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November 2nd, 2022 | Beyond Earth Communications

by Courtney Stadd Vice President Beyond Earth Institute

[The below was adapted from remarks I made at the October 13, 2022, Beyond Earth Space Symposium.]

In the wake of the recent in-person Beyond Earth Space Symposium in Washington, D.C., I would like to make some brief observations on what I view as the challenges facing the commercial space marketplace, as well as provide seven takeaways from a white paper I co-authored with the admittedly cumbersome title, “Emerging Space Industrial Ecosystem Leading to Eventual Beyond Earth Migration: How the U.S. Government Can Avoid Being Left Behind.”

As I noted in my remarks, “If you walk away today with a sense that there is a breathtaking amount of both private and public sector activity in the so-called space ecosystem and that many policy and legal framework challenges (not to mention formidable technical challenges) are confronting our community, with a number of potential fixes, with some terrestrial practice and precedent already on hand, then today’s mission has been accomplished.”

Speaking of the space ecosystem, based on my 45 years personal space entrepreneurial experience, allow me to issue what I immodestly call “Stadd’s 60-30-10 Rule”:*

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*In my original remarks, I was markedly more generous in suggesting how many space startups would survive. After receiving constructive feedback from an audience member at the BE Space Symposium, I went back and did a deeper dive into my personal database and revised my prognostication accordingly.

• 60% of the companies will never make it past the paper aspirational stage. (Note: Is it me or does it sometimes seem like graphic designers outnumber the number of engineers?)
• 30% will secure capital to build their product and fail to either execute and/or misread the market and maybe be acquired or find their individual parts (IP, talent) absorbed
• 10% have the A team with the requisite skill and experience to be sufficiently agile to ultimately survive.  

That slice and dice of the marketplace may appear devasting but actually it is a natural part of a healthy, competitive market dynamic.  

Decades ago, many of us argued that when the federal government took its metaphorical foot off the neck of the space entrepreneur, the genius of the marketplace would flourish.  

The life and death and rejuvenation of the commercial space marketplace are ironically an indication of its health. (Joseph Schumpeter’s famously coined the phrase, “creative destruction”, in which the “process of industrial mutation … incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” 

In order for such creative destruction to occur in the commercial space domain, of course, one needed to remove the overwhelming dominance of the Federal Government and allow growing numbers of diverse space entrepreneurial players to blossom.  In other words, the space marketplace needed to be sufficiently populated to sustain the cycle of creative destruction outlined in the chart below. Out of this dynamic, the odds become more favorable that sustainable space-based products and services may emerge.  (Meanwhile, to be frank, with some notable exceptions, we still witness a tendency to mistake technical possibility for space market opportunity.)

Source: https://medium.com/the-capital/is-blockchain-a-disruptive-technology-565af6646b30

With rising interest rates and some concerns in the investor community that the returns in this domain are taking longer than expected, the up-and-coming space entrepreneurs better strap in for what we veterans have been through numerous times – business cycles including recessions and major market corrections.  

But the data from credible analytical firms such as BryceTech (https://brycetech.com/) and others (e.g., Space Foundation’s The Report https://www.thespacereport.org/) strongly suggests that, notwithstanding the ups and downs, the Age of the Space Entrepreneur, and the trend toward government as customer and supportive partner, are becoming a permanent part of the space market landscape. 

In turn, this is forcing government customers (civil and military) to experiment with various creative acquisition strategies to break out of the cumbersome and inefficient traditional federal procurement leviathan.  For example, the Air Force’s acquisition chief, Frank Calvelli, recently circulated a set of tenets for the Service intended to capitalize on the innovation being driven by the commercial space entrepreneurs. In his statement, he wrote:  “The traditional ways of doing space acquisition must be reformed in order to add speed to our acquisitions to meet our priorities.”  https://spacenews.com/new-guidance-from-space-force-acquisition-boss-the-traditional-ways-must-be-reformed/

And now let me turn to a quick overview of the White Paper, “Emerging Space Industrial Ecosystem Leading to Eventual Beyond Earth Migration: How the U.S. Government Can Avoid Being Left Behind.” It includes specific suggestions on how the Government can continue to advance its role as customer and supportive partner:

