Unless the cost per pound of sending something into space comes way down, like to $50 per pound, most of the engines of economic change and innovation will never be able to afford getting involved in space, except as sub-contractors to the larger companies that can afford the launch costs. NASA is committed to developing technologies that should bring launch costs down to about $500/pound by 2040 or so. Here is the launch budget for the Space Shuttle through 2020:
Annual budget of $2.4 billion remains flat
Nominal rate of 8 flights per year for the period 2004 - 2020
$300 million per launch for the first 8 flights in any given year
$90 million per launch for flights 9 and 10 in any given year
Minimum safe launch rate is 5 flights per year
Maximum shuttle launch capacity is 10 flight per year
As I understand it, most of the economic innovation comes from small companies with gross revenues well below $50 million per year. Microsoft and Apple started as 'garage' companies with revenues below $50,000 per year. Such individuals and companies would never be able to afford the costs of their own launch vehicles. Until launch vehicle costs come way down in the next century, I'm afraid the only role that small-scale private enterprise will have will be as partners with the larger companies like Rockwell, Hughes, Lockhead and so on.
As for private enterprise in general, the tide is already turning with NASA 'privatizing' many functions and programs that it originally handled. This means that in the near future, private enterprise will be given a freer reign in defining what it would like to do, and how it wants to make profit from its space activities. When that happens, space exploration will have transitioned from a scientific/political curiosity to a profit-making enterprise. If NASA had been allowed to patent all of the technologies and inventions it generated since 1960, NASA would be a $50 - 100 billion per year business by now! Instead, it has to go to Congress every year and plead for its dwindling research budget, and defend its very existence.
Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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