauts (or “taikonauts”) for a month.

China has also had three successful missions to the moon. And its next mission, Chang’e 5, due to launch towards the end of 2017, is designed to bring samples from the moon back to Earth. China also has a declared intent of landing taikonauts on the moon by 2025 – the same time frame in which the US will be testing its new Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon.

But while there’s an element of competition, the success of the past few decades certainly shows that it is possible to collaborate in space even when tensions rise on the ground. Indeed, space exploration may even act as a buffer zone from international politics, which is surely something worth having. It will be interesting to see how a wider role in space exploration for private companies will affect such international collaborations, especially since so much of the effort is based in the USA.

Healthy competition or dangerous game?

A benefit of the entry of the private sector into space exploration has been recognition of the high-tech companies that contribute to the growth of the economy as valuable targets for investment. Indeed, a recent presentation at an international investment bank – under a heading of “Space; the next investment frontier” – declared that “investment interest has helped reduce launch costs and spur innovation across related industries, opening up a new chapter in the history of the space economy”.

One of the last engagements of Barack Obama’s presidency was to chair the Whitehouse Frontiers Conference, where space exploration was discussed as much within the context of US industry as within the drive to explore new worlds. Contributors to the conference included NASA – but overwhelmingly the speakers were from private technology and investment companies.

Perhaps it is cynical to say – but once investment starts to flow, lawyers won’t be far behind. And that is another aspect of the explosion of interest in space commerce and tourism. Laws, statutes and other regulations are necessary to govern the international nature of space exploration. At the moment, the United Nations, through its Office for Outer Space Affairs, is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. It also oversees operation of the Outer Space Treaty, which provides a framework for the governance of space and activities that might take place. While the obvious lack of “space police” means that it cannot be practically enforced, it has never actually been violated.

The operation is designed along similar lines to the international treaties that oversee maritime activities and the exploration of Antarctica. This is the closest that there is to international legislation and, since coming into operation in 1967 with the three inaugural signatories of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the (then) USSR, the treaty has been signed by 106 countries (including China and North Korea). It is necessary to have such controls because although the risks that surround space exploration are high, potential rewards are even higher.

If we look at the way more conventional businesses operate, such as supermarkets, competition drives prices down, and there is little reason to believe that competition between space companies would follow a different model. In which case, greater risks might be taken in order to increase profitability. There is no evidence for this so far – but as the field develops and additional private companies move into space exploration – there will be a higher probability of accident or emergency.

The treaty says that a state launching a probe or satellite is liable to pay compensation for damage when accidents occur. However, the costs of space exploration are astronomical and crippling to poorer countries, making them increasingly depend on commercial launchers. But if a private company launches an object that subsequently causes damage in space, the struggling economy will have to pick up the bill. The treaty may therefore need to be updated to make private companies more liable. There are also serious issues around the safety of astronauts, who have the legal right to a safe existence when in outer space. But even lawyers aren’t sure whether the law does – or should – extend to private astronauts.

Looking to the future, there will be a need for an expanded version of a Civil Aviation Authority, directing and controlling routes, launches and landings on Earth, and between and on planetary bodies. All the safety and security considerations of air and sea travel will pertain to space travel at a vastly enhanced level, because the costs and risks are so much higher. There will have to be firm and well-understood protocols in the event of a spacecraft crashing, or two spacecraft colliding. Not to mention piracy or the possibility of hijack. All this might sound a little gloomy, taking the dash and exhilaration from space exploration, but it will be a necessary development that opens up the era of space travel for citizens beyond those with deep pockets.

The original space race resulted from the ideas and skills of visionary theoretician engineers including: Robert H Goddard, Wernher von Braun, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky. Is it too far a stretch to think that the second space race is propelled by a new generation of entrepreneurs, including Bezos, Branson and Musk? If this is the situation, then I would hope that the main enabling factor in the pursuit of space endeavours is not possession of wealth, but that vision, ingenuity and a wish for the betterment of human are the main driving forces.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Private Spaceflight Decade: How Commercial Space Truly Soared in the 2010s

A lot has happened in the past 10 years.

Historians may look back at the 2010s as the decade in which commercial spaceflight really started taking off.

Private companies are doing a lot more in the final frontier today than they were 10 years ago, including ferrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), landing and reflying rockets, and manufacturing products off Earth.

Since 2010, and especially since 2013 or 2014, “it has been an enormous change — a sea change, almost,” said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a nonprofit trade association. “It’s mind-boggling.”

Private cargo flights galore

Let’s start with those robotic ISS resupply missions, which NASA has funded through a series of commercial cargo deals. SpaceX has flown 19 contracted missions to date with its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket, with the first coming in October 2012. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rocket made their first fully operational run in January 2014 and have racked up 11 more launches since then. (Both companies suffered one cargo-mission failure; an Antares exploded on the pad in October 2014, and a Falcon 9 broke apart in flight in June 2015.)

About half of those Dragon-Falcon 9 missions have featured landings of the rocket’s first stage, showcasing one of the important trends that SpaceX pioneered in the 2010s: the recovery and reuse of orbital hardware by a private company.

