Capitalism Storms the Heavens

Recent developments in the world of commercial spaceflight are coming to a head, and will have dramatic impacts on the world in the next few decades.

This topic is often overlooked by leftists because it feels too fanciful, or because it feels like engaging with it seriously risks being part of a techno-optimist grift. But despite the questionable politics of the people driving the commercial spaceflight industry’s bleeding edge, the engineering challenges are being overcome, and the future is on our doorstep. Understanding it is vital to being able to prepare for it.

To that end, this article will explore the developments likely to take place over the next few decades of commercial spaceflight. It also looks at some of the ways leftists can organize in relation to these changes, both as resistance and as counterpower.

For a general book-length overview of the science, technology, and (capitalist-leaning) economics of commercial spaceflight, I’d recommend John S. Lewis’ excellent Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets. Some of it is out of date because aerospace technology has advanced since 1997, but the science is rock solid, and the economics, in its bog standard capitalist entrepreneurship, is a good reference for what that crowd is doing. Lewis, in fact, was a science advisor to at least one company trying to do just what his book teaches – mine asteroids – so the course of events laid out in the book is already underway.

Cheap Orbit

The current biggest cost in space activities by far is launch. Getting to space is hard, and it’s expensive. The speeds required to get to low earth orbit (LEO), just a few hundred miles up, are enormous – around 7.8 kilometers per second, or 4.8 miles per second. Achieving those speeds requires a lot of energy, and thus a lot of fuel, and thus a big rocket with big fuel tanks. Fortunately, fuel is relatively cheap, but the rockets themselves cost a pretty penny. And generally speaking, we throw those rockets out after each use. They’re launched, and then parts of them break away and go into orbit, while the vast majority of the rocket just falls back to earth and is destroyed. With expendable launch costs, the low end of the price range recently ran from about $1,500 to $2,500 per pound of payload put into LEO.¹

In early 2016, however, that started to change, with SpaceX’s first successful launch of a rocket that put a satellite into LEO, but then landed safely on a barge instead of disintegrating and crashing. Since 2016, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has reached a total of 252 reflights of previously launched rockets, with some vehicles being used upwards of 20 times. That’s let SpaceX pocket basically all of the launch costs (because SpaceX hasn’t changed launch pricing at all relative to when they weren’t reusing the rockets) and dump the profits into the development of their Starship launcher.

The Space Shuttle Challenger launching from Complex 39 Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA, Published on March 3, 2021, Courtesy of NASA on Unsplash

Starship is a dramatically larger vehicle that’s expected to be able to lift between 100 and 200 tons to LEO. Pricing for launches varies depending on who’s estimating, but the high end of the price range is $50 per pound payload to LEO, and the low end is around $5, with total launch costs between $2 and $10 million.² ³ This is a dramatic cost drop. Even as this article was being written, a successful orbital launch and two soft landings (Starship and the booster hovering then falling into the ocean) were completed on June 6, and judging by the previous development timelines on Falcon 9 and current progress on Starship, we can likely expect a full successful orbital launch with two successful landings by the end of 2024.

These numbers are hard to grasp in isolation, so let’s consider some more concrete prices. The average adult American weighs about 180 pounds, which in Starship launch-to-LEO prices translates to between $900 and $9,000. The low end is the price of a plane ticket from San Francisco to London; the high end is the price of a vacation to Europe. Or if you prefer more absurd comparisons, the price range for tickets to the 2024 SuperBowl was roughly $6,900 to $23,000, with an average around $8,000. Over 61,000 people attended that game.⁴

Another important factor is the effect of Starship’s increased payload capacity and lower launch costs on the design of the habitable structures we’d be able to put into space. Making cheap, airtight, high-pressure containers is trivial; the entire modern world is built on that. From the propane tanks that fuel barbecues to the soda bottles in your fridge, we’re surrounded by dirt-cheap pressure vessels that handle higher pressures than any space station will ever experience. But those containers are generally made from either durable but very heavy steel, or flimsy plastic you can puncture with a pin. It’s a tradeoff between strength and weight. Current space station design is extremely lightweight, similar to airplane design, made of aluminum and titanium and sheet metal, because space stations need to be launched into orbit, and weight is expensive. The need for them to be both safe and lightweight makes them extremely expensive to engineer. Since Starship’s breakthroughs in payload capacity and cost, however, it has suddenly become very easy to build durable steel space stations.