The paper is twelve pages and, as a co-author, I would urge you, of course, to read the whole document but, as a teaser, allow me to suggest seven major take-aways:

1. Vice President Kamala Harris, Chair of the National Space Council, recent called for “new rules” to ensure “clarity” and “certainty … that allow flexibility to incorporate the innovation [in commercial space] that is occurring in real-time” was timely and demands a whole-of-government response.
2. The Space Frontier may have unique and formidable technical challenges but, in many ways, it is just another place to do business and so many of the time-tested policy and legal practices on earth (intellectual property, property rights, trade, etc.) are applicable to space-based activities beyond the Kármán line.
3. We believe that the previous and current Administrations should be applauded for advocating a return to the Moon and this time to settle it on a permanent basis. But, with all due respect, we believe Artemis is framed much too narrowly. Outside the bubble of DC (what I like to call “10 square miles surrounded by reality”) it comes across as the narrow technocratic goals of a federal bureaucracy rather than being rightly viewed as an audacious goal that is part of America’s historic DNA – a commitment to pioneering and settling new frontiers.  We need to constantly ensure that the voices and faces of the Artemis generation (we prefer the more encompassing “Beyond Earth Generation”) need to be the face of this new chapter in space development – including on NASA or Space Council Advisory Councils!
4. For the first time since the Space Age, with shifting aspirational timelines draining the public’s confidence in the government’s ability alone to lead an initiative as complex as beyond earth migration, the good news is that an alternative pathway has been opened:  Significant private capital is financing a huge array of innovative earth orbing and cislunar space ventures.
5. Among our recommendations, we ask the White House to consider greatly expanding the Cislunar working group – balancing national security and industrial base activities, impediments and incentives for an emerging cislunar marketplace.
6. By Executive Order, the President should establish a Beyond Earth interagency Working Group chaired by Commerce, with NASA as Vice Chair. Leveraging off the Vice President’s recent call for “new rules” to ensure clarity and certainty in space, this interagency group should promote, facilitate and promulgate – not study – policies, incentives, investments, laws and regulations needed to lay the groundwork for beyond earth migration.
7. Our paper also calls for the Administration to request that the U.S. Congress grant the U.S. Trade Representative “Fast Track” Trade Promotion Authority to commence talks with our international space trading partners.

Finally, I want to ensure that Bob Brumley, former General Counsel, US Department of Commerce, founder/CEO of several telecom companies, and BE Advisor, is properly credited for providing the original and core intellectual content for this document. 

Did we, the organizers of the Beyond Earth Symposium, arguably try to cram in too many topics during our October 12 program– leaving little time for deliberation? Yes, but we make no apologies. That was intentional in that we wanted to bring together thought leaders to speak to the wide range of policy and legal issues that need to be acknowledged, let alone addressed, in one fashion or another, as what appears to be inexorable off-planet migration gets traction (clearly, timing and scale are one of the many outstanding TBDs). 

As for the skeptics regarding humanity’s future in space, who among us in the commercial space domain has not been subjected to the arguments made by those who believe our future in space is either a misallocation of resources or the vanity projects of a wealthy elite or that the technical and market challenges are too overwhelming to ever allow for a sustainable large-scale presence in space? 

Other than pointing to the empirical data that shows a growing number of experienced space entrepreneurs in the U.S. and overseas raising real capital and developing real hardware, I can only refer to the well known and amply validated quote from Arthur C. Clarke: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” 

In the months to come we will be hosting future webinars, refining today’s policy papers and issuing new ones, as well as hosting follow-on in person dedicated workshops and Symposia where we will unpack many of the issues identified at what many of view as a landmark Space Symposium last month and, thus, allow adequate time for debate and concrete formulation of next steps.

This is all part of Beyond Earth Institute’s Call to Action: Galvanizing all relevant segments of the public-private sectors with an interest in supporting the policies and legal regimes – while addressing the formidable technical challenges – associated with facilitating our next exciting chapter in humanity’s exploration and settlement of the High Frontier.