SpaceX first notched a booster touchdown during an orbital flight in December 2015. Since then, the company has pulled off nearly four dozen additional landings, many of them coming on specialized ships at sea. SpaceX routinely reflies these first stages, too, often multiple times.

And the Dragon capsule is reusable, and increasingly reused, as well. For example, the two most recent SpaceX resupply missions, which launched on July 25 and Dec. 6, respectively, featured Dragon spacecraft that had already made two trips to the orbiting lab.

Such activity is key to SpaceX’s long-term vision. The company aims to slash the cost of spaceflight enough to make bold exploration feats economically feasible. Indeed, Elon Musk has repeatedly stressed that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help achieve one particularly ambitious goal: to colonize Mars.

SpaceX has already lowered the cost of getting to space considerably. The company currently sells launches of the workhorse Falcon 9 for $62 million and the newer, more powerful Falcon Heavy for $90 million. Those rockets can loft 50,265 lbs. (22,800 kilograms) and 140,660 lbs. (63,800 kg), respectively, to low Earth orbit (LEO), according to SpaceX’s spec sheet.

That works out to about $2,720 per kg to LEO for the Falcon 9, and $1,410 per kg for the Falcon Heavy. For comparison, the cost to LEO for NASA’s now-retired space shuttle orbiters was about $54,500 per kg, according to a recent report by Harry Jones of NASA’s Ames Research Center. (SpaceX is also widely acknowledged to be considerably cheaper than its competitors in the commercial sector, but comparisons are tricky because those other companies generally don’t publish their launch prices.)

Another company, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, also began routinely landing and reflying rockets in the 2010s. Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle has performed 11 successful touchdowns to date, with the first coming in November 2015. The most recent iteration of the reusable New Shepard has flown six such missions. To date, these test flights have hauled experiments to suborbital space and back for 100 customers, Blue Origin representatives said.

Rocket Lab is yet another private launch provider that broke new ground in the past decade, pioneering dedicated missions for small satellites via its 57-foot-tall (17 meters) Electron rocket. The two-stage Electron first lifted off in May 2017 and now has 10 flights under its belt, the last nine of which have been completely successful.

During the most recent mission, which launched on Dec. 6, Rocket Lab guided the Electron’s first stage back down toward Earth in the proper orientation for recovery — a big step toward rocket reuse, which the company plans to start implementing as early as next year. But Electron rockets won’t land vertically like New Shepard and Falcon 9 first stages do; instead, Rocket Lab plans to pluck the falling boosters out of the sky with a helicopter.

Not all of the rocket action is being conducted by American companies, either. For example, Beijing-based OneSpace, which aims to give small payloads rides to suborbital space and to orbit, launched for the first time in 2018.

Lots going on

The variety and capabilities of the hardware carried by such rockets have surged over the past decade as well.

For example, the 2010s saw the dawn of the off-Earth-manufacturing era. That milestone occurred in September 2014, when a 3D printer built by California-based startup Made In Space rode to the ISS (aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule for good measure).

Since then, Made In Space has launched a handful of other machines to the orbiting lab, including equipment that manufactures the high-value optical fiber ZBLAN.

The company is also developing in-space assembly technology known as Archinaut, which Made In Space envisions will help repair, upgrade and refuel satellites in orbit and build entirely new structures as well. This past July, NASA awarded the company nearly $74 million to give Archinaut an orbital test, which could come as early as 2022.

Advances by the private space sector have also made it much easier to see what’s happening here on Earth. For instance, the San Francisco-based company Planet first launched its sharp-eyed Dove Earth-observation satellites to orbit in 2013, and several hundred have been lofted to date.

These tiny spacecraft, each of which is about the size of a loaf of bread, capture imagery for use by a wide variety of customers. Some of these photos have considerable national security utility; Doves have helped analysts keep tabs on the North Korean and Iranian rocket and missile programs, for instance.

Communications tech also leaped ahead in the 2010s, Stallmer said, citing the launch of more-capable broadband satellites. And much bigger things are to come in this respect. SpaceX launched its first 120 Starlink spacecraft in 2019 and eventually aims to loft up to 12,000 of these satellites (including another 60 before the year is out). Several other companies, such as OneWeb and Amazon, have similar goals. (These planned megaconstellations have come with some controversy, however. Astronomers have expressed concerns about how Starlink and its ilk will affect their observations, and other folks in the space community worry about the space-junk hazard such craft pose.)

The 2010s also saw the increased commercialization of the ISS. For example, Texas-based NanoRacks, which helps customers get their gear up and running on the station, got its first foothold on the orbiting lab in 2010.

NASA has been encouraging this trend, as well as increased private activity in deep space. In the past year or two, for example, the American space agency has started reserving space on commercial lunar landers.

The delivery of scientific experiments and technology demonstrations to the moon by these private robotic craft will help NASA put boots on the lunar surface by 2024 and establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor by the end of the 2020s, agency officials have said. Indeed, NASA even wants the private sector to help get those astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

This is just a sampling of the past decade’s advances, of course; there are far too many to detail in a single story.

