Pathfinder to Profit: Lessons from the Space Shuttle Era

Modern entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich in the space business may be surprised to learn that the idea of privately supported human spaceflight is far older than they are. In the last half-century—a period characterized by increasing contempt for government-funded projects and growing faith in the power of the market—it was NASA’s Space Transportation System (STS) that, before Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, first offered a vision of human spaceflight as a business: a formerly public infrastructure sustained by private capital, which would concentrate its benefits in the hands of entrepreneurs willing to invest in the technology. Developed beginning in 1968 and subject to continual modification during its operational life from 1981 through 2011, the STS or “Space Shuttle” offered both an inspiring example of early space commercialization and a cautionary tale on the dangers of imagining access to low Earth orbit as a profitable enterprise. Hopes that the winged, semi-reusable orbital spaceplane would pay for itself by carrying private and foreign government cargo and crewmembers for pay—and that private entities would eventually purchase and operate their own vehicles—helped spur NASA to create the STS but never actually materialized sufficiently to support it. From the program’s inception through the first sale of a shuttle “orbiter” (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Pathfinder test article to a private entity in 1983), to the collapse of NASA’s commercial ambitions in 1986, the STS offers modern space entrepreneurs lessons on how to set goals, imagine operations, and understand risk when entering the human spaceflight business. Ensuring the safe design and flight of commercial space vehicles requires not only vast resources and a staggering commitment to early unprofitability but a willingness to accept the idea that innovation and invention are not synonymous. Instead, success in the space business is built upon public infrastructure (including government clients and an established technical workforce) and a merciless commitment to reducing costs at the expense of novelty, originality, and elegance.