IF THERE is one phrase that describes the emerging entrepreneurial space industry – sometimes called NewSpace – it is “unrealised promise”.
The possibility of low-cost access to space, including trips by ordinary people (albeit with not-so-ordinary bank accounts), has fired the public imagination. Since the media hoopla over the SpaceShipOne flights that snagged the Ansari X Prize three years ago, tens of thousands of people have contacted , Richard Branson’s space tourism venture, wondering how to sign up.
And yet, since success of the SpaceShipOne flights, NewSpace has shown little additional progress. Some ventures have suffered technical problems and delays, while others have struggled to raise money. Most recently, SpaceShipOne developer suffered a tragic setback on 26 July: an explosion that claimed the lives of three employees.
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So why are entrepreneurs willing to risk everything to realise the dream of a privatised space industry? While many want to make money, it is not the only, or even the most important, factor. There plenty of easier ways to make a fortune, and many of the people entering NewSpace have already earned millions or billions in other industries. Something deeper than dollars sustains people through cynical investors, sceptical government regulators and even tragic technical failures. That underlying passion for space flight, free from the perceived shackles of government efforts, is at the heart of Michael Belfiore’s new book, Rocketeers.
Belfiore has spent the past few years travelling throughout North America, visiting many of the companies at the forefront of the space industry. The result is something akin to a breezy travelogue in which Belfiore at times injects himself into the action. In Toronto, for example, he gives Brian Feeney of the da Vinci Project a lift to the hardware store to buy supplies, and later helps build a part of Feeney’s planned sub-orbital craft. In Texas, he wields a rake and shovel to put out brush fires after a successful engine test by .
The strength of Rocketeers is in Belfiore’s portraits of the personalities behind NewSpace. SpaceShipOne’s designer Burt Rutan is a brilliant aerospace engineer with an almost monomaniacal focus on his work, once abandoning a round of golf without explanation to his partner to return to work when inspiration struck. Robert Bigelow, a real-estate developer who founded orbital habitat company , harbours a lifelong fascination with UFOs. Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize and serial entrepreneur, looks for business opportunities wherever he goes: attending the Indianapolis 500, he is bored by the racing cars but fascinated by the “orgy” of economic activity in the form of concessions and souvenir sales. Within days, the – the space industry’s version of NASCAR – is born.
While Belfiore excels at painting the world of NewSpace with broad brush strokes, he fumbles a bit with the details. There are a number of errors, and in his biggest one he describes a NASA programme that will provide “$500 billion” to help fund the development of private spacecraft to service the International Space Station. $500 billion is about three decades’ worth of today’s NASA budgets; the actual amount pledged by the agency is $500 million.
Reading Rocketeers, a common theme emerges: many of the people involved in NewSpace are driven both by their love of space flight and their frustration with what government space programmes have – or, rather, have not – done over the past half-century. Raised on a diet of science fiction and the promise of the early space age, they eventually became alienated as they realised their own dreams of space travel would go unfulfilled unless they took matters into their own hands.
“These enthusiasts have taken matters into their own hands”
Such motivation doesn’t necessarily make the best business sense, and it remains to be seen if any of these ventures will find the right combination of technical and financial success to realise their founders’ dreams. However, as Rocketeers adeptly illustrates, any failures will not be due to lack of enthusiasm.
Rocketeers
Smithsonian Books