Driving factors

Several factors are driving such progress, Stallmer said. One of the biggest catalysts is the drop in the cost to access space.

“If people have to spend 50% less on launching a payload, it enables them to open a larger market on development of what they can do and build on the ground,” Stallmer told Space.com.

And what they can build on the ground is increasingly efficient and capable, given the ever-increasing miniaturization of electronics that’s exemplified by Planet’s flock of Doves. It also helps that those two sides — launch and payload — have been acting in increasing synergy in recent years, Stallmer said, noting a better alignment of supply and demand in the space sector.

Space companies also found it increasingly easy to access private capital throughout the 2010s, Stallmer said. The numbers back this up: According to the venture capital company Space Angels, $24.6 billion has been invested in the commercial space sector since 2009 — and $5 billion of that has been pumped in just in the first three quarters of 2019.

Investors’ pockets have been opened, at least in part, by the successes notched throughout the decade by companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic (which flew landmark crewed test flights to suborbital space in December 2018 and February 2019). And these high-profile pioneers have pushed the industry forward in other ways as well, Stallmer said.

Such companies have inspired people to start their own space outfits and also seeded them with talent. For instance, up-and-coming launch provider Relativity Space, which recently announced that it had raised $140 million from investors in its latest funding round, was founded in 2015 by Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone — alums of Blue Origin and SpaceX, respectively.

Not so fast

But it hasn’t all been wine and roses for private spaceflight in the 2010s. Milestones have been much harder to come by in a particularly high-profile field: human spaceflight.

Consider Virgin Galactic, which aims to fly paying customers to and from suborbital space aboard its six-passenger spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo. The company is nearly ready to start doing so, but the timeline has shifted considerably to the right over the years. Back in 2004, after all, Richard Branson predicted that his newly founded company would begin commercial space-tourism operations by 2007.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard is designed to carry people as well, but it doesn’t yet have any crewed flights under its belt, though that seems likely to change soon. (It’s tough to say much about New Shepard timeline shifts, because Blue Origin has mostly avoided publicly announcing target dates throughout its 19-year history.)

Then there are the crew-carrying orbital vehicles. In 2010, NASA began encouraging the development of these spacecraft via the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, to fill the shoes of the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle fleet. In September 2014, Boeing and SpaceX emerged as the big winners of this competition, each scoring multibillion-dollar contracts to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the ISS.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner are on target to start this taxi service soon, perhaps in 2020. But again, that’s later than the primary stakeholders had hoped. When NASA officials announced the SpaceX and Boeing deals in September 2014, for example, they said they hoped at least one of the two capsules would be up and running by 2017.

Part of the responsibility for these delays rests with the U.S. Congress, which did not fund the Commercial Crew Program adequately in its early years, said space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C.

But the wait also reinforces a simple and sobering reality about exploration: “Human spaceflight is hard,” Logsdon told Space.com.

Numerous examples make this point. For example, Virgin Galactic’s progress has been slowed by two fatal accidents, one on the ground in 2007 at the facilities of design and manufacturing partner Scaled Composites and another in 2014, during a rocket-powered test flight of the first SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Enterprise. And the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that performed a historic uncrewed demonstration flight to the ISS in March no longer exists; it was destroyed a month later during a ground-test accident, setting SpaceX back some.

And just today (Dec. 20), Boeing’s Starliner experienced problems during its first orbital mission, an uncrewed test flight that was supposed to go to the ISS. An error with the capsule’s timing system prevented that rendezvous, and Starliner is now scheduled to come back down to Earth on Sunday morning (Dec. 22) without achieving a number of major test-flight goals.

But these companies are working through such issues, and exciting things may well be just over the horizon. Seeing Crew Dragon, Starliner, SpaceShipTwo and New Shepard come fully online will be thrilling enough. But shortly thereafter, a private spaceship could carry people to deep space for the first time. After all, SpaceX is working on a 100-passenger, Mars-colonizing craft called Starship, and Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has already booked a flight around the moon with a target launch date of 2023.

“The 2010s were ‘getting ready,’ and we’re close to ready,” Logsdon said about private human spaceflight. “Hopefully, 2020 will see ‘getting started.'”

There Are 2 Seats Left for This Trip to the International Space Station

Axiom Space is selling tickets on a SpaceX capsule for a $55 million, 10-day stay on the orbiting outpost that would be the first to involve no governmental space agencies.

If you have tens of millions of dollars to spare, you could as soon as next year be one of three passengers setting off aboard a spaceship to the International Space Station for a 10-day stay.

On Thursday, Axiom Space, a company run by a former manager of NASA’s part of the space station, announced that it had signed a contract with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, for what might be the first fully private human spaceflight to orbit.

“I think you’ll see a lot more energy in the market as people come to realize it’s real, and it’s happening,” said Michael T. Suffredini, the president and chief executive of Axiom.

The spaceflight, Axiom officials said, could take off as soon as the second half of 2021.

SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon capsule for taking NASA astronauts to and from the space station. But just as the company’s development of its Falcon 9 rocket for taking cargo to the space station led to a vibrant business of launching commercial satellites, SpaceX is also looking to expand Crew Dragon passengers beyond just NASA astronauts.

After a successful test in January of an in-flight escape system, the first Crew Dragon flight carrying two NASA astronauts could launch within a couple of months.

For now, NASA wants a new Crew Dragon for each trip carrying its astronauts, even though the capsules are designed for multiple trips to space. That means a Crew Dragon flown for NASA could be used again for a flight of tourists.

Last month, Space Adventures, another company, announced an agreement with SpaceX to fly a Crew Dragon with up to four tourists for a free-flying trip that would last up to five days. That trip would not dock at the space station. Eric C. Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, said in an interview the Crew Dragon would fly autonomously but that the passengers would receive training to be ready for various emergencies.

The Space Adventures trip could happen in late 2021 or early 2022. “It’ll be probably right around the 60th anniversary of the John Glenn’s flight,” Mr. Anderson said, referring to the first American to circle Earth, on Feb. 20, 1962.

The capsule and its passengers would take an elliptical path, reaching an altitude two to three times as high as the space station’s orbit.

Mr. Anderson did not provide an exact price, but said the cost would be $10 million to $20 million less than the $50 million to $60 million usually mentioned for orbital trips.

On the planned Axiom flight, one seat would be occupied by a company-trained astronaut who would serve as the flight commander. The other three seats will be for customers who are to spend 10 days in orbit floating inside the space station. The Axiom astronaut would also oversee the space tourists while they were on the station, making sure that they did not interfere with the six crew members.

Mr. Suffredini said that the space station, with as much interior room as a Boeing 747 jetliner, should have enough room for everyone.

He declined to talk about the cost, but in the past, Axiom has confirmed that a seat on the trip will cost $55 million, and it has already signed up one person.

From 2001 to 2009, seven nonprofessional astronauts bought trips to the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. In each of these trips, arranged by Space Adventures, the other two astronauts on the spacecraft were working professionals headed for a tour of duty in orbit. Last year, the United Arab Emirates bought a Soyuz seat to jump-start its space program by sending an astronaut, Hazzaa al-Mansoori, to the space station.

The Axiom mission could be the first orbital flight with people aboard without the direct involvement of a governmental space agency.

NASA has in recent years become more receptive to allowing companies to find new ways to make money on the space station. Last June, NASA set up a price list for various commercial activities, including charging companies like Axiom $35,000 a night for each tourist staying at the station for space to sleep and the use of its amenities like air, water, the internet and the toilet. The largest chunk of the $55 million ticket price is for the rocket ride, which Axiom will pay to SpaceX, not NASA.

“NASA has been very forward leaning, and we’re taking advantage of that,” Mr. Suffredini said.

From 2005 to 2015, Mr. Suffredini worked at NASA as program manager for the International Space Station. A year after retiring, he was one of the founders of Axiom, which claims it can build and operate a private facility at a fraction of the $4 billion that NASA spends annually on the International Space Station.

But the first step in that plan is going to the I.S.S.

Axiom has been discussing with NASA the possibility of tourist flights for several years. Last month, NASA also selected Axiom to develop a module that would be attached to the I.S.S. in 2024 and used for commercial business activities. When the space station is eventually retired, the Axiom module would be detached and used as a building block for Axiom’s private space station.

If a trip to orbit seems like too much, two other companies, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, may be on track to carry their first customers on short-hop space tourism flights to the edge of space. Virgin earlier priced seats on its space plane at $250,000, but may now charge more. Blue Origin has not announced the cost of a trip aboard its reusable rocket and capsule, New Shepard.

“I think it’s an important inflection point,” said Mr. Anderson of Space Adventures. Space travel, even if affordable for only a few, is still marker of hope and what humans can and do accomplish, he said.

“I’m hopeful it will be something cool and positive in the world,” he said.

This year may finally fulfill the promise of private human spaceflight

Big and small rockets. The Moon and Mars. Lots of asteroid stuff, too.

reader comments

Share this story

This year could see the fulfillment of a number of long-promised achievements in human spaceflight. For the first time, private companies could launch humans into orbit in 2020, and two different companies could send paying tourists on suborbital missions. The aerospace community has been watching and waiting for these milestones for years, but 2020 is probably the year for both.

We may also see a number of new rocket debuts this year, both big and small. A record number of missions—four—are also due to launch to Mars from four different space agencies. That’s just the beginning of what promises to be an exciting year; here’s a look at what we’re most eagerly anticipating in the coming 11.5 months.

Commercial crew

Yes, it’s happening. Probably. Both SpaceX and Boeing have made considerable progress toward launching humans to the International Space Station from Florida. They’ve also had setbacks. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon performed a successful test back in March, but a month later the capsule exploded during a thruster test. Boeing completed an orbital uncrewed test flight in December, but it was hampered by a software issue and unable to perform the primary task of its flight, approaching and docking with the International Space Station.

