Getting over getting to space

Rockets are cool. Maybe a bit too cool.

A very cool Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX during launch. Source.

I, like most Westerners, generally do not view Chinese websites. But recently I made an exception and looked up the web page of a Chinese company called Galactic Energy. Galactic Energy's Wikipedia page clearly states that their "long-term objective is to mine asteroids for rare metals and minerals". Something that obviously piqued my interest. 

Sadly, I could find nothing of this on Galactic Energy's website. If they ever had asteroidal ambitions they seem to be gone or at least hidden from plain view. These days their homepage is solely dedicated to their launch business, the business of sending rockets into Earth orbit. Of this they were refreshingly transparent. If you had anything you wanted sent into orbit you could book an orbital launch directly, through their online form. If you did not have an orbital satellite ready or lacked the necessary funds to send it into space there was also the option of buying Galactic Energy branded jackets and notebooks. 

The potency of rockets

Sometime, Galactic Energy must have had the ambition to mine asteroids and build things in space. Otherwise that inconspicuous phrase would not have been on their Wikipedia page. And, yet, sometime along the way, those lofty ambitions seem to have given way to the more mundane task of lifting things into space.

Calling orbital space launches mundane might seem a bit brash. But the fact is that there are now dozens of nation states with the capability of launching rockets into space and a whole bunch of private companies that can do the same as well.

Galactic Energy is not even unique in getting stuck on space launches instead of its more high-flying objectives. Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest men, has been vocal about his ambitions for space colonization. Yet his space company, Blue Origin, is still, after almost a quarter century of operations, solely focused on figuring out a way to get rockets into orbit.

Elon has already done that

I believe this is wrong on many levels. Specialization is great for progress. Very complicated things, including orbital space launches, are best left to the experts. There is no reason to have more experts than necessary, but it is also not possible to be an expert on everything. If you put your efforts and your resources on something as complicated as rockets, there will be preciously little left for other things.

The whole situation is made almost silly by the fact that the problem of orbital rocket launches has already been solved. Elon Musk's company SpaceX has made rocket launches routine. Last year SpaceX launched 96 rockets into space, all of them successful. Of course it is good that SpaceX has some competition in order for them not to get complacent, but there is simply no good reason at all to have dozens of companies all striving for the single goal of launching rockets into space.

Filling it up

Today humanity does not lack rockets. In fact, there is an abundance of rockets. To the point where we have problems filling them. I am exaggerating only slightly. Of the 96 rocket launches SpaceX performed last year, 63 of them were launching Starlink satellites into orbit.

Starlink is a satellite based system for global internet access. I have never used it but according to reports it is decent and for those who for some reason lack real internet access, it is surely great.

I have not seen Starlink's accounting. But I doubt that Mr. Musk will be able to recoup the tens of billions of investment that has been sunk into the Starlink network when it is finished. This might not matter very much if the main objective is not to make money in the long term but rather to launch rockets in the short term. Starlink might not give a decent return on investment over 20 years. But it generates income now. Which is very convenient if you want to launch as many rockets as possible right away. 

On this measure it is a success. During the last 4 years SpaceX has sent 2500 tons of Starlink satellites into orbit. This is almost as much cargo to orbit as the Space Shuttle program managed during 30 years of operation.

Launching as many rockets as possible while getting some money in on the side might not be a bad deal if you are in the space launch business and intend to stay there. SpaceX has built what is probably an unassailable lead in orbital launch technology. No one can compete with SpaceX when it comes to launching cargo into orbit safely and cheaply. 

The problem now is that even though SpaceX has already cornered the launch market its competitors refuse to accept this. Launching rockets seems to have become a goal unto itself, SpaceX’s competitors are not scaling down their launch operations but instead mimics SpaceX’s every move. Jeff Bezos has not been burned by the fact that Elon Musk’s space launch company is wildly more successful than his own. Instead he is launching his own Starlink competitor, Project Kuiper, in the vain hope of copying some of SpaceX’s glory.

Aim higher

Starting projects with the main intention of creating cargo to bring into orbit is a bit sad. For the very simple reason that there are plenty of things humanity could send to space. Not things that will give a quick cashflow boost, to be sure, but things that might benefit humanity in the longer run. If we intend to ever expand beyond this planet there are many things we need to do first. We need to send out probes to map our solar system in much greater detail. And we need to send up industrial machinery to start experimenting with producing things in zero gravity. 

While a quick buck might be very attractive to SpaceX, this should not be the case with every entity in the space economy. The many start-ups in the rocket launch business are not there for the great cash flow opportunities. Most of them are idealists who do it for a greater good (or maybe in the hope of untold profits very far off in the future). Which means they should be able to take the long-term view. 

