Axios Space: 🌓 Ticket to the Moon

Plus: Space rings of power | Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Open in app View in browser     Axios Space By Miriam Kramer · Oct 18, 2022 Thanks for reading Axios Space. At 1,324 words, this newsletter is about a 5-minute read. Please send your tips, questions and space suitcase recommendations to miriam.kramer@axios.com, or if you received this as an email, just hit reply.     1 big thing: Remaking the space industry Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   The private human spaceflight industry will need to scale up and find new markets to reach its goal of resembling the airline industry to take people to space. Why it matters: SpaceX and others have already begun selling their dream of rockets launching thousands of people to orbit, the Moon, Mars and even beyond. But today, the private human spaceflight industry is a relatively small portion of the space economy and several hurdles stand in the industry's way of reaching its goal. Driving the news: SpaceX announced last week that an American couple purchased tickets to fly around the Moon aboard a Starship vehicle. Instead of having potential customers buy full missions — like the dearMoon mission around the Moon — this allows those with the money to buy single seats for a lunar flight. "This mission is really groundbreaking in that it really puts us on a very firm step towards airline-like operations where now for the first time you can buy an individual seat to the Moon," Aarti Matthews, SpaceX director of Starship crew and cargo programs, said during a press call last week. The big picture: The human spaceflight industry is maturing. Blue Origin is launching paying customers regularly on suborbital flights, Virgin Galactic is working toward the same goal, and SpaceX is flying private and astronaut crews to orbit. Reality check: It's not guaranteed that space travel will ever reach airline-like status. The market is obvious for air travel that takes people from place to place for business or personal reasons. But space travel has a far less clear market for everyday people for the foreseeable future. The demand for human spaceflight and activity in low-Earth orbit, planetary exploration and planetary settlement "at the moment is largely created by government policy, and by the vision and spending of individuals as opposed to a very broad-based market pull," Carissa Christensen, founder and CEO of BryceTech, tells me. In order to create something akin to airline-like operations in space, there needs to be destinations and reasons to go to orbit, including activities like tourist visits to private space stations and the manufacturing of specialized materials in space, experts say. But those anchor points for the private market are still years, if not decades, away. State of play: The market for space travel may not resemble the airline industry anytime soon, but the regulatory environment governing key parts of the space industry may start to resemble the airline industry's process in the not-too-distant future. Today, every American rocket launch has to be licensed through the FAA, a process that can be lengthy with a lot of red tape and logistical hurdles. But in the future, that could be streamlined, with companies able to launch their rockets without specific launch licenses for each flight, much like an airline. That will get the industry to more "normalized operations," the Secure World Foundation's Ian Christensen tells me. What to watch: "Airline-like travel will absolutely be necessary when there is demand at scale for commercial human spaceflight," BryceTech's Christensen says. "The question is what will drive that demand at scale? And when will that happen?" A dramatic lowering of the cost of spaceflight, which would allow more people to experience it, could spur a shift in the industry. SpaceX's Starship — if it works as expected — could help to lower the cost of going to space. The vehicle will be reusable and is expected to have a high capacity for delivering cargo and people to space, allowing a major cost reduction that experts say could change the way people access orbit and beyond.     2. A space investment slump Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   Investment in space industry startups fell off in the third quarter of this year, according to a report from Space Capital. Why it matters: Startups push innovation in the space industry and their funding is an indicator of where the space economy might be heading. Last year, the global space economy was valued at about $370 billion. It's essential to national security, agriculture and many invisible parts of everyday life like GPS. What's happening: The economic downturn appears to be hitting certain parts of the space industry hard, with venture capital investment falling off. $3.4 billion was invested into space startups in the third quarter of the year. Overall investment has fallen off by 47% year to date when compared to Q3 of last year, according to the report. Parts of the industry including launch, applications and distribution all saw declines or at least flat funding, according to the report. Between the lines: Companies focused on far-future and more speculative space ventures like asteroid mining have seen a precipitous drop-off in investment since last year's record highs. In 2021, investors funneled $1.4 billion into these "emerging industries," accounting for nearly half of the total investment in this part of the space industry since 2013. Q3 of this year — with $206 million invested year to date — appears to mark a return to the more typical amounts of investment into emerging industries seen before last year. "We saw a lot of companies get funded that probably shouldn't have," Space Capital's Chad Anderson tells me. "I think that they're going to feel some pain when the rubber meets the road over the next 12 months when they realize that they need more capital, that it's harder to come by, and that no one is willing to pay those prices that they paid last year."     3. Extreme explosion clocked in space The GRB (center, red). Photo: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. O'Connor (UMD/GWU) & J. Rastinejad & W Fong (Northwestern Univ)   Scientists detected what could be the most powerful explosion of its kind ever seen in space. Why it matters: These gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are a window into some of the most cataclysmic events in the universe, as they emit massive amounts of energy that ripple across the cosmos. "Because this burst is so bright and also nearby, we think this is a once-in-a-century opportunity to address some of the most fundamental questions regarding these explosions, from the formation of black holes to tests of dark matter models," Brendan O'Connor, a leader of teams observing the GRB said in a statement. What's happening: Space telescopes detected the GRB, called GRB 221009A, on Oct. 9 with ground-based telescopes making follow-up observations of the event's aftermath. Researchers think the GRB was triggered by a star exploding in a supernova and in the process creating a black hole 2.4 billion light-years away. The GRB was so intense scientists think it even disrupted Earth's ionosphere, affecting long-wave radio transmissions. The intrigue: Relatively nearby GRBs may also help scientists learn more about how elements heavier than iron — like gold and others — form in the universe. Earlier research found these elements can form when dense neutron stars collide with one another, spreading the heavy elements across the universe. But scientists think they might also be created during events like the one that produced this GRB. Follow-up observations made using the Gemini South Telescope in Chile will allow researchers to parse out more about whether those elements were created during this event, O'Connor added.     A message from Axios Business news worthy of your time     Together, Axios Markets, Axios Macro, and Axios Closer decipher what the daily deluge of news, statistics, and analysis really means — and why it matters. Subscribe for free     4. Out of this world reading list An astronaut crew lands in the ocean after coming back from the ISS. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls   🧑🏾‍🚀 Four astronauts returned to Earth by SpaceX after ISS mission (Axios) 🛰 Satellite broadband players poised to compete for U.S. military customers (Sandra Erwin, SpaceNews) 🌙 Take a tour of the new Air and Space Museum gallery (Robert Pearlman, CollectSpace) 🔭 NASA's planet finding TESS spacecraft is working again after a glitch (Meghan Bartels, Space.com)     5. Weekly dose of awe: Rings of power Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JPL-Caltech   Seventeen dust rings spread out from two stars dancing around one another more than 5,000 light-years from Earth. The new photo from the James Webb Space Telescope shows off the stellar duo known as Wolf-Rayet 140. "We're looking at over a century of dust production from this system," Ryan Lau, an author of the study about the system published in Nature Astronomy, said in a statement. "The image also illustrates just how sensitive this telescope is. Before, we were only able to see two dust rings, using ground-based telescopes. Now we see at least 17 of them."     A message from Axios Business news worthy of your time     Together, Axios Markets, Axios Macro, and Axios Closer decipher what the daily deluge of news, statistics, and analysis really means — and why it matters. Subscribe for free   Big thanks to Alison Snyder for editing and Sheryl Miller for copy editing, and to Sarah Grillo for the illustrations. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe. ✈️ Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Axios, 3100 Clarendon B‌lvd, Arlington VA 22201   You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from Axios. 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