The Coming Space Industries

So, when Starship becomes operational, the cost to put people or things into LEO will be staggeringly lower – well within the budgets of a lot of people, and certainly within the budgets of a lot of corporations, who previously could never have even dreamed of going to space. What happens then?

The first industry to take advantage of this will almost certainly be space tourism. That business already exists at a small scale for a few dozen rich people,⁵ and we can expect it to grow exponentially. Starship’s design is already well suited to tourism, as it has a considerable amount of passenger space. Designs already exist for temporary or permanent hotels or cruise ships in space.

Beyond tourism, there are various industrial processes that benefit from microgravity.⁶ Drug development and semiconductor crystal growth,⁷ for instance, can take advantage of properties in their respective materials that change in zero-g environments, where gravity isn’t overwhelmingly pulling in one direction. On the International Space Station, there’s already commercial research being done by non-commercial astronauts: Proctor Gamble is researching detergents, Axiom Space is doing cancer research for academic and industry partners, Redwire Space is doing microgravity alloy production research, and InnoStudio is looking into antiviral pharmaceuticals.⁸ ⁹ When launch to LEO becomes 100 times cheaper, we can expect corporations to increase their orbital presence dramatically. Again, Starship can readily be used as a space station, and so can quickly expand research lab capacity in orbit.

“The reachable parts of our solar system get a lot closer when you can easily do orbital refuelling, and this is already on the drawing board.”

Another industry likely to emerge as soon as Starship becomes operational is space-based power generation for earth. While solar panels on earth are fundamentally limited to the amount of direct sunlight afforded by weather conditions and time of day, these factors don’t exist in space (spacecraft can go into shadow, but that depends on orbit). As such, a solar panel in space is vastly more productive than one on the ground, producing upwards of 8 times more energy output. It can be in full sunlight almost constantly, and without interference from the atmosphere, it can take in approximately 1,300 watts of light per square meter (compared to 1,000 on the ground).

Beaming power from orbit back to earth is a lossy process, but it works, as Caltech demonstrated just last year.¹⁰ Caltech’s estimates for economic viability are launch costs of at most $100 per pound, so the $5-$50 range provided by Starship is well within budget. Additionally, the recent development of extremely thin, low-weight thin-film solar cells has made the idea even more viable. Some online vendors are currently selling a 4,000-watt thin-film solar panel kit for $610 (~$0.15/W), with four panels that each weigh less than 4 pounds, which means that even the high end of Starship launch costs would put the price-to-LEO at $200. Total cost to orbit for these expensive commodity thin-film solar panels would therefore be around $0.25 per watt output power. This is just the panels – transmission equipment and other components would add cost, of course – but the estimate is at least right to within probably a factor of four. Given that an orbital power station would require zero maintenance because of a lack of weather, dust, moisture, etc., the operational costs reduce to ground control costs, and the investment would be easily recouped. At least one company in the UK is working on orbital solar power currently, as is the Chinese space program.¹¹ ¹²

Starship will also dramatically lower the cost to go well beyond LEO. Getting to the Moon – or Mars – will no longer be the monumental task it has been since the Apollo program. Since putting a lunar lander into LEO now costs only a few million dollars, it becomes feasible to launch a second payload consisting entirely of fuel. The reachable parts of our solar system get a lot closer when you can easily do orbital refuelling, and this is already on the drawing board. NASA is currently working on a return to the Moon in 2026, using Starship to transport and land the Artemis 3 crew.¹³ ¹⁴

Cheap Space

To understand the longer-term developments in store for a society with cheap commercial space travel, we have to understand how economic incentives will work in this new setting. A crop of new venture-funded corporations, along with R&D teams at existing companies, will eventually bring down the cost of those remaining expensive parts of space travel by iterating quickly and producing cheaper alternatives. Every scrap of profit companies can steal from their competitors will be stolen, modulo whatever collusion and monopolism eventually develops.

