Freedom to Launch: How Deregulation Created a Space Renaissance
Space travel stalled for decades, but now private enterprise is proving that freedom is rocket fuel for progress.
Key Takeaways
Following NASA’s Apollo program, space progress stalled for decades, as the agency’s monopoly on launches ensured that prices remained exorbitant and innovation waned.
From 1984 to 2014, deregulation dismantled legal barriers to private launch services, ending government control of the industry.
Freed to compete and prove their value, private companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have been able to engineer the much-needed cost reductions in space travel, making ventures such as space mining and private planetary missions at last feasible.
Progress stems from an alliance between scientists, who identify what is technologically possible, and entrepreneurs, who make it economically viable and profitable—an approach absent when the government expropriates taxpayer dollars and awards them to agencies that face no pressure to deliver more value than they consume.
The space-exploration renaissance was made possible by the industry’s newfound freedom to think, to produce, and to trade, unleashing human ingenuity from arbitrary government controls.
It’s been fifty-six years since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. In 1969, no one would have thought that the last man to set foot on the moon would do so a mere three years later. Mid-century Americans expected a future of lunar colonies and space stations. The first man to step on Mars, they thought, would probably be a young boy who had watched Armstrong’s first steps with his parents. Mid-century science fiction projected that, by the end of the 1900s, space travel would be as common as air travel, that humanity would have colonized the moon and Mars, and that daring astronauts would be exploring the moons of Jupiter. And NASA was working to make these expectations a reality: Werner von Braun, chief architect of the Apollo Saturn V rocket, had worked out a plan to bring man to Mars by the 1980s.1
None of this materialized.
Now, a quarter of the way through this century, last century’s projections of the future seem possible again — and possibly right around the corner. SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has announced his company’s intention to land their Starship rocket on Mars at the end of 2026 and to send the first manned Starship as early as 2029.2 Their competitor, Blue Origin, aims to “harness in-space resources” from the moon and other celestial bodies. They and their collaborators plan to have the first privately owned space station, Orbital Reef, open for business in 2027.3
Why has progress in space been so slow? How could the same generation of people who built the Apollo program have been so far off in their predictions of humanity’s future in space? The cause of their industry’s stagnation and the cause of their failure to predict the future are identical. Progress, whether in space or any other domain, requires freedom. This is a point which almost no one in the space industry, and few of its supporters, has fully appreciated. It’s taken until well into the twenty-first century to see the return of a progressive and inspiring space industry, because until recently the industry’s core service, launching rockets into space, was unfree. To continue and accelerate this progress, the industry must come to appreciate and defend its newfound freedom.
Private industry’s progress
Almost every vision of the future from mid- to late-twentieth-century futurism and science fiction depicts a world in which space faring is dominated by government entities, whether NASA (or its equivalents) or the military. For example, Arthur C. Clarke’s novels and their movie adaptations depict NASA’s efforts to explore the solar system. The 1960s television series, Star Trek, envisions exploring “the final frontier” as a quasi-communist endeavor of an interstellar equivalent of the U.N.
Historically, space advocacy groups primarily sought to convince the public to support government space agencies, or to convince those agencies to adopt their plans and suggestions.4 While some space advocates saw a substantial role for the private sector, no major twentieth-century proponent of science and space exploration advocated the freedom necessary to make this a reality. Even as late as 2015, science popularizer and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson was insisting that NASA would continue to lead the exploration of space.5
Very recently, many of these groups and individuals have warmed to the private space industry, likely owing to the undeniable fact that NASA’s plans have progressed like molasses, while companies like SpaceX, Rocket Labs, and Blue Origin are moving so fast that the awe-inspiring achievements of autumn become routine by spring. But the space community has celebrated the private sector’s results without fully appreciating their cause.
