Private spaceflight

• 1. Introduction

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  Private spaceflight began, in one version of the story, with a capsule full of gifts. In 1992, the Russian Foundation for Social Inventions launched a spacecraft called Resurs-500 from Plesetsk Cosmodrome on a private mission named Europe-America 500. Russian companies contributed the funds. The capsule parachuted into the Pacific Ocean, was collected by a Russian missile-tracking ship, and arrived in Seattle. That small venture had almost nothing in common with the orbital rocket industry that would grow up around the same time. Both, though, were driven by a single conviction: that space did not have to belong exclusively to governments. How that conviction became a contested commercial market, and what it cost to get there, are the questions this documentary explores.

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• 2. Opening the Door

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  The US Communications Satellite Act of 1962 allowed commercial consortia to own and operate their own satellites. They still had to launch them on government-owned vehicles. Advocates of private space described the Act as the first step on the road toward privatization, and its opponents agreed.

  NASA, from the beginning of the Shuttle program, worked to position its vehicle as the sole legal option for commercial satellite launches. The Challenger disaster of 1986 interrupted that arrangement. With the shuttle grounded after the mid-launch explosion, the argument for a commercial launch alternative grew harder to dismiss.

  On the 4th of July 1982, the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive 42. It declared the expansion of United States private-sector involvement in civil space a national goal. Directive 94 followed on the 16th of May 1983, specifying that commercial launch vehicles would be regulated only to the degree required by national obligations and public safety. On the 30th of October 1984, President Reagan signed the Commercial Space Launch Act. Before that law, all commercial satellite launches in the United States were restricted to NASA's Shuttle by federal regulation. The Act eliminated that restriction. It also added a clause to NASA's mission: Congress declared that the agency must seek the fullest commercial use of space.

  On the 11th of February 1988, a presidential directive ordered the government to purchase commercially available space goods and services whenever feasible. On the 5th of November 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Launch Services Purchase Act. The Act required NASA to buy launch services from commercial providers for its primary payloads, reversing the earlier Shuttle monopoly entirely. In 1996, the government selected Lockheed Martin and Boeing to each develop Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles. Both the Delta IV and Atlas V entered service, though commercial demand fell short of projections. By 1997, commercial launches at the Eastern Range outnumbered government launches for the first time.

  In 2004, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act required both NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to deregulate private spaceflight. It established a learning period through 2012 limiting FAA authority over spaceflight participant safety. In November 2015, the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship Act, known as the SPACE Act, updated the legal framework. It permitted US citizens to exploit space resources including water and minerals. The Act stated clearly that the United States was not claiming sovereignty over any celestial body. By 2015, the indemnification provision had stood for more than 25 years without ever being invoked in a commercial launch mishap.

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• 3. First Rockets

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  OTRAG, a German company founded in 1975, was the first private company to attempt a private spacecraft launch. Testing of its rocket began in 1977. Around the same time in Europe, the European Space Agency created Arianespace in 1980 to offer commercial launch services on a sustainable commercial basis. Initial hardware and launch facilities were developed with government funding; the company was then designed to operate commercially. Arianespace went on to launch numerous satellites.

  The first privately funded rocket to reach the boundary of space in the United States was Space Services Inc.'s Conestoga I, which launched on the 9th of September 1982 and climbed to 309 kilometers on a suborbital flight, crossing the Kármán line without reaching orbit. In October 1995, Space Services Inc. attempted an orbital launch with Conestoga 1620, but the vehicle failed to achieve orbit due to a guidance system failure. That was the company's first and only orbital attempt.

  The milestone of reaching orbit by a fully private launch vehicle fell to Orbital Sciences Corporation. On the 5th of April 1990, its Pegasus rocket, an air-launched vehicle, became the first launch vehicle fully developed by a private company to reach orbit. By the early 2000s, a new generation of entrepreneurs was designing space systems intended to match or outperform what governments had built. Their early achievements were followed by a wave of better-funded ventures, many of which would not survive.

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• 4. The Graveyard

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  The 288-satellite Teledesic network was one of several large commercial satellite constellations projected in the 1990s to drive demand for private launch services. None of those constellations was ever built. The anticipated demand evaporated, and many of the launch providers formed to meet it did not survive.

  In 1996, NASA selected Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to build the X-33 VentureStar, a prototype single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft intended to become a full-scale commercial space transport. In 1999, the prototype's composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank failed during testing. NASA had spent $912 million on the program and Lockheed Martin had financed $357 million. The project was terminated on the 31st of March 2001.

