Elon Musk’s “SpaceX” and its high profile projects have highlighted the increasing significance of the private players in the space sector.
This has also opened up debates on the possible horizons of future explorations and the need for regulatory reforms in the sector.
What was SpaceX’s latest milestone?
SpaceX recently launched a car into space that is headed towards the asteroid belt with a dummy strapped in the driver’s seat.
The silliness has indeed managed to capture the imagination of the masses, which could be put to further advance research.
The car was launched through the reusable “Falcon Heavy” rocket (currently, the most powerful launcher) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.
As it is reusable, it has contributed significantly to bring down costs by enhancing launch capacity by 64 tonnes at the low price of merely $90 million.
This project is in line with current decadal trend of the increasing role of private sector in space exploration.
How has the role of the private sector evolved over the years?
Private sector companies have operated in the space sector since the 1980s in most of the elite space club countries.
In India, despite the various strategic, security and regulatory constrains, a private ecosystem has evolved around the ISRO.
But there is a substantial difference between older business models and what Musk and the new-gen space entrepreneurs have been attempting lately.
Previously, private were merely contracting with national space agencies to build satellites and subsystems.
Contrarily, the current trend is developing entire vertically integrated operations without licensing or purchase agreements with national agencies.
This has also triggered diversity in ambitious targets, with Musk envisioning mass exploration and companies like Amazon envisioning space tourism.
While most of these targets are indeed overstretched in the current scenario, and involve multiple risks, the vision does indeed hold potential sway.
What are the new potential areas?
Some have argued that liberalising space access to private would unleash a new leap-frog moment in technological progress like the “internet revolution”.
Entrepreneurial energy in the sector is already starting to combine, with even start-ups competing for privately conceived projects by larger space firms.
The rush to enhance internet connectivity for the masses is also a significant “demand oriented pull factor” for increased commercial interest in space.
This is already driving the need to commission massive constellations of small communications satellites in the “Lower Earth Orbit”.
Asteroid mining is also another potential area that looks promising, with scope for monetization and disrupting commodity markets.
How has the regulatory framework shaping up?
There hasn’t been much progress in this domain as space activity is still governed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
This bars state actors from militarizing or claiming celestial bodies and calls upon them to regulate all private sector activity within their borders.
Most countries including the US and India haven’t yet comprehensively understood the evolving trends and regulatory reforms needed in the sector.
But Luxembourg is already envisioning as an asteroid mining hub and has passed a law passed recently to establishing the necessary legal frameworks.
This might give it the first mover’s advantage and India too needs to urgently capitalise on its private sector’s potential to make significant gain.
India’s Case - India even lacks an independent body that can create a level playing field for government and private space enterprises.
But there are signs of progress, and a few months ago, the “Department of Space” had published a draft “Space Activities 2017 Bill” for public comments.
While the bill fails to take the substantially different requirements of various space-related activities on board, it is indeed a start in the right direction.
India has the public and private sector potential to exploit first-mover advantage—if it addresses the private sector space race with more urgency.
