Space - how did we get here?

I believe that one of the long-term, and ideally short-term, goals of humanity as a civilisation should be creating a sustainable presence off-world.  Importantly, this is not because anyone wants to ‘abandon’ Earth - nowhere in the universe is so uniquely suited to humanity, and living anywhere else would be absolutely miserable.  However, we don’t need a ‘reason’ to leave Earth, we are compelled to do so because humans are, at our core, curious explorers.  If you disagree with this assumption, I advise you to stop reading now, because our fundamental assumptions about humanity probably differ.  

In this piece and the companion pieces to follow I examine some of the systems involved in ‘space’, from a political and commercial lens, to better explain why space is the way it is and what we might do differently to change it.   If we ever want to get to some kind of sustainable presence off-world, we must first examine the financial systems that underpin ‘space’ so that we can better design around these.  Currently, most of the financial systems that exist in the space sector are essentially unsustainable, and are driven by a small number of actors.  If we want this status quo to change, we need to build a sustainable, long-lasting celestial presence, and the only way to do that is to build a commercial system that necessitates existence in orbit.  What that might be, I’ll get to - but for now, let’s discuss how we got to today.  

Well, the Cold War was really what got it started.  Germany had been experimenting with rocketry since the late 20s, and their capabilities evolved rapidly as the war progressed, with the V2 being the most advanced rocket in the world when it was launched at London.  As the war came to a close, and the impending Cold War become more apparent, both the US and USSR felt it was necessary to capture as much of this intellectual capabilities as they could.  Operation Paperclip relocated over 1,600 Germans scientists, and Operation Osoaviakhim moved more than 2,200.  Most of the scientists involved, on each side, wanted to develop rocketry for space, and this was convenient for the governments involved, as these rockets could also be used to develop a nuclear payload.  

The propaganda success of Sputnik, the first human made satellite, in 1957 showed the USSR that space could be valuable as more than just a place to develop militarily, and the ‘space race’ began soon after.  National pride and propaganda were really what led to the launch of Sputnik, Laika and Gagarin, and the Apollo program was exactly the same.  

The military soon followed, with the first spy satellites being developed by 1959. These early models were very simple, taking photos on analogue cameras and ejecting the film when orbiting over specific points in the US to float down by parachute.  Even today, the US National Reconnaissance Office has a budget of $10b, which is huge considering China's entire space budget is $11bn.

The USSR won pretty much all the major achievements of the space race - the first satellite, the first animal, the first man, the first woman, the first space walk, but the ultimate achievement was landing on the moon.  The USSR believed, due to their significant successes, that they were far ahead of the US, but America wasn’t out of the fight yet.  

With both the success of Gagarin, and the failure of the Bay of Pigs, US President Kennedy felt compelled for the US to win at something, and he turned to NASA.  He was presented with an option - a space station in orbit or a mission to the moon.  Kennedy famously chose the moon, and his successor, Johnson, followed in his legacy.  However, the USSR had an excellent space program and kept their primacy in space until at least 1966, when Korolev, the man leading the Soviet program, died.  This also coincided with a two-year hiatus in Soviet space advancements as they developed a new space vehicle, the Soyuz, which is still in service today.  

This hiatus led the US to race forward, ultimately catching the USSR and quickly surpassing them.  The first spaceship rendezvous, docking, and working spacewalk, i.e. doing physical work outside the spaceship, were all achieved by 1966, essential elements of going to the moon, and within two years, NASA astronauts were orbiting the moon.  The Soviet program was very close behind, but ultimately Apollo 11’s landing on the moon led to the end of the Space Race, with Soviet plans being shelved, and their focus shifting to orbital space stations. 

Success in the Space Race was a poisoned chalice for NASA, with their budget being slowly reduced over the years after Apollo.  Since then the space sector, in general, has essentially tread water, even with significant achievements like the ISS and the Space Shuttle.  Essentially, once the Space Race was won, there were very few incentives, for anyone on Earth, to make any significant investment in space.  And that was the case for about 40 years, from 1970-2010.  When governments had strong incentives, we went from Sputnik, the first satellite, to Apollo, the first human on the moon, in 12 years.  To put that into context, it’s been 13 years since the first iPhone came out.  

However, for a long time, there have been very few incentives for governments to truly invest in space.  This is slowly changing, as more states are becoming involved in space, and especially considering warfare is becoming more dependent on space enabled capabilities, like GPS. Combat supremacy is now seen to rest upon space assets, and having the capacity to disable another state’s assets in space can lead to a huge advantage on the ground.  

One of the main reasons we have seen consistent investment in space over the past seventy years is that it maintains skills that are needed in the case of a military conflict.  Not to say this premise isn’t valid - safety of its citizens is the primary responsibility of any nation - but to think that governments really, really care about space is naive.  It’s not their job to care about space;, it’s their job to care about the countries they represent, and really to ensure they remain in power.  

Another concern around governments, especially Western governments, is the short term nature of their approach.  As most terms are between 3-5 years, success needs to come within those time frames.  We see this time and time again in the US, amongst others, where one politician will raise funding, only for another to cut it.  Non-democratic governments, such as China and the UAE, are able to invest in space, knowing they have the capacity to reap long-term rewards.

Things have been changing recently.  The rise of China, and their space program, has emboldened the US.  The success of the tech sector, and the fortunes that it’s produced, has led to significant wealth being invested into space.  Milner, Musk, Branson, Allen, Bezos, Bigelow, Zuckerberg, Schmidt, Page, Diamandis - these are just some of the more well-known names of people who’ve poured significant funding into the space sector in the past twenty years.  

Governments, notably the Nazi German, US and USSR, led to huge advancements in the field of rocketry and astronautics.  With the success of the US in the Space Race, competition, and advancement died down, and was fielded out to the private sector to maintain capacity.  In the past 20 years, we’ve seen some major changes, notably in access to space, but these are not sustainable ones, and are still resting on shaky foundations.