  In 1997, Beal Aerospace proposed the BA-2, a low-cost commercial heavy-lift launch vehicle. On the 4th of March 2000, the BA-2 tested the largest liquid rocket engine built since the Saturn V. In October 2000, Beal Aerospace ceased operations, citing a government decision to commit to the competing EELV program. In 1998, Rotary Rocket proposed the Roton, a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle designed for vertical takeoff and landing. A full-scale atmospheric test vehicle flew three times in 1999. After spending tens of millions of dollars without securing a launch contract, Rotary Rocket ceased operations in 2001.

  On the 28th of September 2006, Jim Benson, founder of SpaceDev, announced the Benson Space Company, with plans for the safest and lowest-cost suborbital personal spaceflight. The vehicle was to be a vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing craft called the Dream Chaser, based on NASA's HL-20 design. Excalibur Almaz announced plans in 2007 to launch a modified TKS spacecraft for tourism. It would have featured the largest window ever placed on a spacecraft. Their hardware was never launched, and their hangar closed in 2016. Escape Dynamics operated from 2010 to 2015 in pursuit of single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane technology. In December 2012, the Golden Spike Company announced plans to carry participants to the Moon's surface and back. The price was $750 million per passenger, with service planned to begin as early as 2020. XCOR Aerospace planned suborbital flights with its Lynx rocketplane at $95,000 per seat. The first group of 23 passengers, from the Axe Apollo Space Academy, was planned for 2015.

  What finally changed the odds was not a better rocket design but a different kind of investor.

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• 5. The Money

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  In 2015, venture capital investment in private spaceflight companies for that year exceeded the total for the previous fifteen years combined. The pace of deals had accelerated sharply, from two or three per quarter in 2012 to fourteen per quarter by 2015. By that point, the most active investors included Lux Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, RRE Ventures, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In 2017, CB Insights ranked the most active space tech investors in order from highest to lowest. The list included Space Angels Networks, Founders Fund, RRE Ventures, Data Collective, Bessemer, Lux Capital, Alphabet, Tencent Holdings, and Rothenberg Ventures.

  Ten billionaires had made what observers described as serious investments in private spaceflight at six companies: Stratolaunch Systems, Planetary Resources, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Bigelow Aerospace. Their names were Paul Allen, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Ram Shriram, Charles Simonyi, Ross Perot Jr., and Robert Bigelow.

  Bigelow Aerospace eventually collapsed and left the market. Rocket Lab went public through a special-purpose acquisition company, though its valuation was affected by market volatility. SpaceX, by the early 2020s, had a $100 billion valuation and dominated the launch market in mass to orbit.

  By 2020, one startup from the early 2000s had brought launch prices from tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to a few thousand. A second company's technology promised to reduce costs further still, to below a few hundred dollars per kilogram. China's first private launch, a suborbital flight by OneSpace, did not come until May 2018.

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• 6. Cargo and Crew

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  On the 18th of January 2006, NASA announced a competition for US commercial providers to demonstrate orbital transportation services to the International Space Station. In 2005-18 commercial launches had taken place worldwide against 37 non-commercial ones. Russia held 44 percent of commercial orbital launches, Europe 28 percent, and the United States just 6 percent. The Space Shuttle was scheduled to retire in less than half a decade and ultimately did so in 2011. NASA planned to spend $500 million through 2010 developing private-sector capability for ISS cargo delivery, a task harder than any existing commercial transport because it required precision orbit insertion, rendezvous, and possibly docking.

  In August 2006, NASA awarded contracts under the COTS program. SpaceX received $278 million. Rocketplane Kistler received $207 million. Rocketplane Kistler failed to meet its contractual deadlines, and NASA terminated the contract in August 2008 after disbursing only $32 million. Several months later, in December 2008, NASA awarded the remaining $170 million to Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop ISS resupply services.

  In December 2010, SpaceX launched the second Falcon 9 and the first operational Dragon spacecraft. The mission was declared fully successful: the first time a private company had launched to space, reentered, and recovered a capsule. Subsequent COTS missions grew more complex, and Dragon first docked to the ISS in 2012. By that year, a private company was regularly transporting cargo to and from the station, and a second provider was scheduled to begin in 2013. The post-Shuttle period also drew on Russian Soyuz and Progress vehicles, the ESA supply vehicle through 2014, and a Japanese cargo carrier through 2021.

  On the 30th of May 2020, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 became the first crewed mission to the International Space Station under the Commercial Crew Program. A parallel track had been running alongside these government contracts, aimed not at cargo but at paying passengers who wanted a seat near the edge of space.

