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Commercial astronautics - myths and reality

We formulate the problem


On network resources devoted to space and cosmonautics, a conversation periodically comes up about the use of outer space for applied purposes. Various projects are being discussed, from real ones, such as satellite navigation systems or remote sensing systems , to outright delirium.

In these discussions, the topic of the commercialization of astronautics is raised relatively regularly. Everyone has a different attitude to this topic: someone considers this evil, someone is indifferent to this, others consider this a matter of the distant future. Even educated, technically and economically competent people often show ignorance in this matter. On the whole, in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, commercial space exploration is understood as ... Yes, strictly speaking, nothing at all.

I am a "space pirate." From 2015 to 2018, I was the leader of the private space company Ultradyne, one of several unofficially existing in Russia in addition to Lin Industrial, Kosmokursa and NSTR Space Systems. Anticipating questions about Ultradyne, briefly say that, making a decent test TTRD to fuel a pair of aluminum / ammonium perchlorate, and dozens of burning and test launches, we did not "mastered" prosaic zagnuvshis for lack of money. However, I, as the person in charge and for the economic component of the project, collected and systematized some knowledge of commercial and space applications, and now I want to put them in several articles. This article is the first of them.

I note that I do not do popularizationastronautics. The purpose of these articles is not to arouse “dreams of space” among schoolchildren (let pseudo-space bloggers do this), but to analyze what is really being done in the commercial segment of the space industry, how to raise money from this and how to realize your childhood dream of becoming a space commander the ship. I also warn that I will use technical or special terminology (to clarify incomprehensible terms, I will provide links to articles in online encyclopedias).

Let us return to the wording of the questions in this article. As I said above, instead of a clear understanding around the concept of “commercial space exploration” a set of indistinct “myths” swirls. Therefore, in this article I am going to make out what misconceptions about commercial astronautics are common today in Runet, why they arose and how things are in reality.

Myths


The myths surrounding commercial space can be divided into several subsets. They often intersect with other common sets of misconceptions about astronautics in general.

The first subset of myths from this set is “conspiracy theological”. There is no commercial astronautics, “power is hidden”, the Mask feeds NASA, everything is an order from the Pentagon and reptilians invented space. This subset strongly intersects with all sorts of pseudoscientific and obscurantist "theories" common on the Internet.

The second subset can be called "cosmic opera." We were born too early to participate in space exploration. Now there is nothing (because our technologies are too imperfect), but someday, in the future, when they come up with the technology of tiryampampy, everyone will fly into space. And then there will be commercial astronautics, interstellar transportation of general cargoes in bulk, space pirates, blah ... blah ... blah ... At this moment, the speaker on astronautics usually begins to carry nonsense in the style of the popular soft sci-fi , and in his eyes images of beautiful aliens.

The third subset is “hard industrial,” and it seems to come from hard Soviet science fiction. Commercial astronautics - evil, not knowing evil capitalists to pull their bloody imperialist paws to our space, astronautics should be state-owned, plants in orbit, rare earths on asteroids, power plants around the Sun, raising virgin lands on Mars, giving 20 hectares of apple trees over the plan to the XVXIIXIZh move ... K I'm sorry, carried away.

How does this compare with the real state of affairs in the space industry? Yes, a little less than nothing. Why do these myths exist?

The causes of myths


In my opinion, there are several reasons. The first is the economic illiteracy of many interested people. Many of those who are interested in astronautics, with good engineering education, have very weak ideas about the economics of even their industry, not to mention economics in general. This is understandable - astronautics is a very complex, knowledge-intensive industry, little connected with everyday life and requiring technical specialists to completely (much more than, for example, IT) immerse themselves in the technical problems they solve. However, when such a specialist begins to express his opinion about the economic features of commercial space exploration, he looks, at best, pale. But they listen to him - he is, in the eyes of other people, an expert! Therefore, it turns out that he is transmitting his insufficient knowledge to other people.

And it happens even worse - bloggers who do not have any technical or economic education, who understand journalism and PR at best, and who do not understand anything at all, start writing / talking about the cosmonautics economy. As a result, the audience gets confused even more.

The second reason for the appearance of myths is a lack of technical knowledge with an excess of fantastic literature and "popularization." Specialists do not talk much about the details of their work, because rocket science is really rocket science - it is difficult and very far from the everyday interests of people (further and more difficult than even IT). Also, in some cases, this technical information is also classified (from launch vehicles to ballistic missiles)- “less than one step”). At the same time, there is a lot of popular science literature on astronautics, and a significant part of this literature is about half a century ago, that is, in fact, is pretty close to retro fiction and was written, on the one hand, taking into account the theoretical science of those years, and with on the other hand, without understanding the real conditions and possibilities of modern science and technology. As a result, people who are interested but not professionally engaged in astronautics have a mess in their head from outdated data and unconfirmed theoretical speculations.

The third reason is overt politicization of the topic. Cosmonautics and related technological advances are eagerly used for a variety of propaganda. At the same time, everything that is possible is churned and twisted.

The fourth reason is the publication on the network of a large number of pseudoscientific (in the style of Ren-TV) nonsense about space. Unfortunately, space and astronautics, due to the specific perception of the term "space" by some people, have always attracted and will attract freaks and lunatics. The Internet has given these people the opportunity to publish their thoughts. This creates an abundance of informational garbage on the network that prevents interested people from finding real data.