These issues are likely surmountable. SpaceX plans to conduct a test of its in-flight abort systems on Saturday—using a slightly modified version of the SuperDraco thrusters that caused problems in April. Success with this test could set up a crewed launch in late spring depending on how fast NASA can review data from that and other tests before signing off on Crew Dragon’s readiness for flight.

Further Reading

Less clear is how long Boeing’s software issues will set the company back. Starliner also experienced some thruster issues during its test flight. NASA has said it will spend the next two months reviewing the issue before deciding how to proceed. The bottom line is that it seems likely that one or both companies probably will get crewed flights off in 2020. We can’t wait.

Space tourism

Let’s face it: we’ve heard this before. Richard Branson has been promising to take tourists on a suborbital space ride for a long time. As far back as July 2008, Sir Richard said Virgin Galactic would be ready to bring its first paying customers into space within 18 months. More than a decade has since passed since then, but Virgin appears to be getting close.

The company has completed two successful suborbital test flights to the edge of space with its VSS Unity spacecraft, and Virgin has since begun refitting the cabin interior for customer missions. The first paying customers will likely fly later this year—including Sir Richard himself.

Company

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

Quick Facts about SpaceX:

You are here

Making History

SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company capable of returning a spacecraft from low Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in 2010. The company made history again in 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station.

SpaceX successfully achieved the historic first reflight of an orbital class rocket in 2017, and the company now regularly launches flight-proven rockets. In 2018, SpaceX began launching Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket by a factor of two.

CREW DRAGON DOCKS WITH ISS

Crew Dragon docked with the International Space Station on March 3 at 3:02 a.m. PST, becoming the first American spacecraft to autonomously dock with the orbiting laboratory.

Falcon Heavy First Flight

Falcon Heavy is the world’s most powerful operational rocket by a factor of two, capable of carrying large payloads to orbit and supporting missions as far as the Moon or Mars.

First Dragon Reflight

This Dragon resupply mission represented the first reflight of a commercial spacecraft to and from the International Space Station.

FIRST REFLIGHT

On March 30, 2017, SpaceX achieved the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket. Following delivery of the payload, the Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth for the second time.

DRONESHIP LANDING

On April 8, 2016, the Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, and the first stage returned and landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship.

FIRST LAND LANDING

On December 21, 2015, the Falcon 9 rocket delivered 11 communications satellites to orbit, and the first stage returned and landed at Landing Zone 1 -– the first-ever orbital class rocket landing.

Pad Abort Test

Crew Dragon tests launch abort system, which can provide astronauts with escape capability all the way to orbit.

Drone Ship Landings

SpaceX begins series of first stage landing attempts on an autonomous spaceport
drone ship.

Spacex Awarded $2.6b Commercial Crew Contract

NASA awards SpaceX contract to fly American astronauts.

Falcon 9 Reusable Test Vehicle Flies 1000M

Vehicle completes highest leap to date, lands safely.

First Stage Landing

Falcon 9 first stage successfully lands in Atlantic Ocean.

First Flight of Falcon 9 to GTO

Falcon 9 reaches Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit

Grasshopper Completes Half-mile Flight

The Grasshopper program finished with a 744m flight, hover, and landing.

Dragon Visits Station

Dragon becomes the first private spacecraft in history to visit the space station.

Dragon Returns from Earth Orbit

On December 8, 2010, Dragon became the first privately developed spacecraft in history to re-enter from low-Earth orbit.

Falcon 9 First Flight

Met 100% of mission objectives on the first flight!

Falcon 1 Flight 5 Makes History

Falcon 1 Flight 5 makes history, becoming the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to deliver a commercial satellite to Earth orbit

SpaceX Wins $1.6B CRS Contract

NASA awards SpaceX $1.6B Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

Falcon 1 Makes History

Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit.

Advancing the Future

As one of the world’s fastest growing providers of launch services, SpaceX has secured over 100 missions to its manifest, representing over $12 billion on contract. These include commercial satellite launches as well as US government missions. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is flying numerous cargo resupply missions to the space station under a series of Commercial Resupply Services contracts. Dragon was designed from the outset to carry humans to space and will soon fly astronauts under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Building on the achievements of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, SpaceX is working on a next generation of fully reusable launch vehicles that will be the most powerful ever built, capable of carrying humans to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

Contact SpaceX

SpaceX is a private company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk. The company has more than 6,000 employees across locations, including its headquarters in Hawthorne, CA; launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL; Kennedy Space Center, FL; and Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA; a rocket development facility in McGregor, TX; and offices in Redmond, WA; Irvine, CA; Houston, TX; Chantilly, VA; and Washington, DC. SpaceX has suppliers in all 50 states. See our SpaceX Supplier/Contractor Policy and our policy on trademarks, copyrights and other IP.

Axiom strikes deal with SpaceX to ferry private astronauts to space station

Axiom Space, a Houston-based company with plans to develop a commercial outpost in space, announced Thursday it has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry a professional astronaut and three paying passengers to the International Space Station as soon as next year on the first fully private human spaceflight mission to Earth orbit.

The private crew members will spend at least eight days on the orbiting research platform, allowing them to enjoy “microgravity and views of Earth that can only be fully appreciated in the large, venerable station,” Axiom said in a statement.

