Space is opening up beyond governments to private industry, driven by ever-lower costs for launching payloads into orbit. Led by SpaceX, the cost of putting a kilogram of payload into low earth orbit or LEO was almost $100,000 just a few decades ago, and now with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, has been estimated at below $1,000. It’s a huge opportunity to build a whole new economy, but to get there, it will take incredible coordination from government and the private sector to catalyze it. Can America build it? And does it even want to?
Produced by Christopher Gates
Music by George Ko
Transcript
This is a human-generated transcript, however, it has not been verified for accuracy.