The key to accomplishing the industry’s ambitious goals is to radically reduce the cost of reaching orbit. Whether the goal is scientific research, exploration, commercialization, or military defense, the fundamental constraint on the utilization of space is the cost of escaping the earth’s gravity.6
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos explains his company’s mission by analogizing the current space launch industry to the telecommunications industry of the early internet days. He wants to enable cheap and easy transfer of mass to orbit in just the way that early internet companies enabled cheap, reliable, high-speed transfer of data across the globe. A successful space launch industry will enable dorm-room space startups by making space accessible to entrepreneurs and consumers in just the way that companies like MCI and Cisco enabled Facebook to be founded in a Harvard dormitory.7
To achieve this goal, Blue Origin has designed its New Glenn rocket to ferry cargo to lower earth orbit for under $1k/lbs.8 This is comparable to SpaceX’s industry-leading Falcon Heavy’s ~$700/lbs.9 SpaceX’s ambition for Starship is <$100 per pound.10 In contrast, NASA’s refurbishable Space Shuttle cost ~$29k/lbs. and its expendable Space Launch System (SLS) costs ~$19.5k/lbs.11 To borrow a turn of phrase from Richard Nixon, when space was dominated by the government, the costs of astronautics was astronomical. It’s taken the private sector to bring the cost of space down to earth.
It’s difficult to imagine the full range of possibilities that such a radical cost reduction will open, but we’re already seeing some of the results.
Rocket Labs, a third player in the new space launch market, has been radically reducing the cost of scientific research in space. In partnership with MIT, they aim to launch the Venus Life Finder mission in summer 2026. The mission will be the first privately led and funded mission to another planet and costs under $10 million. In addition to the contributions from Rocket Labs and MIT, funding comes from philanthropy.12
Another new possibility is space mining, which requires affordable ways of moving mining equipment hundreds of millions of miles and of returning mined materials back to Earth. Asteroid mining company AstroForge’s February 2025 mission, Odin, though failing to achieve its primary objective due to communications issues, marked the first serious attempt at a commercial, deep-space mission. Its follow-up mission, Vestri, aims to achieve the first private landing on an asteroid.13
Notable by its absence from the new space race is NASA, but not for lack of trying.
NASA’s stagnation
NASA had an earned reputation as the leader in space technology because of Apollo’s success. But it was that very success which would ultimately lead to failure.
The goal of the Apollo program was to put a man on the moon, and to do it before the Soviets. While the motivation of the scientists and astronauts responsible for Apollo’s success was to innovate and explore, the program’s motivation was political. It’s the nature of such government programs that their success becomes their undoing: there’s no reason to continue running a race you’ve won. So, unsurprisingly, after NASA won the space race, politicians became less willing to fund ambitious, risky ventures. NASA’s mission became less well-defined and, as a result, the care with which NASA managed its programs deteriorated.
NASA’s defenders can point to post-Apollo programs that made real advances. For instance, in this period NASA ironed out the requirements for long-term human presence in zero gravity. But if space technology is to ever develop beyond a political curiosity, radical cost-reduction is the essential advance needed. NASA’s post-Apollo advances are only achievements if we ignore the context of its failure to achieve that cost-reduction.
Following Apollo, NASA’s most ambitious program was the Space Shuttle, which had the goal of making a reusable spacecraft and, as a result, radically reduce the cost of reaching lower earth orbit.14 It is now well-understood that reusability is essential to cost reduction. This is why the launch vehicles currently in development, whether government or private, American or Chinese, incorporate some degree of reusability.
Though many Americans remember the Space Shuttle program fondly, it was a failure. According to some estimates, the Shuttle was over ten times more expensive than the Saturn V at getting mass to orbit.15 And the Shuttle was unsafe, suffering two tragic, catastrophic failures.16 Furthermore, because the Shuttle program was functional and semi-reusable, the reusable Shuttle’s failure to lower costs led many to question whether reusability as such was as important for cost-reduction as hoped.
