Mike MazzaThe space industry’s remarkable transformation reaffirms a profound truth: progress requires freedom. In the decades following Apollo, space technology crawled along at a glacial pace. Now private companies are rapidly advancing rocket technology, slashing launch costs, and planning ambitious missions throughout the solar system.
SpaceX’s reusable Falcon Heavy now delivers payloads to orbit for under $700 per pound; Blue Origin’s New Glenn targets a similar price point. SpaceX’s Starship aims to reduce costs further to under 10s of dollars per pound. The industry’s radical cost reduction has enabled entire new sectors: private planetary science missions, commercial space stations, and asteroid mining ventures.
What changed? The legal framework governing space launch services.
Until 1984, the U.S. government maintained a complete monopoly on space launch through NASA and the Department of Defense. Even after the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 technically permitted private launches, NASA effectively blocked commercial competition by using the Space Shuttle program to offer taxpayer subsidized launch services.
The Space Shuttle, despite being pitched as a vehicle to make spaceflight routine and affordable, ultimately cost approximately $29,000 per pound to orbit — roughly ten times more expensive than Apollo’s Saturn V. It also suffered two tragic failures. Meanwhile, NASA acquired and then abandoned the promising Delta Clipper vertical landing rocket in 1996, delaying by two decades the technology that would eventually revolutionize spaceflight.
The industry’s unfettering occurred gradually: the 1990 Launch Services Purchase Act required NASA and the Department of Defense to procure commercial launch services; the 1998 Commercial Space Act declared that “free and competitive markets create the most efficient conditions for promoting economic development” in space; and the 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act established a framework for private crewed spaceflight.
The final barrier fell in 2014 when SpaceX successfully challenged the Air Force’s practice of awarding launch contracts exclusively to United Launch Alliance (ULA), a government-created merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s launch businesses. Only then could new entrants compete on equal terms for lucrative military contracts.
The dramatic improvements made possible by this expanded freedom aren’t merely about better management or technology. They reflect the fundamental difference between government and market approaches to innovation. NASA secures funding through taxation — the forcible expropriation of wealth — by convincing politicians that its programs serve political objectives. Private companies must convince investors to voluntarily provide capital to create commercially viable ventures.
This distinction creates entirely different measures of success. When entrepreneurs are free, they must integrate scientific possibilities with economic realities to deliver valuable services at competitive prices. Success is measured objectively by profitability, which enables increased investment in improved technology. When innovation is administered by the government, “success” is determined by political factors disconnected from economic reality.
The old space industry employed brilliant scientific thinkers, but, because its course was controlled by government force, it necessarily lacked the brilliant entrepreneurial thinkers required for self-sustaining technological progress. Scientists discover what is physically possible, and, when given the freedom to do so, entrepreneurs discover what is economically possible. Together, they transform those possibilities into world-changing realities.
For this progress to continue and to accelerate, the space industry must not merely benefit from its newfound freedom but actively defend it. To this end, the industry must demand that governments take affirmative steps to protect its freedom. The 2015 SPACE Act, Florida’s 2023 Spaceflight Entity Liability Bill, and similar legislation are important steps toward protecting property rights and defining liabilities in space. But more must be done.
For example, as orbital space becomes more crowded, some regions of orbital space may be made unusable by a cascade of colliding objects. Whatever the technical fix, entities that place and operate satellites in stable orbits should be recognized as having a property right not only in the satellites but in the orbits they occupy. Such a property rights framework would recognize the freedom of those creating value in orbital space to continue to do so while avoiding both a tragedy of the commons and more of the central planning that has hobbled space exploration.
America leads in space technology because it has led in the expansion of economic freedom to launch and to explore. By removing barriers to innovation and establishing clear rights and liabilities, we can ensure that the space industry continues or even accelerates its rapid progress. As the cost of reaching orbit falls below $100 per pound, entirely new possibilities will emerge that we can scarcely imagine today.
After fifty years of stagnation, the space industry has finally been unleashed. To secure continued progress in the space industry and to bring its dynamism to other cutting-edge industries, we must recognize and double down on the defense of its essential catalyst: freedom.
Image Credit: peepo / E+ / via Getty Images
NI Staff