Axiom said Thursday it has signed a contract with SpaceX to transport a commander “professionally trained” by Axiom and three private astronauts to the space station on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission could take off as soon as the second half of 2021, Axiom said.

“This history-making flight will represent a watershed moment in the march toward universal and routine access to space,” said Michael Suffredini, Axiom’s CEO, in a statement. “This will be just the first of many missions to ISS to be completely crewed and managed by Axiom Space — a first for a commercial entity. Procuring the transportation marks significant progress toward that goal, and we’re glad to be working with SpaceX in this effort.”

Axiom says it plans to offer additional flights to the International Space Station for professional and private astronauts through a Space Act Agreement with NASA, which is looking to Axiom and other companies to develop a commercial market for human spaceflight in low Earth orbit after the space station’s retirement.

The private astronaut flight opportunities arranged by Axiom could launch as often as two times per year, the company said.

Self-funded space fliers to date have flown to the space station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, joining crews comprised of government cosmonauts and astronauts.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner capsule are only U.S. vehicles expected to be available to transport commercial crews to the International Space Station in the coming years. Both human-rated ships were developed in partnership with NASA, which has contracts with SpaceX and Boeing valued at a combined $6.8 billion to build the Crew Dragon and Starliner capsules and fly government astronauts to the space station.

The Crew Dragon and Starliner spaceships will end NASA’s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz crew ferry ships for astronaut transportation to and from the space station. The Soyuz has been the only spacecraft able to carry crews to and from the station since the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2011.

SpaceX is gearing up for the first Crew Dragon test flight with astronauts on-board later this year. The mission, named Demo-2, could take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as May, following an unpiloted Crew Dragon test flight to the station in March 2019.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will fly on the Crew Dragon to the space station. If the test flight goes well, the Crew Dragon will be certified for regular crew rotation flights to the orbiting complex lasting up to seven months.

The Crew Dragon is designed to accommodate up to four people on launch and landing. On crewed missions, the capsule will take off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, then splash down in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida.

“Since 2012, SpaceX has been delivering cargo to the International Space Station in partnership with NASA and later this year, we will fly NASA astronauts for the first time,” said Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating. “Now, thanks to Axiom and their support from NASA, privately crewed missions will have unprecedented access to the space station, furthering the commercialization of space and helping usher in a new era of human exploration.”

Although NASA supported development of the Crew Dragon, the SpaceX capsule — like Boeing’s Starliner — is available for other customers.

Last month, the space tourism company Space Adventures announced an agreement with SpaceX to fly paying passengers on a Crew Dragon spacecraft without going to the space station. Instead, the Crew Dragon will fly on its own in Earth orbit, reaching altitudes hundreds of miles above the space station to provide passengers a more expansive view of Earth.

Passengers for the Space Adventures mission or the Axiom-managed flight have not been announced, but possible clients could include wealthy adventurers, filmmakers, researchers and astronauts from nations with nascent space programs.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft closes in for docking in March 2019 at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, meanwhile, failed to dock with the space station on its first unpiloted demonstration flight in December. Boeing and NASA engineers are probing the spacecraft’s software after the capsule suffered multiple faults during its mission, which ended with an early landing after missing its rendezvous with the space station.

Officials have not said when the Starliner spacecraft could be cleared for a test flight with astronauts, or whether NASA will require Boeing to launch another unpiloted demonstration mission before proceeding with a crewed mission.

Led by Suffredini, a former ISS program manager at NASA, Axiom is developing a commercial habitat to be installed on the International Space Station as soon as late 2024. In January, NASA selected Axiom to provide a module for an open port on the station in a step toward development of a commercial replacement of the International Space Station.

NASA announced last year it would solicit proposals from companies to provide a module to connect with the open port on the ISS. At the same time, the agency announced a pricing structure for private astronauts who launch on Boeing or SpaceX commercial crew spacecraft to live and work aboard the research outpost.

NASA is negotiating with Axiom on a firm-fixed price contract to provide at least one commercial module on the International Space Station. But Axiom has more ambitious goals.

Axiom says it plans to build and launch several modules to form the “Axiom Segment” of the International Space Station.

The privately-funded elements planned by Axiom include a node module, an orbital research and manufacturing facility, a crew habitat, and a “large-windowed Earth observatory” that is similar in appearance to the International Space Station’s cupola module. Axiom said the new commercial segment will add more research and habitation facilities to the ISS, and provide “novel avenues of research in areas such as isolation studies and Earth observation.”

Research currently conducted on the ISS could be transferred to the new commercial facility gradually to prevent interruptions with the ISS is retired, according to Axiom.

In parallel with the development of a commercial space station, Axiom says it will launch a series of “precursor missions” to the ISS with private astronauts, the first of which was announced Thursday.

Axiom says it oversee training, mission planning, hardware development, life support, medical support, crew provisions, hardware and safety certifications, on-orbit operations and overall mission management for the private astronaut flights.

