By Prof. Dr Heinrich Kreft, former ambassador, President of the Diplomatic Council

While space travel was considered the domain of nation states in the last century, it is clear that space will be conquered by the private sector in the 21st century. Companies owned by well-known billionaires such as Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson), Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) and SpaceX (Elon Musk) have been working since the early 2020s to commercialise space. They are competing for the future trillion-dollar business of space travel and, at some point, possibly the colonisation of other celestial bodies.

The billionaires' universe

It can be assumed that these civilian efforts are also aimed at catapulting the founders from billionaire status into the future ranks of trillionaires. But it is just as likely that the knowledge and progress gained in the process will greatly benefit the future of humanity. An alliance between the public and private sectors in space exploration is inevitable. As early as 1997, more commercial than government-commissioned rockets took off from US space launch sites.

The best example of the new ‘space generation’ is SpaceX's Crew Dragon. In June 2020, the manned spacecraft carried two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Falcon 9 rocket on behalf of NASA. In November 2020, SpaceX launched its first regular astronaut flight. The November crew – Crew-1 – was the first to be officially flown to the ISS by Crew Dragon after the manned test in spring 2020 was successful. It marked the beginning of a long series of many more planned commercial space flights in the 2020s. The US module of the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to be predominantly privately owned by 2025.

New business model for large-scale projects

It is fair to say that we are witnessing a new business model for large-scale projects, which in the ‘old days’ were financed and carried out entirely by the state, but have been taken over by the private sector for some time now. Space travel is a prime example of this, led by the multi-talented entrepreneur Elon Musk and his company SpaceX.

This business model works as explained below. One or even several extremely financially strong entrepreneurs develop a large-scale industrial technology to series production. The state is happy to support this development because, firstly, it wants to benefit from it itself, secondly, it does not have to provide all the necessary funds itself, thirdly, it does not have to justify itself politically to citizens and taxpayers, fourthly, it is guided by the insight that companies produce practical results more quickly than if officially organised research institutions were to deal with them, and fifthly, the state will have access to the results at any time in the future, if only through appropriate legislation.

The few companies that have the financial resources, know-how and willingness to take risks to embark on the adventure of this new large-scale project stand to reap almost immeasurable profits. Firstly, after the initial phase, there will be a steady flow of money into the company as soon as the state believes in the feasibility of the project and supports its development with financial resources. Secondly, the state will soon emerge as a client because it needs the relevant technology for its own purposes. SpaceX, for example, has managed to become a major supplier to the US space agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Neither side can be blamed for this; it makes sense for both the company and the agency. But it promises SpaceX a key role in a future market whose dimensions are probably still underestimated when described as ‘trillions’. Anyone who occupies a key position from the outset in the colonisation of space by humankind – and that is what this is all about – can rightly hope for buoyant revenues. One might compare this situation to Rockefeller's rise in the then-new oil business or Microsoft's rush into the emerging world of personal computers. However, today's situation has many times more potential because the state itself has an interest in the conquest or colonisation of space to an extent that was not even the case with oil, let alone computers.

The chutzpah, a mixture of purposeful, intelligent insolence, charming persistence and irresistible audacity, with which Elon Musk has brought his company SpaceX into this unique position in space travel is viewed in the international ‘billionaires’ club’ with a mixture of recognition, envy and greed. Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos from the ‘club’ have set out to challenge Elon Musk for a piece of the future space travel pie.

Using nuclear power to conquer space

At the same time, several other ‘top guys’ from the ‘club,’ including the in many ways all-powerful Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have begun to transfer the business model described above to other large-scale projects. This is particularly evident in the energy sector, more specifically in the development of a new generation of nuclear power plants. To do this, the safety risk must first be limited to an economically calculable level. New construction methods for comparatively compact nuclear power plants, which are about the size of a single-family home, have made it possible to rebrand what was once a high-risk technology as a future technology with manageable risks. Conventional power plant construction has always been based on the assumption that the ‘worst-case scenario’ must be avoided at all costs. This required an immeasurable increase in expenditure to rule out the last residual risk, which is ultimately impossible anyway. The new commercial nuclear power plants follow a different safety concept: instead of reducing the probability of an accident, the consequences of the worst-case scenario are to be mitigated.

This new safety concept – critics might call it ‘uncertainty thinking’ – fundamentally changes the cost structure of nuclear power plants, thereby enabling new business models and, in essence, a completely new nuclear business world. It is precisely this development that is likely to play a decisive role in breathing new (commercial) life into the peaceful use of nuclear power. This new commercialisation of nuclear power with what its proponents call a ‘balanced mix of economic efficiency and safety’ will be largely responsible for the return of nuclear energy. It is, of course, foreseeable that countries will have a keen interest in using this peaceful form of ‘nuclear energy 2.0’ to secure energy supplies for their populations and economies.

