Space Wars: The Private Sector Strikes Back

A long time ago, in a business once dominated by government agencies.. SPACE ITHEI PRIVATE SECTOR STRIKES BACK WARS It was a period of Cold War. The US and Soviet governments. were in a race to show their technological superiority in the new arena of outer space. While milestones in great human space exploration were achieved, the eventually be passed... torch had to 1961 The Soviet Union puts the first person (Yuri Gagarin) in space. 1969 First crewed landing on the moon (Apollo 11) 1981 A reusable spaceship: NASA's space shuttle era begins. 2000 The $100 billion International Space Station (ISS) welcomes its first crew. It is the single most expensive structure ever built. 2004 Scaled Composites + Poul Allen Joint Venture The new age of commercial spaceflight kicked off. SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X prize by sending a manned flight to suborbital space and back, twice in the span of five days. 2010 SPACEX Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) led by Elon Musk launched its Dragon capsule. atop a Falcon 9 rocket. SPACE SpaceX was the first private oompany to launch a spacecraft to orbit and recover it after re-entry.. (DRAGO 2011 NASA retires the Space Shuttle program after 30 years of operations. Here are some of the key players in today's space industry that are vying for PRIVATE SECTOR SPACE SUPREMACY.. Old Guard Consisting of juggernauts such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences, the Old Guard is more heavily reliant on government contracts to stay operational. Orby.al Orbjlal Founded in 1982, Orbital Sciences is one of the most established companies in the space sector. Orbital Sciences has operated over 1,000 satellites, launch vehicles, and other space-related systems since inception. The company also has a long-term contract backlog of over $5 billion. In 2008, the company secured a $1.9 billion contract to fly eight cargo missions to ISS. However, on the third flight on Oct 28th, 2014, its unmanned Antares rocket exploded mid-flight while carrying 5,000 Ibs of food, science experiments, and supplies. LOCKHE E D. M ARTIN A juggernaut in the aerospace and defense industries, Lockheed is another space-capable builder. Every aeroshell flown by NASA to Mars, from Viking to the Curiosity rover, has been built by Lockheed. Lockheed formed a partnership with Boeing in 2006 called the United Launch Alliance. Lockheed is the prime contractor on NASA's Orion spacecraft, which completes its first test flight in December 2014. NASA BOEINC Boeing is another deep-pocketed aerospace company with ties to space. ULA Boeing is the prime contractor for the ISS. In 2014, Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract for its CST-100 capsule. The CST-100 is designed to transport up to seven passengers AV-021 to low-Earth orbit destinations such as the ISS The first crewed flight will be in 2017. ULA United Launch Alliance The United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed in 2006. ULA has launched close to 100 missions now with a 100% success rate. Several commercial ventures plan to launch their planes or capsules upon Atlas V rockets. BİGELOW Bigelow is engineering and building inflatable, expandable space stations that will lease out room to sovereign and corporate customers The BA 330, expected to be launch ready by 2017, has 330 m of habitat. That is 210% more than the ISS Destiny module, for only a 33% increase in mass. snc snc: SIERRA NEVADA CORPORATION Sierra is developing the Dream Chaser, a re-usable space plane designed to carry up to seven people to and from a low Earth orbit. Launching vertically on ULA's Atlas V rocket, it would land horizontally on a conventional runway. In late 2014, Sierra lost out to Boeing and SpaceX on getting the next stage of Commercial Crew NASA funding (worth $7 billion) for taking Americans into space by 2017. SCALED COMPOSITES Scaled Composites was founded in 1982 by Burt Rutan to develop experimental aircraft. Now owned by Northrop Grumman, the company focuses on concept designs and unique fabrication processes. The company is known for its use of non-metal, compositematerials, and for winning the Ansari X Prize with its collaboration with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, called SpaceShipOne. New Guard Companies in the New Guard are typically founded by billionaire entrepreneurs such as. Bezos, Branson, or Musk. The