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• 7. Personal Spaceflight

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  Before 2004, no privately operated crewed spaceflight had ever taken place. The private individuals who had reached space before that year did so as passengers in government vehicles. In January 1986, US Congressman Bill Nelson flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia. In 1990, Japanese television reporter Toyohiro Akiyama flew to the Mir Space Station. Dennis Tito's self-financed visit to the International Space Station in 2001 was different in spirit: he paid his own way. But he too flew in a Russian Soyuz, not a privately owned vehicle.

  The Ansari X PRIZE was intended to stimulate private investment in spaceflight technology. On the 21st of June 2004, SpaceShipOne completed the first human spaceflight in a privately developed and operated vehicle. On the 27th of September 2004, Richard Branson and SpaceShipOne's designer Burt Rutan announced that Virgin Galactic had licensed the craft's technology. The company planned commercial flights within 2.5 to 3 years. A fleet of five SpaceShipTwo craft, each launched from a carrier airplane called WhiteKnightTwo, was to be constructed, with seats priced at around $200,000. Branson said his plan was to use that revenue to make future flights more affordable. A test flight of SpaceShipTwo in October 2014 resulted in a crash; one of the two pilots died.

  Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis I on the 12th of July 2006, a subscale pathfinder of an orbital space station module. Genesis II followed on the 28th of June 2007. Plans called for additional prototypes before the production model, the BA 330, could be built. By 2010, the company was developing a Next-Generation Commercial Space Station from Sundancer and B330 modules. Initial launches were planned for 2014, with portions projected for lease as early as 2015. No launches had taken place.

  On the 11th of July 2021, Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic made their first successful flight to space. Nine days later, on the 20th of July, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin made their own first successful flight. On the 16th of September 2021, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience carried the Inspiration4 mission to orbit, the first orbital spaceflight crewed entirely by private citizens. In September 2024, the SpaceX mission Polaris Dawn included the first private spacewalk. A mission called Fram2, operated by SpaceX on behalf of entrepreneur Chun Wang, flew Wang and his all-civilian crew into a polar orbit. It was the first time any human spaceflight mission had achieved that trajectory. The crew included Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, and Eric Philips. As the number of privately crewed flights grew, some companies had already set their ambitions on destinations well beyond low Earth orbit.

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• 8. Beyond Earth Orbit

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  On the 22nd of February 2024, Intuitive Machines' Odysseus landed on the Moon, having launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the 15th of February. It was the first successful landing by a privately owned spacecraft on the Moon and the first American lunar landing in more than 50 years. It was also the first lunar lander to use cryogenic propellants.

  Mars One, a private Dutch non-profit, announced in June 2012 a plan for a one-way human mission to establish a permanent colony on Mars. The plan called for landing four humans on the Martian surface in 2023, with new groups of four arriving every two years. The project's $6 billion budget drew criticism as far too low. A NASA study of a comparable mission estimated the cost at $100 billion, including a return trip. Critics raised concerns about medical feasibility, the sustainability of reality television funding, and unverified claims that the project was designed to extract money from donors.

  In February 2013, the US nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced a plan to send a married couple on a 501-day round trip past Mars. The mission would have used a free return trajectory, an orbital path that recurs only once every 15 years, to minimize fuel requirements. The two-person crew would have passed within 100 miles of the Martian surface. If anything went wrong, the spacecraft was designed to navigate home without outside assistance.

  On the 27th of September 2016, at the 67th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress, Elon Musk unveiled detailed plans for the Interplanetary Transport System. Those plans covered vehicle dimensions, engine count, cargo and passenger capacity, orbital refueling arrangements, and representative transit times. In July 2017, SpaceX revised the architecture, shrinking the design to make the system useful for Earth-orbital and cislunar launches as well as Mars. That way the system could help pay for itself through commercial work. The resulting design, the Super Heavy and Starship, was intended for satellite launches, ISS servicing, lunar cargo, and eventually Mars. On the 5th of May 2021, the twelfth Starship prototype, SN15, flew a 10-kilometer suborbital test and landed softly.

  The Planetary Society, a nonprofit space research and advocacy organization, sponsored a series of small satellites to test the feasibility of solar sailing. Its first attempt, Cosmos 1, was launched in 2005 but failed to reach space. The LightSail series followed, with the first spacecraft launching on the 20th of May 2015; LightSail-3 was planned as a further mission. The B612 Foundation was building an asteroid-finding telescope named Sentinel, intended to launch in 2016. A single one-kilometer asteroid was estimated to contain 7,500 tons of platinum alone, worth more than $150 billion at 2008 prices.

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