Whether space travel or nuclear power, commercialisation will separate both from the sluggish state apparatus and thus accelerate their development. At the same time, there is clearly strong state interest in both technology sectors, with the state acting as co-financier, client and customer. It is also foreseeable that the state will use its legislative power to enable and promote these developments – all of this is already happening in these two sectors, namely space travel and nuclear energy.

Digitalisation, genetics, health

Unsurprisingly, the United States of America is leading the way with this business model. The dominance of the US in global digitalisation provides a blueprint for how this approach works. Just one example: over 90 per cent of all German public authorities rely on software from the US company Microsoft. US legislation, in turn, stipulates that US authorities can access the customer data of US companies at any time – even if this data is stored outside the United States. This fact alone is one of the biggest and most serious issues in the digitalisation of public services in Germany. It would be beyond the scope of this book to go into detail about this highly controversial debate, but it is a very good example of how business and government can work together to control a ‘technology of national importance’. Mind you, we are talking about the control of the German administration by a conglomerate of US business and the US government. The ‘unthinkable scenario’ that the government of another country could bring the local administrative apparatus to a standstill is just as ‘unimaginable’ as the idea that foreign authorities could access the data held by German bureaucrats. After all, Facebook's parent company Meta seriously threatened to withdraw from Europe in 2022 because its business model was allegedly threatened by the high level of data protection in this country. That was an empty threat because the withdrawal of Facebook, which is, after all, the world's largest social network, would not jeopardise public administration or the economy in Germany or Europe. But what if Microsoft – or Oracle, IBM and all the other US digital corporations – were to even consider discontinuing their European business? Unthinkable? Perhaps, but impossible? Certainly not! And, of course, US digital dominance extends beyond the public sector and beyond Germany.

This public-private partnership, which has worked so well for the US in the digitalisation process, is now being transferred to other technology sectors of similar fundamental importance. Space travel – the subject of this book – is at the forefront of this development.

But other sectors will also be subject to this strategy. This is already the case today in nuclear power and, incidentally, in artificial intelligence – a ‘megatechnology’ whose importance is often still completely underestimated. In other areas, such as genetics, it seems foreseeable.

Interestingly, the US influence on an issue of international significance has not been particularly noticeable: vaccinating the world against coronavirus. All the major vaccine alliances – CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Covax (Covid19 Vaccines Global Access) and Gavi (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) – were undoubtedly under the decisive leadership of Bill Gates' Gates Foundation. Gavi described the question of who has the final say in the global vaccine supply in 2020/21 as ‘co-leading’; at least this acknowledged that others besides the Gates Foundation also have a say, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations (UN) and even the international community.

Incidentally, global healthcare is not only being Americanised by vaccine alliances, but just as strongly and probably even more sustainably by smartwatches and other wearable electronic devices that continuously monitor the vital signs of their wearers and transmit them to digital health services via the cloud. After all, at the beginning of 2022, more than 100 million people around the world were already wearing an Apple Watch on their wrists – and the trend is rising sharply.

Geostrategic power balance as a driver

A common thread running through all these examples is the US economy's push, with the help of the US government, to put an American stamp on a technology sector that is critical for the future. This geopolitical aspect must not be ignored in the conquest of space, which is the subject of this book.

When this book describes China's reach for the stars elsewhere, this must also be seen against the geostrategic backdrop of the global balance of power. It also seems foreseeable that Russia will not be content to play a spectator role in the conquest of space – quite the contrary. As is well known, Russian state space travel has a decades-long tradition that Branson, Bezos and Musk will not surrender voluntarily. Europe's role in the conquest of space has been rather modest so far, but it is nevertheless unmistakable. There are many indications that a ‘Western space alliance’ will develop, comprising the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom (Sir Richard Branson is British, not American!), and probably also Australia and New Zealand. Whether international cooperation with Russia beyond this, as manifested over many years in the International Space Station (ISS), will be maintained in view of the strategic importance of space travel seems highly doubtful. The struggle for Ukraine, which began in 2014 and intensified in 2022 as Russia's response to the expansion of the North Atlantic military alliance NATO in Eastern Europe, does not make long-term cooperation in space travel appear promising either.

(Excerpt from the book ‘Race to Space’ (ISBN 978-3-98674-147-1)