Given the failure of the Shuttle program, it’s tragic that NASA killed the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper program in favor of second-generation space plane projects.17 The Delta Clipper was a single-stage-to-orbit, reusable, vertically landing rocket. As is now evident from the achievements of SpaceX, vertical landing is key to reusability, and hence to cost reduction. The Clipper was developed as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative and was transferred to NASA in 1996. While under development by McDonnell Douglas, a prototype became the first rocket to achieve a powered vertical landing in 1993. That’s twenty years before Blue Origin and SpaceX were able to develop vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing rockets and twenty-five years before Falcon rockets proved that this approach could achieve radical cost-reduction. After NASA took over the program from McDonnell Douglas, an early test flight crashed and NASA canceled it.18 Because NASA and the Department of Defense were the only entities then operating space launch vehicles, the idea that would ultimately revolutionize spaceflight was left unexplored for over a decade.
Today, NASA’s Artemis program aims to reach the moon by 2027 and establish a permanent moon base in the following years. But Artemis is more likely to make headlines because of delays, cost overruns, and decisions to outsource ever more elements of the program to private companies. By all accounts, the SLS rocket that is the program’s workhorse is mind-bogglingly expensive and obsolete compared to private-sector rockets.19
Explanations of the post-Apollo slowdown in space exploration center on NASA. After Apollo, NASA became far more risk averse, especially compared to present-day industry-leader SpaceX. It outsourced work to the private sector using cost-plus contracts to politically favored cronies, which further inflated costs.
But these are effects, not causes. They are effects of the government’s decision to centrally plan the space industry using NASA and the Department of Defense as the sole providers of space launch services. Since launch capacity is the key infrastructure for the space industry, it should have been expected that, until the launch industry was free, space development would stagnate. The cause of the space industry’s failure to live up to its potential was the lack of freedom in its fundamental service. The cause of the twenty-first century’s renaissance in space exploration is the freedom granted to space launch during the last two decades of the twentieth century.
The birth of freedom in the space launch industry
Until 2004, there was limited freedom in the space-launch industry. The freedom finally achieved in the early years of the twenty-first century was the culmination of twenty years of efforts to free private entities to commercialize space launch services.20
Prior to the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, only NASA and the Department of Defense were permitted to operate space launch vehicles in the United States.21 The act was, in part, a response to Space Services, Inc. of America’s (SSIA) effort to build a private, commercially viable launch service business. SSIA was founded by David Hannah in 1980 when, while technically not illegal, private launch was a legal and regulatory gray area.22 There was no framework in which private rockets could be licensed, insured, or even integrated into national airspace systems. So, while not clearly legal, a private launch was also not illegal.
The legal gray area in private launch made private launch services far riskier than it otherwise would be. On top of the inherent riskiness of rocketry or of starting a whole new industry, SSIA was taking on the risk that the government could shut the entire thing down at any point.23 But Hannah and others saw an opportunity in the Reagan administration’s enthusiasm for private enterprise and skepticism of regulation to take the risk. SSIA proactively informed the FAA, DOT, NASA, and the DoD of their plans. In 1982, their Conestoga I became the first privately funded rocket to reach space.24
SSIA failed to become the first commercially viable space launch company. But they were right in their judgment that the political climate of the time presented an opportunity to begin a revolution in the space industry.25 Their successful launch demonstrated both that private enterprise could reach space and the need for legal and regulatory clarity on the possibility of private launch. Rep. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Sen. Harrison Schmitt (R-NM) (a former Apollo astronaut) took up the cause of commercial space launch legalization.26 The result was the Commercial Space Launch Act.
The 1984 act explicitly granted private entities the freedom to launch and limited the power of government agencies to regulate space launch “only to the extent necessary . . . to ensure compliance with international obligations of the United States and to protect the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security interests and foreign policy interests of the United States.”27
Unfortunately, NASA used the Space Shuttle program to crowd out private competition by pricing launches at deeply subsidized rates.28 It wasn’t until the Challenger disaster grounded the program, and the 1990 Launch Service Purchase Act required the government to purchase some launch services from private providers, that NASA’s control of the market waned.29 The 1990 changes in the law led the government to select Boeing and Lockheed Martin to each develop and operate launch vehicles that would compete for government contracts.30 Only then did launch-service start-ups begin to form.
