Space innovation is falling behind

Without refocused federal and private funding, we risk losing our leadership in orbit. With the close of the Cold War, the West plowed headlong into 30 years marked by one tech-fueled boom after another. As if by right, the United States and its allies began to take for granted America’s technological supremacy and the seemingly inevitable expansion of liberal democratic hegemony both on Earth and in space. And almost immediately, we became blinded by our own success.

Today, the new space economy is, if any one thing, a direct amalgam of that bullish techno-political hubris. It also presents an accelerating near-term risk. We face an apparently inexorable march towards resurgent great power conflict, and it is clearer by the day that America’s position as the undisputed leader in space is no longer a guarantee. But, to preserve our authority and freedom on orbit, and for that matter on Earth, we would be well served to remember how we got here.

The freedom that enabled 70 years of unchallenged growth on orbit cost us, and the planet, mercilessly. Nearly 100,000 Americans gave their lives and multiples more were wounded during the 70 years of regional conflicts fought to preserve America’s dominance. Millions more foreign civilians and soldiers died in proxy wars as the great powers parried for influence. And depending on how you count, the U.S. alone has spent between $10 trillion and $15 trillion in taxpayer dollars on conflicts since the 1950s.

Few of us truly comprehend the sacrifices that too many made to put us where we are today. And too many of us are chasing the promise of a near term venture capital-backed exit to pause for a moment and reflect on the immense opportunity that today holds — and the immense risk should we squander that opportunity. But if one ponders the pace of innovation in the space industry today, one could easily come to believe that we are doing just that.

The first Earth observation satellite program started in 1956, nearly 70 years ago. The first communications satellite launched in 1958. The first space domain surveillance program began in the 1960s. Yet we continue to see new entrants to the new space industry touting “revolutionary” Earth observation solutions, “innovative” communication technologies and “cutting-edge” sensing capabilities. It seems that many of us are just iterating slight variations on themes first laid down in the era of the first televised presidential debates.

This is not to say that the entire coterie of companies building within these verticals are not doing some amazing things. Far from it. Indeed, some U.S. and allied companies operating in the new space economy are indeed changing how space is used. Yet still, many more space companies today are merely improving on an existing tune, not writing new music. We must do better.

Where did all the entrepreneurs go?

The origin of the term entrepreneur traces its roots back to a few key thinkers, including Jean-Baptiste Say whose 1800 “Treatise on Political Economy” first regularized the term in the context of economic adventurers. Later, in the early 20^th century, Joseph Schumpeter’s “Theory of Economic Development” crystalized our modern definition as one “who destroys the existing economic order by introducing new products and services, by creating new forms of organization, or by exploiting new raw materials.” Given that definition, however, one could comfortably conclude that most new space companies are not, then, inventive enough to be deemed truly entrepreneurial. This is a problem.

This should be concerning, not just because most space companies are looking at space like the next gold rush — with Falcon 9 as the railroad and the data that controls our phones, our money and our privacy as the gold — but, more so, because our casual pace of innovation has placed our adversaries in a position to challenge our leadership on orbit. It seems that the firms manufacturing the picks and shovels in this new space gold rush, and the venture firms backing their exit-driven, incremental remixes of half-century-old technologies are blithely unaware of the strategic impact of their short-termism. Few businesses have both the vision and ingenuity necessary to solve the truly hard problems — but those are the problems most in need of solutions. And as a result, despite the billions in venture capital poured into the new space economy, we are missing the mark.

The space industry of the modern context demands honest introspection. Without increased investment in the moonshots of tomorrow, which remain necessary to the maintenance of our place at the apex of space, we risk far more than we realize. Still, despite the emerging jeopardy in which we find ourselves, there are bright spots, small corners of our industry that still shine through with truly entrepreneurial innovation of the type that led to our original primacy. Such firms should be feted and funded. Whether via fiat or funding round, the truly entrepreneurial among us — those doing their part to live up to Schumpeter’s original entrepreneurialism — must be elevated and encouraged.

Taxpayer funded appropriations for the U.S. Space Force and related research and development programs are woefully inadequate to meet the evolving challenges of tomorrow, and must be meaningfully increased and then, critically, maintained. Meanwhile, commercial dual-use technologies introduced by the new space economy under the banner of venture capital are either, and in some cases both, ineffective or unsustainable without external support. Venture investors are critical components of our national security, whether they like it not, and as such their allocations should reflect, in both direction and magnitude, the strategic prerogatives of the country. There is no reason that successful reprioritization of both federal and private funding cannot, if adequately executed and perpetuated, accrue to the benefit of not just our national security but also investors’ balance sheets.

We can no longer ignore the reality that, without increased government funding for truly innovative space technologies and an enduring investor refocus on genuinely novel space businesses upon which our space and terrestrial warfighters will increasingly rely, the U.S. risks a near term strategic shock, and its eventual relegation to a secondary space power.

Philip Hover-Smoot is an aerospace and defense executive, industry attorney, and the CEO of Scout Space Inc., an in-space observation service provider focused on space security and comprehensive Space Domain Awareness