New. Guard is more "disruption-oriented" and aims to reduce costs, develop'new technologies, and change the fundamental business approach to space. GALACTIC vaRGINGALaaTIC Founded by Richard Branson in 2004, Virgin Galactic is developing commercial spacecraft primarily to provide suborbital spaceflights to tourists. The Virgin Group invested $100 million in Virgin Virgin's plan: Galactic initially, and in 2010 the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi (Aabar Investments) • 2.5 hr flights with a few minutes in space put in $280 million for a 31.8% stake in the company. In 2011, they upped it to 378% for another $100 million. • Cost per tourist: $250,000 per flight • 700 customers have put forward a deposit. Virgin's SpaceShipTwo is intended to launch from its mothership (the White Knight Two) at an altitude of 15,000m. In late 2014, the test flight of the company's' SpaceShip Two craft, VSS Enterprise, ended in tragedy as it broke apart in midair. Test pilot Michael Alsbury died, and his co-pilot Peter Siebold was injured. "I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration." -Elon Musk SPACEX. The company was founded in 2002 by former Paypal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk. SpaceX is ambitiously trying to reduce space transportation costs by thinking big and taking a new approach to space flight. SPACE The key to their plan involves developing a new rocket engine that is cheaper to use and maintain. SpaceX seems to be succeeding on that front, and in disruptive fashion. A Falcon 9 launch costs an average of $57 million. In contrast, the Air Force currently pays a retainer to United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed) for $1 billion just to be "launch ready" - and another $380 million per launch. In late 2014, NASA also selected SpaceX to use its Dragon spacecraft to transport American astronauts to the ISS, a lucrative $2.6 billion contract. The Dragon can carry seven crew members. Blue Origin Founded by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin is initially focused on lowering the cost of suborbital space flight. United Launch Alliance sees Blue Origin's BE-4 engine as a potential replacement for the dated Russian made engines it has used in the past. Bezos has said that ULA is making a "very significant dollar investment" in the BE-4 Blue Origin has also started work on orbital human spacecraft using a reusable booster system, for which testing began in 2012. PLANE TARY ŘESOURCES Formed in 2010 (and renamed in 2012), Planetary Resources has a unique business model and some interesting backers including Peter Diamandis, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, James Cameron, and Ross Perot Jr. The company's stated goal is to "expand Earth's natural resource base" How to achieve this? Mining asteroids that are packed with mineral wealth. Step 1: Build satellite telescopes with various sensing arrays to survey potential near-Earth asteroids (Arkyd-100) Step 2: Send probes to near-Earth asteroids to gather additional information, create a shortlist of asteroids, and to eventually sample the asteroid for detailed geological composition Step 3: Mine the selected asteroid for materials such as water and metals. Water is essential in space as hydrogen fuel and oxygen can be made from it, creating potentially a "trillion dollar market" in the future. Platinum Group Metals are also abundant in asteroids, and some asteroids could contain more PGMS than ever mined before in Earth's history. DEEP SPACE INDUSTRIES DSI announced its plans to the market just nine months after Planetary Resources. It also envisions asteroid mining in our future. The company has announced spaceship concepts such as the FireFly and the DragonFly, but has yet to announce a manufacturing partnership. STAY ON TARGET... With the private sector's new business models, innovation, and cost reduction strategies, the future of space is as exciting and as near as ever. Billionaires Musk and Bezós continue to go head-to-head, as the Old Guard is starting to dig their heels in to their position. The battle rages on... SUBSCRIBE TO Visual Capitalist. ---------------* GET FREE INFOGRAPHICS ON BUSINESS AND INVESTING EACH DAY WWW.VISUALCAPITALIST.COM/SUBSCRIBE Visual Capitalist is a new way to discover business opportunities and learn about investment trends. VISUAL CAPITALIST y avisualcap f /visualcapitalist www.visualcapitalist.com mOT AZEA RES