Progress was further cemented by the Commercial Space Act of 1998, which adopted the commercialization of space and the protection of free markets as explicit goals: “The Congress . . . declares that free and competitive markets create the most efficient conditions for promoting economic development, and should therefore govern the economic development of Earth orbital space.”31
The last step in the freeing of private space launch was the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which established a legal framework for private crewed space launches.32 The act clarified the role of the FAA and established a so-called learning period during which the FAA’s power to regulate human spaceflight is severely limited. (The learning period has been extended multiple times and is currently set to expire in 2028.)33
The final barrier to the formation of a free market for space-launch services was the still-existing special privileges granted to United Launch Alliance (ULA), a company formed at the behest of the government, combining the launch services of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. In 2014, SpaceX sued the government, alleging that the Air Force was illegally excluding it from bidding against ULA for military launch contracts.34 SpaceX dropped the lawsuit after the Air Force agreed to open competition and SpaceX was able to provide launch services for a quarter of ULA’s price.35,36 The lawsuit opened a new source of revenue for SpaceX and its competitors.
The twenty-year period of legalization and deregulation freed Americans to innovate in space-launch services. After the SpaceX lawsuit, companies historically protected by the government lost their last privileges and new players became able to compete on fair terms for lucrative military contracts. Space was now open for business.
Why freedom makes the space industry’s progress possible
Without an appreciation for the fundamentality of freedom to technological progress and industrial development, the best industry observers find themselves in the position of Casey Handmer, former NASA JPL scientist (and current NASA critic): “There’s no law of physics which says that government has to be conspicuously less productive than private industry, but it certainly seems to happen a lot.”37
There may be no law of physics that says that government can’t be productive. But there is a socio-economic principle that explains NASA’s failure: productivity is only possible to the extent that we are free to think, to act, to create, and to trade.
Along with the freedom now extended to private industry comes a responsibility: space must be profitable. That is, any entity which invests in space technology must come away with more value than it put in. The result of this alignment is the sustainable, long-term technological progress that characterizes every industry in which both scientific curiosity and economic profitability are driving forces.
Now that the space industry is free, scientists and space companies must prove that their work is valuable by convincing investors and customers to freely invest in or buy their services. Only in a system in which all parties participate voluntarily can technological progress reach its productive potential. Technological progress requires entrepreneurial thinking, which is only possible to the extent that investors, producers, and consumers are free.
By contrast, scientists and administrators at NASA never had to justify their work to persuade someone to voluntarily pay to use their programs. From NASA’s perspective, their work was important enough to give them the “right” to coercively expropriate wealth from productive members of society and to prevent those same people from competing with them.
In a free market, entrepreneurs face the question, “How can I make a valuable product for my customers to earn a return for my investors?” Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell from SpaceX must think about how to lower the price of launch services to attract customers away from ULA and to launch more advanced Starlink satellites; Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp from Blue Origin must think about whether to build a rocket which will directly compete with SpaceX or to find an unserved niche. Those high-level decisions become a factor in product design. For instance, is it better to build a cutting-edge rocket out of aluminum-lithium alloy (New Glenn) or stainless steel (Starship)?
How are these questions to be answered? When innovation is administered by government, “success” is measured by compliance with the ephemeral and unpredictable edicts of politicians. When business is free, success is measured objectively by long-term, self-sustaining profitability, which makes possible increased investment in new research and technology by successful firms and their investors. This is the virtue of profit seeking, which the critics of private spaceflight refuse to understand.
Entrepreneurial thinking is exactly what’s been missing from the space launch industry since its beginning, so it is unsurprising that many of the leading figures of the new space industry were leading entrepreneurs in traditional tech. The old space industry employed many brilliant, creative scientists, but it lacked brilliant, creative entrepreneurs. And until very recently, the entrepreneur’s way of thinking, the kind of thinking necessary to make space a new frontier, was illegal and therefore impossible in the space launch industry.
It is the scientist who solves the problem of how to design a rocket engine that can escape earth’s gravity. But it is the businessman who solves the problem of how to profitably organize the resources necessary to make the scientist’s designs a reality. In a free economy, the scientist discovers what is physically possible while his partner, the businessman, discovers what is economically possible.