For long-term investments we also have something called the government. SpaceX was built with government grants. For its first decade SpaceX was kept afloat by money from Nasa (and to a lesser extent the Department of Defense). This was sound government policy. At the time Nasa lacked a suitable space launch vehicle and instead of developing one themselves they outsourced the project to private entrepreneurs, of which SpaceX was the most successful.

While the early investment in SpaceX was auspicious it is more difficult to see anything positive in today's launch business. SpaceX rules the market. They send more volume to space than the world currently needs at prices no one else can match. Why are then dozens of well-financed (and not so well-financed) start-ups trying to send rockets into orbit? It makes no sense to me.

It would have been much better had the start-up scene just left the launch business to SpaceX, the Chinese and perhaps one other American company for competition's sake. The talent and resources thus released could be used for other space related endeavors, either to the Moon and Mars or, preferably, to the asteroids and on to free floating space colonies.

Aiming high with a small bow

To be fair, this is already being done. To an extent. There are private companies developing all sorts of vehicles for space travel to and landings on extraterrestrial bodies. There is currently a horde of robotic vehicles descending on the moon. Many of these have been built by private corporations. In December 2023 a lander built by the Japanese company ispace crashed while attempting to land. Just a few weeks later another lander by American company Astrobotic failed to even reach the moon.

Finally, on February 22, yet another American company, Intuitive Machines, managed to land their lunar vehicle close to the south pole of the moon. The lander tripped over when touching down and landed on the side. Despite this mishap the mission should still be considered a sort of success. More importantly, it is just the beginning. Later in this year both Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines will have attempted new moon landings, as will a third American company, Firefly Aerospace.

All of these nominally private missions to the moon have one thing in common: They are all bankrolled by the government. The American participants are financed by Nasa's CLPS program, where Nasa pays for private lunar missions in the hope of building an ecosystem of companies with the ability to take cargo to the moon. Just as Nasa built a private space launch industry from scratch 15 years ago they now hope to do the same with lunar landing.

This might work in the sense that Nasa may get lunar landings cheaper from the private sector than they could realistically achieve themselves. But it is unlikely that they can repeat the great success of SpaceX. If nothing else for the simple reason that there is both broad and deep demand for launch services, many countries and many private enterprises are willing to pay to get their satellites into Earth orbit. The market for placing things on the lunar surface is much, much smaller.

Exactly how much smaller is shown by Intuitive Machines successful landing. Nasa's scientific equipment did not fill up all of the lander and some space was left for two commercial cargoes. One was the EagleCam, a "selfie stick", a detachable camera that was supposed to take cool photos of the landing (it failed to detach and took no photos at all). The second was 125 stainless steel balls designed by expensive artist Jeff Koons (it too failed in a way when the lander tripped over and the art installation ended up inaccessible on the bottom side). 

Even if the problems of landing on the moon are ironed out the lack of suitable cargo should be cause for some concern. That Mr. Koons can sell 1 inch stainless steel balls for 2 million dollars a pop is all well and good but it can hardly be described as a sustainable foundation for lunar travel. The optimist's theory of space travel is that with transportation being cheap enough, someone will use it for something commendable. But if nobody does?

Getting to space vs. being in space

What is sorely needed now is well-financed companies with new ideas of things to do in space. Asteroid mining is first on my list and should be high up on everyone's. As long as humanity is forced to haul everything in space up from the unfathomable deep gravity well that is Earth, we will never really make it in space. The only way forward is to use the resources already in space. And that means asteroid mining.

There have been attempts at this. Planetary Resources is probably the best-led and best-financed of the lot. Or rather was, since it folded in 2018 due to lack of funding. Another, even more ambitious enterprise, was Deep Space Industries, which envisaged not only asteroid mining but also the processing and manufacturing in space. They too ceased operations in 2019 due to economic difficulties.

Space production is an area where things should be happening but are not. For decades now there has been ongoing research at ISS and previous space stations about zero gravity production. Of crystals, proteins and other delicate objects that could potentially gain something from being produced away from the brutal gravity on Earth. To the best of my knowledge there have been no serious attempts to commercialize this research. Which could either mean that zero gravity production is a dead end or, more probably, there is a lack of willing entrepreneurs and investors.

If humanity is to take the next step on its way to becoming an interplanetary species this is where things need to change. By now it is more or less safe to say that humanity has mastered the art of the orbital launch. With getting to space sorted out we need to start focusing on being in space.