Cover Photo: Apollo 17 Rover in 1972 | NASA
Small businesses and entrepreneurs with ideas for commercializing space have been running into the same road block for decades: launch costs.
However, with private space companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic driving down costs through innovation, space is increasingly within reach of small business owners.
Here’s a great short video from Bloomberg on launch costs:
With prices for a single launch dropping in recent years from hundreds of millions to tens of millions of dollars, launching your business idea into space is increasingly more affordable.
Small satellites will make up most of the space cargo in the years ahead. However, tourism, research, and exploration will also increase in activity over the medium term.
Space Garbage
On Earth, being a trash collector has never been a glamorous job. Yet, setting up a company to collect the tens of millions of pieces of dangerous space garbage could be both stylish and lucrative.
A Japanese entrepreneur recently raised $43 million to clean up the world’s extraterrestrial trash.
Beyond Science Fiction
Space has long been the realm of Star Trek fans and science fiction aficionados. With sky-high launch costs falling quickly, space-based entrepreneurship may become more grounded in reality.
An exciting time to watch how space exploration expanding ~ entrepreneurs bring new ideas, ideas that make the impossible, possible. Great video and post.
True indeed, Randall. Here’s hoping new and exciting technologies will emerge from this next great burst of space exploration. From LED lights to improved radial tires for our cars, pushing out into space has its advantages. Here’s an interesting link to a list of NASA’s spinoffs: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html
As always, thanks for the comment! Tricia and I are looking forward to grabbing a cup of coffee with you when our paths cross. Hope all is well! 🙂