Space Industry Needs 'Devil's Rope' Innovation, Space Foundation Says

The commercial space universe is still awaiting its own "devil's rope" -- also known as barbed wire, the invention of which allowed the homesteading and settling of the American West -- to drive more space utilization, said Space Foundation Director-Research and Analytics Micah Walter-Range at a foundation event Tuesday. He said NASA technology development and transfer of that tech to the commercial sphere could be a key policy for helping drive the domestic space industry. He said challenges facing the Russian launch industry could extend for some time, with Russia -- which usually dominates the space launch market -- accounting for 17 launches last year, vs. 22 each in China and the U.S. That loss of market share continued into 2017, he said, with Russia facing possibly its smallest number of launches since the early 1960s. But the Russian launch industry took a nose dive after the fall of the Soviet Union and eventually rebounded, Walter-Range said. He said talk of an emerging Chinese commercial launch industry will likely follow similar models some other nations have followed, with government-supplied vehicles and a commercial marketing arm. Meanwhile, the U.S. workforce dedicated to space is seemingly declining -- compared with employment growth in Europe and Japan -- likely due more to the sector becoming increasingly integrated with other industries so counting jobs that are purely space becomes more problematic, Walter-Range said. He said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with the $1 billion in company stock he's cashing out annually for Blue Origin operations, gives him the 10th or 12th largest space budget on the planet, depending on how U.S. agency spending is counted. Walter-Range said the 232 satellites launched in 2016 marked the second consecutive year of declines, mostly due not to a particular downturn in the market but nanosatellite constellations causing a statistical blip.