One dramatic example of the intersection between technological and economic thinking is the industry’s approach to second-stage rocket reusability. In his interview with Lex Fridman, Jeff Bezos explains that the cost of a second stage can be lowered in one of two ways. Either the stage is expendable but much cheaper to manufacture or is reusable but more expensive to manufacture. In his judgment, “[it] is actually not obvious which one is better.”38 In other words, just because it’s technologically possible to build a reusable second stage doesn’t mean it’s profitable to do so. The way to find out is to do it and see. Can a fully reusable two-stage rocket outcompete a partially reusable two-stage rocket? The Starship program is the first experiment to find out. How to make industry progress is neither solely a scientific nor an economic problem but their union. Solving that complex problem requires the extraordinary thinking only possible when entrepreneurs are free.
In a well-functioning commercial enterprise, the work of the scientist and the businessman each set a context within which the other must solve his share of the industry’s problems. Elon Musk is well known for his first-principles approach to engineering and the “idiot index.” The first-principles method begins by identifying what are the fundamental physical constraints on a problem and ignores any considerations not dictated by those constraints. The physical constraints on rockets are the rocket equation and the structural efficiency and thermal properties of component materials, among many others. The idiot index compares the cost of a finished product to the cost the raw materials. The higher the ratio, the more inefficient the productive process. In combination, the two approaches imply that if the raw material costs are only a small fraction of the product cost, the costs are not the effect of physical limitations and are likely due to product design and manufacturing. Musk explained this approach in a 2012 interview:
I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminium alloys, some titanium, copper and carbon fibre. And then I asked, what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price — which is a crazy ratio for a large mechanical product.39
His related method of engineering stresses the elimination of parts and the potential to automate production.40 Musk’s philosophy isn’t purely scientific or technological; it’s also economic. First-principles engineering tells him what is possible at the current stage of scientific knowledge. The idiot index tells him how much he can save by improving design and manufacture. Fewer parts means less maintenance (a cost), more efficient manufacturing (a cost), and more mass to orbit (revenue). These considerations pushed SpaceX’s engineers to design a rocket engine so impressive that one of its competitors assumed the engine must be a hoax, and to design a first-stage that doesn’t land but is caught.41 It’s precisely when business and scientific considerations inform each other that technology thrives and the near-impossible becomes commonplace. And that’s precisely what’s impossible for an institution like NASA, which uses force to maintain its existence.
If the activities scientists wish to explore are illegal, there’s nothing to think about. This was the case for private space launch until the 1980s. If the activities are legal but must be shaped to adhere to unjust laws and regulations, or if the government provides deeply subsidized competition, only two outcomes are possible. Either the cost of compliance will be so high no one will risk the effort, or as was arguably the case between 1984 and 2004, privileged firms can operate but regulation and subsidization stifle new market entrants.42 In either case the industry is unfree.
So, it’s wrong to think that it is privatization per se that makes an industry dynamic and progressive. The fundamental factor is freedom. This is why, though there have been private entities in the space industry since before Apollo, and there were private launch providers in the twenty years following the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act, the industry only became dynamic when freedom rather than controls came to define the space-launch market.
The integration of scientific with productive considerations, by its nature, is hobbled or absent in controlled industries. At NASA, the question faced by administrators is: “How can I convince politicians that funding this program will please their constituents?” James Fletcher had to please Richard Nixon; Jared Isaacman’s nomination was withdrawn for failing to keep Donald Trump’s favor. Government institutions like NASA get funding by currying favor with politicians, who in turn expropriate wealth from taxpayers. By the nature of the job, it’s impossible for NASA administrators to think entrepreneurially about how they earn and spend this funding, because this funding is not a voluntary investment: it’s obtained by force. Leaders in private industry must think entrepreneurially because their very existence depends on their continued success.