While its initial partnership with NASA is focused on connecting a module and flying private astronauts to the International Space Station, Axiom plans to detach its commercial modules when the ISS reaches its retirement date, forming a standalone, free-flying commercial orbital station. Before the International Space Station is decommissioned and the Axiom Segment is detached, Axiom aims to launch a solar power platform to provide the commercial modules the electricity and cooling previously provided by the ISS.

The industry team assembled by Axiom to work on elements of the commercial space station includes Boeing and Thales Alenia Space of Italy. Boeing and Thales built most of the pressurized modules on the U.S. segment the International Space Station.

Other partners identified by Axiom include Intuitive Machines and Maxar Technologies.

The U.S. government is in the process of approving an extension to NASA’s support for the International Space Station to 2028 or 2030. By that time, NASA managers hope commercial operators like Axiom could take over management of a replacement space station in low Earth orbit.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

SpaceX will launch private citizens into orbit

A truly out-of-this-world experience

Share this story

Share All sharing options for: SpaceX will launch private citizens into orbit

SpaceX is planning to send up to four private citizens into space to take a trip around Earth sometime at the end of 2021 or in early 2022. The spaceflight company announced an agreement on Tuesday with Space Adventures, a space tourism business that has helped seven different private citizens take trips to (and from) the International Space Station aboard Russia’s Soyuz rocket and spacecraft.

Space Adventures said the price of the mission will not be disclosed, and the two companies were light on other details, like what kind of preparation the tourists will have to go through. The companies did say Tuesday that the tourists will fly in the human-rated version of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and that they will orbit Earth at two to three times the roughly 250-mile height of the ISS.

SpaceX has spent the last few years building and testing out this new version of Dragon as part of a contract with NASA to shuttle astronauts to and from the ISS, after years of using the spacecraft to shuttle cargo to the space station. The private spaceflight company recently completed the second major flight test of the Crew Dragon, as it’s called, which demonstrated the capsule’s ability to escape an exploding rocket.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has teased the idea of space tourism as a business for a few years now, though he’s been overly optimistic about how soon that could happen. The company announced in early 2017 that it had accepted undisclosed payments from two customers for a trip around the Moon using Crew Dragon and the Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX said at the time that the trip would happen by the end of 2018. But in September 2018, the company announced that it now intends to send one of those passengers — Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa — around the Moon using the company’s massive, yet-to-be-built Big Falcon Rocket. (It’s still unclear what happened to the second customer.)

SpaceX has similarly had to delay the first Crew Dragon flight with NASA astronauts as it worked through the process of certifying the spacecraft with NASA. That flight is now supposed to take place later this year.

Other private spaceflight companies are vying to establish the space tourism market. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are in the running, though both of those companies are promising far briefer experiences. Virgin Galactic says it plans to send its first space tourists up later this year where they will experience a few minutes of weightlessness in the company’s plane-like spaceship. Blue Origin is promising customers a similar amount of time in space, though in a spacecraft that’s more similar to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. (Both of those tickets cost in the neighborhood of $200,000 a pop.)

While little is known about the newly-announced flight, SpaceX has detailed the inside of the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will ferry the tourists around the Earth. The capsule’s interior is a minimalist affair, with just a few suspended seats and an array of touchscreens. The spacecraft is ringed with windows, though they’re not as large as the ones Blue Origin built into its own capsule. SpaceX has also shown off sleek, custom-designed spacesuits and helmets that Crew Dragon passengers will wear. The suits are less bulky-looking than past designs, but are still pressurized, cooled, and flame resistant. They come with touchscreen compatible gloves, and will lock into the seats for the ride up to space.

Update February 18th, 11:51AM ET: Added new information in the second paragraph from Space Adventures about cost and orbit height.

The True Price of Privatizing Space Travel

As NASA opens up the International Space Station to private astronauts, the romance of space will be within reach for those who can afford it.

The International Space Station in 1999 NASA / JSC

On New Year’s Day 2001, the first crew of the International Space Station spent a quiet day in orbit. The commander, U.S. Navy Captain William Shepherd, decided to honor a naval New Year’s tradition, in which the person at the helm recites a poem. Shepherd had written something for the occasion, which included the following, recorded in the ship’s log:

Though star trackers mark Altair and Vega / Same as mariners eyed long ago / We are still as wayfinders of knowledge / Seeking new things that mankind shall know.

The station had been under construction, in orbit, for four years at that point, but Expedition 1 marked the beginning of continuous human habitation.

Today the space station’s “wayfinders of knowledge” are still steering an orbiting laboratory for experiments in biology and materials science. But just as explorers of the sea did their job to blaze a path for merchants, the ISS could soon play host to wayfinders of a different sort, whose voyages will be enabled by a whole lot of cash. About $58 million, according to NASA, which announced last week that it would allow private citizens to fly to the only other realm where humans have lived.