Reality


As I said, the myths listed above have almost nothing in common with reality. But before talking about real commercial space exploration, let's decide what it really is. (Many manage to get confused even with the term, understanding very different things by this).

In English sources (I focus primarily on them, because in the West commercial and private space exploration are much more developed than in Russia), commercial use of space is distinguished - commercial use of space, both by order of state agencies and by ordering private offices, and private spaceflight- space flights carried out by private companies, again, both by order of state agencies and by orders of private traders. Separation, as is customary in the West, according to functionality. Commercial use of space is a type of economic activity, private space flights are, in fact, private flights, a kind of activity in orbit (like air travel - a kind of activity in the air). In Russian, there is no more or less formalized definition of "commercial space exploration" either. Therefore, you have to enter your own definition. I believe that the commercial space travel - it is the activities of private organizations in the design, creation, maintenance and operation of rocket and spacecraftand / or their systems, as well as the provision of services related to the specified activity for the purpose of profit . Such a definition is optimal - it allows us to consider the entire industry for profit and at the same time cuts off the work that was carried out by state space agencies or military astronautics.

History reference


It will be difficult to name the exact start date of commercial space exploration. The launches of the first spacecraft were carried out by the military departments of the USSR and the USA. In the USSR, everything was done by state order at enterprises specially created specifically for space missions. However, in the United States, the development of a very large number of military equipment is carried out by private companies. For example, although the development of the first US satellite, Explorer 1 , was carried out in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) , owned by the US government , the development of the first US manned spacecraft ( Project Mercury ) was carried out by McDonnel, a private aircraft manufacturer. Therefore, on the one hand, it can be said that commercial space exploration originated in 1959. The first commercial satellite, Telstar-1 , was launched into orbit on July 10, 1962. However, in terms of “commercial utility”, its functionality does not look impressive; rather, it was a technology demonstrator commissioned by NASA. The first space flights of commercial purpose, with the launch of commercial payload into orbit in the interests of commercial companies, began somewhat later - on April 6, 1965 Intelsat-1 , the first commercial communications satellite, was launched into geostationary orbit .

Later, many European and American companies joined in commercial space exploration. In 1975, the German private company OTRAG was founded, engaged in the development of rockets for private customers. Sometimes it is referred to as the first private space company to provide a full cycle of work - from spacecraft and spacecraft design to launch and spacecraft flight control. In 1982, the Conestoga-1 rocket was launched and reached space in the United States - the first private-owned rocket developed by a commercial company and launched into space with a private launcher. In 1984, US President Reagan signed an act regulating private space flights and the commercial use of space, which legitimized the possibility of free trade in space technology and services in the United States, for the most part removing these transactions from government control. From that moment, private space companies in the United States began to appear with enviable regularity.

Russia joined the common movement after the collapse of the USSR. The first commercial space company in Russia was RSC Energia in 1994. In 1995, became a commercial GKNPC them. Khrunicheva . Together with the American company Lockheed Martin, they formed International Launch Services , in fact, Russia's first full-cycle space company. True, by the end of the 2000s, commercial space rocket enterprises in Russia began to gradually return under state control for various reasons.

Current state


And you can see it in news releases and in social media feeds. Ilon “what-you-is” Musk, Bezos, the New Zealand-American Rocket Lab , many Chinese companies offering vying launch services, and the development of satellites in garages.

By the way, the notorious Musk was not the first in anything - neither in the creation of private missiles, nor in private launches. Just, unlike dozens of predecessors (and small private companies in the USA involved in the development of spacecraft and spacecraft, there were, for 30 years, really, a dozen two!) Thanks to its grip and more money at the start, it managed to do the same as half a century ago Boeing, McDonnel, Lockheed-Martin, and many others managed to snatch a contract from NASA. That is why SpaceX now flies - there are orders (and therefore money). The development and operation of space technology is an exceptionally capital-intensive business!

We also have companies involved in commercial space exploration - S7 , Sputniks, several space startups that I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Of course, in comparison with Western companies, we have a “pipe lower and smoke lighter”. True, there is little money - there are no orders. The market for space technology and services is rather small, and although the demand is stable, it is not very large. Therefore, competing with old and large companies is extremely difficult.

Profitability in commercial space is not that great. In 2018, global annual revenue in this area amounted to $ 229 billion. And yes, this is not so much - for comparison, Apple's annual income in 2019 amounted to $ 266 billion.

findings


Commercial astronautics is a very real area of ​​economic activity that has existed for about 50 years. In general, this is not a very large, but very capital-intensive market, around which a rather vast science-intensive industry has been built with tens of thousands of employees around the world, solving important problems. Little is known about it in the post-Soviet space, simply because they do not know how to look for information on this topic. She is little like the myths that exist about her. In reality, this is a complex and unpopular industry with its own specifics and extremely high requirements. Nevertheless, with the right approach, this is a fairly profitable, stable business where you can make good money. And yes, it has a place for flights into space, there is, albeit not in an explicit form, a lot of drive and real cosmic romance.

However, I will write more about this in the following articles.

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