“We are finally on the verge of leaving this planet and making our home among the stars...it is a wonderful time to be alive”

(Picture: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094f595)

Review: The 21^st Century Race for Space with Brian Cox- BBC2

From rocket boosters landing back on their launch pads to plan's to colonise Mars - the 2010s are proving to be an extraordinary time of development, innovation and growth for the global space industry. Not since the historic moon mission's has spaceflight been so intriguing. So what is this new space race all about? Mark Tyers review's Dr Brian Cox's BBC 2 documentary The 21^st Century Race for Space.

“We need a giant entrepreneurial explosion in space, like the internet...We need to protect it [the Earth], this jewel, this diamond of a planet”

-Jeff Bezos, Amazon and Blue Origin founder

It is a visually stunning and insightful hour-long programme, from breathtaking footage of Virgin Galactic's Space-ship One, to an exclusive rocket-factory tour with Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, to the ever animated Robert Zubrin waxing lyrical in his space-tech workshop. From start-to-finish it is clear that unlike Yuri Gagarin, Apollo, the space-shuttle or other previous milestones, this latest flurry of space innovations are being driven by private interests. Space Tourism, private satellite launching, space mining and Mars colonisation plans are all briefly covered. The only significant thing missing is an interview with Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk – we get Space X insider Tim Urban instead.

“Government's have not gotten us space travel for the people”

- Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne Ansari X Prize winner and founder of Scaled Composites

But what are the driving forces behind this 21^st Century Race for Space? We get no direct answers from Dr Cox, though he does describe these space industrial developments as “inevitable” on several occasions, primarily perhaps because he wants to see these companies succeed and understands the propaganda value of such a statement.  Admittedly the documentary does cover huge amounts of ground and so does not lend itself readily to much analysis of the space industry so let this writer read between the lines and break down exactly what carrots-and-sticks are causing private businesses and governments to engage in this new space race.

Firstly, and most importantly, there is clearly the classic force of capitalists searching for profits in new markets.  Deep Space Industries founder Rick Tumlinson believes his company could make £30billion in profit from mining a single asteroid – presumably though only after certain minerals have all-but run out on Earth.  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson are all capitalists with a track-record of building businesses producing goods and services for profits.  Governments and increasingly big-business are paying billion of dollars in contracts to launch satellites, International Space Station (ISS) supply runs and general space research and development.  It is this drive for profit which markedly differentiates the 21^st Century race for space from it's cold-war counterpart, which was primarily a propaganda war between competing national super-powers and their allies for symbolic victories.  Whichever country could put a man in space or on the moon first could claim technological superiority whilst simultaneously developing military-industrial capacity and resources.

Secondly, competition between nation-states is still a factor.  The USA is happy to spend billions of dollars in private space contracts because it is dependent upon the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin and Space X to sustain it's position as the world's pre-eminent space-faring nation.  America is far-and-way the world's most dominant military power and relys upon space-based hardware for military navigation, intelligence and communications.  It's space-faring dominance will be unquestionable once Space X's Dragon capsule, Boeing's CST100 starliner or Lockheed Martin's Orion space-craft are human-rated and begin taking astronauts to the ISS, ending America's dependence on Russian Soyuz craft.  Similarly Space X and Blue Origin's innovations have forced the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and other space agencies around the world into an expensive round of research and development into re-usable rockets.

Thirdly, the admirable desire to protect humanity and Earth are a significant driving force. Scientists are in agreement that it is only a matter of time before Earth suffers another cataclysmic asteroid or comet impact or some other human-exctinction-threatening event.  If humanity also had self-sustaining colonies on the Moon and Mars, then such an event would not spell the end of Homo Sapiens.  As he continues to publicly state, Elon Musk founded Space X to make human's an interplanetary species.  Musk's transformation of the automotive industry with his popularisation of electric cars through his company Tesla only adds weight to his environmental credentials.  Jeff Bezos want's to move heavy industry off Earth to decrease pollution and protect the environment.

“Our environment is not just the Earth, our environment is the Solar System”

-Robert Zubrin, engineer, writer and Mars Direct and Mars Society founder

Finally, there are distinctly the driving forces of wonder and exploration at work here to – perhaps more so than in the cold war space race.  Dennis Tito clearly didn't pay a reported $20million to spend 8 days onboard the ISS to make a profit.  When Jeff Bezos talks about how inspired he was by the Apollo missions he is not acting, nor is Elon Musk when he states that he believes the first human expedition to Mars would be the “coolest thing ever”. Perhaps more tellingly, new private space companies have been notoriously hard to keep-in business and there are many other ventures apart from space that these billionaires could be investing their money into.

A wealthy few will get to fly into space as tourists, but more than 99% of us won't be so lucky but nontheless all of these developments will undoubtedly touch the lives of the vast majority of us.  New vast constellations of satellites are promising to provide space internet, opening it up to the developing world, impacting their economies, societies and politics in profound ways.  There will be more job opportunites in the expanding space sector.  America's geo-political relationship with Russia and the rest of the world will change a bit once it ceases to be dependent upon Soyuz rockets and perhaps will significantly alter the military balance of power.

A final point to note is that despite Dr Cox's assertions, it is not inevitable that the global space industry will continue to grow and innovate at such a rate.  Certainly humanities demand for satellites and space-tourism is set to increase for the forseeable future and the ISS mission is ongoing which should see private space companies continue to develop orbital class rockets and new human rated capsules.  Regular human flights around the moon transporting space-tourists seem fairly likely in the next 10-years. What is less clear is whether a working business model will ever be developed for a lunar base (Potential fuel Helium 3 is abundant there and in extremely short supply on earth, however fusion is currently impractical), asteroid mining or the colonisation of Mars.  Without massive amounts of direct government funding, humanity appears to be stuck to calling the Earth our home for the forseeable future.