The business of space travel

Leader of the Furlings

http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/4508/the-business-of-space-travel/

Just as China built ocean-faring boats only to destroy them later and cede exploration, and ultimately the modern era, to the West, governments of the world have given up on space exploration. The United States didn’t just retire the Space Shuttle: it purposefully designed it to be useless. Not since the Apollo Program has any government been serious about space exploration. Thankfully, entrepreneurs have begun to tackle the opportunity. We’ve heard about Virgin Galactic. We’ve heard about SpaceX. What these companies are doing is interesting, but are they taking us closer to the science-fiction dreams of true space exploration?


In order to get there, we need to have not just the right technology, but also the right business models. It’s only when profitable, scalable business models for space exploration are achieved that it will begin in earnest. To put it another way: dreamers and zillionaires built the first – and some of the greatest – cars, but only when Henry Ford came on the scene did we truly enter the car age. And Henry Ford became Henry Ford not because he was a better car designer. His chief innovation was the assembly process, which allowed him to make cars much more cheaply, inventing a new model for car manufacturing.


Inventing a new process led to inventing a new business model which led to radically cheaper cars which led to a radical transformation of society. What will be the business model of the space age?

Space Tourism, Asteroid Mining, Cold Fusion, little bits about them all and other stuff.