The expansion of freedom in space launch is necessary for the formation of a dynamic space industry. But the government must do more than get out of the way. The first major step in this direction was the 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (sometimes known as the SPACE Act).43 By defining clear property rights in space resources and clearly defining liabilities governing human space flight, the government has taken some early, necessary affirmative steps to protect and expand the industry’s newly granted freedom. Florida’s 2023 Spaceflight Entity Liability Bill and Texas’s earlier 2011 legislation are other steps in this direction.44 But more needs to be done. For example, as the cost-to-orbit continues to fall, earth orbital space will become more crowded. There is a need for well-defined rights and liabilities in the use of orbital space.
America is the leader in space science because it has led the way in expanding and protecting its citizen’s freedom. Preserving and enhancing the freedom of the space industry will not only enable the space entrepreneurs to flourish but will demonstrate globally that progress requires the freedom to produce and profit. By solidifying and expanding the legal frameworks that enable this freedom, the U.S. can ensure that the frontiers of space will continue to be explored, developed, and commercialized in ways previously limited to science fiction. To secure this future, the space industry must not only benefit from its freedom but actively defend and advocate the freedoms that make its progress possible.
Mike Mazza
Mike Mazza is an associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, specializing in the application of Objectivism to the philosophy of science and technology. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Saint Louis University and previously taught philosophy, ethics, and critical thinking before joining ARI in 2020.
Wernher von Braun, Manned Mars Landing Presentation to the Space Task Group (Washington, D.C.: NASA, August 4, 1969).
Reuters, “Starship, Carrying Tesla’s Bot, Set for Mars by End-2026: Elon Musk,” Reuters, March 15, 2025.
Blue Origin, “Orbital Reef Space Station Advances to Design Phase After NASA Review,” Blue Origin, August 22, 2022.
For example, The Planetary Society’s statement of principles all concern government programs. Its addendum on commercial spaceflight is a brief seven sentences, which endorses private activities only as a means to the end of its government-centric goals. The Planetary Society, “Space Policy & Advocacy Principles,” Accessed April 9, 2025.
Sean O’Kane, “Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘The Delusion Is Thinking That SpaceX Is Going to Lead the Space Frontier’,” Verge, November 24, 2015.
For elaboration on the fundamental importance of lowering the cost to orbit, see Rand Simberg’s excellent article on SpaceX’s Starship, “Walmart, But for Space,” New Atlantis, no. 66 (Fall 2021): 46.
Jeff Bezos, interview by Lex Fridman, “Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin | Lex Fridman Podcast #405,” November 14, 2022, YouTube video, 2:27:29, at 44:00.
Rich Smith, “With New Glenn in Its Pocket, Can Blue Origin Compete With SpaceX and Starship?” Nasdaq, January 25, 2025.
Thomas G. Roberts, “Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), last updated September 1, 2022.
Elon Musk, “WATCH: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship Update Event,” YouTube video, 1:22:00, Posted by SpaceX, September 28, 2019.
Thomas G. Roberts, “Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), last updated September 1, 2022. See also Cierra Choucair, “How Much Does It Cost to Launch a Rocket? [By Type & Size],” Space Insider, January 2, 2025.
Jordan Timmerman, “The First Private Mission to Venus Will Have Just Five Minutes to Hunt for Life,” MIT Technology Review, August 29, 2022.
Mike Wall, “Hope Is All but Lost for Private Asteroid Probe in Deep Space — ‘The Chance of Talking with Odin Is Minimal,’” Space.com, March 6, 2025.
NASA, “President Nixon’s 1972 Announcement on the Space Shuttle,” last modified January 5, 2022.
Thomas G. Roberts, “Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), last updated September 1, 2022.
Associated Press, “A Look at People Killed During Space Missions,” Phys.org, November 1, 2014.
Preston Lerner, “Black Day at White Sands,” Air & Space Magazine, August 2010.
Andrew J. Butrica, “The Spaceship That Came in From the Cold War: The Untold Story of the DC-X,” Ad Astra 13, no. 2 (2001), National Space Society.
For details, see Casey Handmer, “SLS Is Still a National Disgrace,” Casey Handmer’s Blog, October 2, 2024.
The Communications Satellite Act of 1962, which allowed private entities to own and operate satellites, was an early step in freeing space for commercialization but wasn’t part of a long-term trend.
