Organizing for Success: The Lessons of Early Commercial Aviation for Commercial Space

As the space domain has developed, scholars, policy makers, and leaders have often drawn inspiration and lessons from the history and experience of the air. With space entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson making further advances in the commercialization of space, how the US responds to those developments and shapes the policy environment has become a significant question. While there are still significant differences between air and space, today’s space leaders can look to early commercial air policy for ideas about how the US government can foster both innovation and growth in the space domain. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities between the two, including technical limitations, questionable safety standards, limited infrastructure, high expenses, a connection with national security, and even concerns over operations in bad weather. This project seeks to draw on early US commercial aviation history to explore potential lessons on how best the US can promote commercial space activities today. These include the use of indirect subsidies for commercial companies, a more aggressive regulatory regime, the establishment of a central authority, infrastructure development, and a focus on federally sponsored research. While the US government undertook all of these in order to promote commercial air nearly 100 years ago, this chapter suggests that a similar agenda can be used to further strengthen and stimulate commercial space and therefore highlights where federal efforts appear to be lacking in the present.