The old joke in the space industry goes something like this, according to Elon Musk, CEO and chief technology officer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX):
The joke underscores that spaceflight is currently very risky, very expensive and not an easy business to make work. Each participant on the panel of executives from three young companies -- Elon Musk of SpaceX, Alex Tai of Virgin Galactic, and Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace -- said they intended to make money, but that the dream of sending humans into space was the most compelling reason for the business.
"I don't think anyone here looked at all the economic opportunities in the United States and picked the space business as the most promising," Musk told Space Symposium attendees.
Yet, Musk and the others are making it work. While both test launches of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket ended in a system failure, the missions were not failures in themselves, he said. The second flight nearly reached the altitude at which the company would deploy a satellite and relayed telemetry the entire way. As a launch, the flight would have been a failure, but as a test, it was a success, Musk said. The company plans to launch its first payload in September.
SpaceX also plans on being profitable in 2008, and will quickly ramp up launches, according to Musk. In 2009, the company plans to attempt its first rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Virgin Galactic is also seeing promising signs that it could see profitability soon after starting up operations. In the first year, the company hopes to ferry 500 people into space and back -- more humans than have every been to space, according to Alex Tai, vice president of operations for the firm. So far, the company has had interest from more than 80,000 people and has taken in $22 million in deposits, Tai said.
Bigelow Aerospace perhaps has the hardest market to predict, as leasing volume on a space station has no historical data. Robert Bigelow, president and founder of the company, is not shy about the unknowns.
"We have no idea what the size of the market is," Bigelow said. "Our goal is to be the Hudson Bay Co. in terms of space destinations."
