The Growth of the Private-Sector Space Industry looking beyond the immediate horizon and explore the economic frontier of space. In the last decade or so, the space industry has evolved into a more privatised one.
Government still plays a big role in financing contracts, but increasingly, its job is to foster a market where competition and innovation can flourish. This shift, generally in the U.S., from NASA doing everything to hiring everything out, is creating new opportunity for businesses and individuals in their careers.
The reality can however be distinctly different. Government contracts often involve corruption, instead of breeding competition they tend to create inflated companies that often merge into extensions of government departments.
Top Private Spaceflight Companies:
1. SpaceX
2. ULA
3. Arianespace
4. Blue Origin
5. Axiom
6. ispace.
What is decentralisation?
Decentralisation is the way you think about the first 50 years of the Space Age is that it was really run from the centre, whether it was NASA or the Department of Defense or other agencies, they set the agenda, they operated the vehicles.
They really decided where we were headed in space, why and when. But what’s happened over the last 20 years is that we’ve brought more decision makers into the fold. Private companies are being asked to develop vehicles and services that are valuable not just to public sector customers, but to private sector customers. And so, it’s really becoming much more of a marketplace for a decentralised marketplace.
The role of the government is still incredibly large in space, both as a customer for those services that those companies are providing, and for setting some of our key social priorities in getting them done, but now there’s many other players.
They are many companies driving force behind the space revolution, but there’s a whole host of other launch companies and startups forming, trying to also bring costs down and in different ways provide access to space for satellites and other equipment at much lower cost.
But the government must allow these entities to flourish, especially with the growing Chinese and Russian companies in the market.