NASA will charge about $35,000 a night per passenger to sleep on board the ISS and use its amenities, starting as soon as next year. The station can accommodate two paying visitors for up to a month, but people won’t be able to just show up. Visitors will sign contracts with SpaceX, Boeing, or other companies to pay for the rocket ride, fees, and other costs. That means these trips will remain the purview of the very rich and very powerful for a very long time to come. That makes space tourism unsustainable, and to a certain mind, depressingly out of reach. Once, astronauts chosen for their courage, verve, intelligence, and vigor embodied the mystique of space. Now the right stuff will come with a price tag. The stars may be an everlasting connection to our ancestors, but the prize of soaring among them will be reserved for the wealthy.

NASA’s decision to open up the space station is in some ways a natural next step for space exploration. Earlier, earthbound vessels all experienced a similar transformation. Transoceanic ships, railroads, and airplanes spawned cottage industries to enable their spread and wide adoption, and each eventually reached the masses. And in widening access to space, NASA is actually behind the Russians, whose space agency has transported a few space tourists through a company called Space Adventures.

But space is different. Space, as they say, is hard. To get there, you have to strap yourself to a bomb, and sometimes those bombs malfunction.

Personal space exploration is also hard to justify. Space is not obviously a place of riches ready for the taking. There are no ports full of exotic foods to bring home, and there are no people or animals to oppress or exploit (at least not yet). There are no vast tracts of arable land where intrepid explorers can make, hunt, or gather everything they need. There is no water, or wind, or soil, or anything except sunlight and radiation. There is no good reason to take on the risk and the debt to get there in the hopes of making it rich.

This has not stopped private companies from exploring space, and it shouldn’t. The region where the space station circles Earth is mostly free from gravity’s influence, transforming many basic physical processes and enabling interesting science. Already, astronauts frequently conduct experiments for pharmaceutical firms that could lead to new medicines, because some proteins grow better in microgravity.

While these projects are financed by private companies, government workers do the job. Astronauts undergo extensive training on Earth before flying to space to conduct biology experiments. It’s not clear yet whether the tourist visits will be open to private firms, turning the ISS into a co-working space in orbit. A private company could, in principle, buy tickets for its own scientists, or for that matter, manufacturers. Under the new tourism plan, NASA will also allow, for the first time, purely for-profit ventures that do not meet any educational or research goals. That could include flying objects or food to space, then selling them to collectors or connoisseurs back on Earth.

But space-based tourism doesn’t have the same utility as private, space-based research or as space-based mining, which may happen someday on the moon or on asteroids. Space-based tourism has no obvious external benefit—at least, none beyond the pure, personal exhilaration of a real-life glimpse of Earth’s curvature. Space tourism is a lark. It’s something for very rich people to do with their money. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has literally said so. “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it,” he told Business Insider in 2018.

Bezos also said he believes that his rocket company, Blue Origin, is his most important contribution to society; he argues that humans should spread throughout the solar system and leave Earth “zoned residential.” But occasional tourism by extremely wealthy people is a giant leap from something like Saturn-ward expansion.

This latest decision, to allow paying visitors, reveals the most about the attitudes of current political leadership toward space: as a place like any other, best suited for commerce.

Several multimillion-dollar tickets to the ISS could offset some of NASA’s bills, for starters. The agency currently spends about $8 million a day to operate the station, NASA officials said during the announcement last week. Some of those funds could be redirected to pay for a sped-up moon mission, aimed at landing astronauts back on the moon by 2024. That year also looms large for the station: Donald Trump’s administration has proposed ending federal funds for the ISS in 2024 and moving toward private stations or private ownership.

This poses somewhat of a conundrum for private companies. If you knew your cruise ship would be unusable within the next five years, how much time and money would you invest in selling tickets to sail on it? How much money would you invest, or be expected to invest, to maintain the station in a visitor-friendly state? Even if NASA could promise a shipshape ISS, the number of people visiting would hardly cover all the expenses. “This is not going to be a profit-making venture for NASA at all,” said Jeff DeWit, NASA’s CFO, at a news conference last week. “But it will help defray expenses.”

Handing tourists the keys to the ISS reflects a much broader shift in space exploration, one that prioritizes resource extraction and commercial profit over pure research and collective scientific efforts. It’s a step toward making space more mundane, a travel destination defined by money and vacations, rather than discovery and glory.

The space-station commander Bill Shepherd, who spent 159 days, seven hours, and 49 minutes in space throughout his career, ended his New Year’s ode with these lines:

We commend to crews that will follow / Merit of the good ship we sail / Let Sun shine strong on Alpha’s wings / A symbol, and bright star we long hail.

Alpha was his nickname for the ISS, though it didn’t stick; the station remained a place named without romance. But it remains a symbol. It’s a bright star you can spot yourself, on any clear night, tracing a steady and sure path across the wide dome of the sky.

I’ve often been asked whether I would visit space, or the moon, or even Mars, if given the opportunity. I’ve never applied for astronaut training, which is one form of an answer. The idea has certainly grown more plausible, as companies such as SpaceX have grown up and built successful rockets. And I can’t deny that a part of me dreams of experiencing the curvature of Earth, or visiting the gray and looming hills of our moon. I often answer that I have a telescope, and for me, right now, that is enough. I can come up with plenty of other ways to spend my money right here, on the only home we have ever known.