The Venture Edge

Emerging industries are the Wild West of the 21st Century, and nowhere are things wilder than in the emerging private space enterprise industry. Driven by entrepreneurs, many of whom put their own wealth from successful Internet ventures into their new space companies, it's the natural venue for the search for opportunity where no one has gone before.  In this case, the opportunity is to make space transportation better, faster, and cheaper; and at least one famous entrepreneur, Elon Musk, secured a big win with the successful launch of Falcon 9 last Friday.  

My good friend Peter asserts that it's time to get NASA out of the way and hand over the reins of space exploration to private companies like Space X and Virgin Galactic. (See Privatize space now). Speaking as someone who has been involved with the private space or New Space industry for several years and knows a lot of the major players, including those that Peter mentioned, I need to set the record straight. For one thing, private companies like Space X get significant government funding and contracts (the most recent was $1.6 billion from NASA to launch 12 cargo missions) and Virgin Galactic will launch from a taxpayer-funded spaceport in New Mexico. This is hardly getting the government out of the picture.