Before the Space Shuttle, launch services for private satellites were provided by NASA using the Delta, produced and managed by the Douglas Aircraft Company (later McDonnell Douglas) (“The Delta Launch Vehicle — Past, Present, and Future,” Proceedings of the 18th Space Congress, April 1, 1981). Outside of the U.S., Arianespace became the first commercial launch provider in 1980. Though a private company, it was founded by the European Space Agency and partner nations and was protected from competition.
Another effort to found a commercial launch company was led by Klaus Heiss, who attempted to raise private capital to buy a Space Shuttlefrom NASA. Heiss would conclude that, “It would be easier to start a private space program in the Soviet Union than in the United States.” He later lobbied for the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Act. (Michael A. G. Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-Space Movement, 1972–84 (New York: Praeger, 1986), accessed June 8, 2025.)
Michael Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier.
Michael Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier.
Michael Michaud, Reaching for the High Frontier.
Hannah testified in congressional hearings on the Act. (U.S. Congress, Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications Hearing on Commercialization, Room 2318, 9:30 a.m.–12:00 noon, Witness List, CIA Classification Review Declassification Guide No. CIA‑RDP92B00181R001701610007‑8 (PDF), accessed June 8, 2025.)
United States, Commercial Space Launch Act, Public Law 98-575, § 2(7), October 30, 1984.
A report commissioned by the Senate Budget Committee estimated the full cost price per launch at >$150M. At the time, NASA was charging $71M. (Expressed in 1982 dollars). For details, see Congressional Budget Office, Pricing Options for the Space Shuttle (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 1985).
United States, Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, Public Law 101-611, title II, November 16, 1990.
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle: Introducing Competition into National Security Space Launch Acquisitions, GAO-14-259T, March 5, 2014.
United States, Commercial Space Act of 1998, Public Law 105-303, § 101(a), October 28, 1998.
Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-492, 118 Stat. 3974 (2004).
FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, Pub. L. No. 118-63, § 1111, 138 Stat. 1034 (2024).
Alex Rogers, “Elon Musk’s SpaceX to Sue Government Over Space Launch Contract,” Washington Post, April 25, 2014.
The Air Force’s willingness to allow competition was likely part of the Department of Defense’s increasing interest in fostering competition in the defense industry. On this, see Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff, Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War (New York: Scribner, 2024).
SpaceX would sue the government again in 2019 over allegedly unfair launch contracts (Joey Roulette, “Musk’s SpaceX Sues U.S. Air Force Over Rocket-Building Contracts: Filings,” Reuters, May 22, 2019).
Lex Fridman, “Jeff Bezos: Amazon and Blue Origin | Lex Fridman Podcast #405,” Lex Fridman Podcast, YouTube video, 2:56:51, August 15, 2023.
Chris Anderson, “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars,” Wired, October 21, 2012.
Trevor Sesnic, “Starbase Tour and Interview with Elon Musk,” Everyday Astronaut, August 11, 2021.
Beal Aerospace, founded in 1997, cited exactly these factors in its 2000 decision to cease operations. Beal Aerospace Technologies, Inc., “Statement from Andrew Beal, Chairman and Founder of Beal Aerospace Technologies, Inc.,” October 23, 2000.
U.S. Congress, U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, Public Law 114–90, 114th Cong., 1st sess., November 25, 2015.
Florida Legislature, An Act Relating to Spaceflight Entity Liability, CS/SB 1318, Chapter No. 2023-139, Laws of Florida (2023), accessed May 8, 2025. See also Texas Legislature, An Act Relating to Space Flight Activities, S.B. 115, Chapter 51, 82nd Texas Legislature, Regular Session (2011), codified at Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, Chapter 100A, accessed May 8, 2025.
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Excellent article! Mike writes clearly and persuasively.
A perfect description, in microcosm, of the problem with any and all industries and economies that are beholden to government edicts, bureaucrats, money and regulations. If freeing the space industry produces these kind of results, imagine what freeing education, or health care or thousands of other industries might produce!