FT: The commercialization of space will require international cooperationOver the past few years, the world has been shaken by trade wars and armed conflicts, writes the Financial Times.
This year may also entail a battle for dominance in space, which is considered the "last economic frontier".
Rana ForooharGovernment agencies and private individuals are fighting for control in space
Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Orbital ATK, ViaSat, SES, OneWeb and more than 10,000 other commercial companies have formed an actively growing sector known as the “new space” over the past 20 years.
It is dedicated to expanding access to space for individuals, space station maintenance, satellite operation, military technology, analytical data processing, and even speculative issues such as space tourism, production and mining on asteroids.
The most famous player in this sector, SpaceX, has launched thousands of satellites into orbit for use at both the public and private levels. Elon Musk's Starlink service continues to provide Internet services to Ukraine, despite its problems with other means of telecommunications as a result of the ongoing conflict with the Russians. But she also became a potential target for the Russian military, even though Musk was haggling with the Pentagon about the cost of further services for Ukrainians.
This brings us to a large-scale discussion about who should control the space economy, which, according to the non-profit organization Space Foundation, reached $ 469 billion in 2021, and by 2030, according to Bankof America forecasts, will amount to $ 1.4 trillion.
The revenues of the commercial part of the space sector increased by 6.4% compared to 2020, according to the Space Foundation report, and most of the growth was due to a 19% increase in government spending on military and civilian space programs (in India they amounted to 36%, in China and the United States - 23% and 18%, respectively).
Previously, space exploration was associated with government programs aimed at issues of national security, national pride and scientific research, and after two fatal shuttle accidents (Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003) The United States has begun to weaken centralized state control over this area. As a result, in 2004, the US Presidential Commission on the Implementation of Space Research Policy concluded that “the role of NASA should be limited only to those areas where there is irrefutable evidence that only the government can carry out the proposed activities.”
Although public-private satellite development and launch programs have existed since the 1960s, a new generation of commercial space companies began to gain momentum only after the shut-down of the shuttle program (completely canceled in 2011). Congress changed financial incentives and developed a new policy to encourage privatization (the commercial orbital transportation Services program). NASA and other government agencies have become clients of private space contractors, not creators or at least supervisors of new technologies.
As with any privatization, the idea was to reduce costs and expand innovation. NASA data for 2014 show that SpaceX managed to deliver 1 kg of cargo to the International Space Station for about a third of the cost of the space shuttle. Currently, most flight operators carry out private orders to deliver supplies to the ISS, and sometimes transport part of the crew.
But, according to Harvard Business School professor Matthew Weinzierl, in parallel with the reduction of costs and the growth of innovations in the field of reuse of materials and equipment, the power of monopolies also grew. A handful of new space companies were able to take advantage of NASA technologies that took decades to develop, bypassing all recognized contractors who helped create them. The taxpayers whose money went to basic research had nothing to do with the wealth that billionaires created in space, and this is the largest public domain of all.
In many ways, this reflects the asymmetry of influence between the public and private sectors observed in the construction of railways in the 19th century (which led to the last outbreak of confidence in the US government in the 1930s) and in the commercialization of the Internet, during which a handful of tech giants benefited the most.
But the new space race is much more difficult because of the scale and potential damage. The main risk factor is space debris, including failed satellites, parts of spacecraft and everything that is formed as a result of their collisions. At the same time, there are different points of view on who exactly to pay for the consequences of collisions, eliminate them or answer for them before the court. The main law regulating the space heritage remains the Space Treaty (1967) of the Cold War, in which very little is said about modern space technologies. It only prohibits launching nuclear and any other weapons of mass destruction into outer space.
Optimists will argue that the potential profit from the commercialization of space will more than pay for garbage collection, and innovations will naturally be followed by more effective regulation. But it's painfully easy to imagine countless catastrophes in the style of science fiction films and books, starting with the creation of extraterrestrial colonies, where (for a fee) the rich can avoid any problems, and ending with evil billionaires obsessed with collecting rare earth minerals in space. Surprisingly, Luxembourg already offers space companies the same services that Delaware provides to American corporations in an effort to avoid taxes, says Weinzirl.
This is unacceptable. But to solve these and many other problems related to the commercialization of space, international cooperation will be required, which is currently lacking on Earth.
Rana Forouhar is an American writer, business columnist and deputy editor of FinancialTimes. He is also a CNN global economic analyst.