So what will be the initial target products? With so many people in space, water is going to be a major commodity. Every gallon of water put into orbit will cost at minimum $58, and possibly up to $350, so finding a way to lower that cost would be valuable. Recycling water is possible, though complicated, and it requires lots of special, expensive equipment. Water also makes a rather good radiation shield, which is important for long-term presence in space, especially farther from earth. A quickly expanding orbital complex that can get water cheaply by launching it will prefer to launch it. A company that can provide that water at even cheaper prices by not launching it at all (more on this later) will corner the market.

Photograph of an astronaut beside a satellite, Published on November 13, 2015, Courtesy of NASA on Unsplash.

Similarly, fuel on spaceships is finite and limits mission lengths. Orbital refueling by launching the fuel from the ground is certain to become a major sector of the aerospace industry. Multiple on-orbit refueling companies, in fact, have already been founded. Some have shuttered, having started out about a decade too early. But others, such as OrbitFab, are working with other companies and governments to get refueling components into newer satellites.¹⁵ Northrop-Grumman is rolling out its own refueling depots.¹⁶ On-orbit refueling is not some far-fetched idea; it’s happening now, and Starship will only make it cheaper. But just like launching water, it still costs a lot of money per pound. A company that can provide fuel without launching it will similarly corner the market on orbital refueling.

Both water and fuel can be sourced in space without launching a single pound of either. The solar system is chock-full of small asteroids with large quantities of water ice and hydrocarbon ice (for instance, frozen methane). Water can be electrolyzed into oxygen and hydrogen, which can be burned; or the oxygen can be used as oxidizer for hydrocarbon fuels. Capturing such a water- or hydrocarbon-rich asteroid and extracting the frozen material is beyond our current abilities, but that’s almost entirely due to the cost of launching vehicles into space. The cost reductions from Starship will make it relatively easy to put robust, sturdy machines into space, and that will include asteroid mining equipment. Multiple designs have already been explored, and cheaper launches will lead to rapid iteration by asteroid mining companies, multiple of which have been founded over the years. Building out the asteroid mining industry will likely require at least some workers in space, possibly deeper space than just earth orbit, and that will increase the demand for fuel and water.

As it would be in any outpost, food is also a crucial factor, perhaps even more so than fuel and water. While water can be recovered, and fuel can be sourced more or less locally in almost-usable form, food has to be grown. Initially it will all have to be launched from earth, but again, the suddenly lower costs of launch will make it profitable to simply grow food in space and provide that to workers in orbit. Aeroponics in space is entirely feasible, and since plants convert CO₂ to oxygen, there’s a virtuous cycle with human populations, which need food and oxygen and exhale CO₂. As we currently have no way of fully automating food production, workers will be needed to grow the food, which will in turn have feedback effects on water and fuel sourcing. To my knowledge, no efforts currently exist to pioneer space aeroponics, most likely because you would still need to ship all of the water and carbon mass up from earth; it will likely only be sensible to do once you can source those in space. But the eventual orbital production of water, along with an increased human presence producing biowaste, will make food production much more feasible to locally source.

We must also consider one final initial driving force of early expansion into space: billionaires with too much money and not enough sense. Rich people love to spend money on absurd displays of their wealth – yachts, private islands, megamansions. It’s highly likely that when access to LEO becomes dirt cheap, billionaires will start salivating over the prospects of having a space yacht, a space island, or a space mansion. The crowd that wants to seastead and create private startup countries will yearn for a “free-market” crypto-fascist corporatocracy in the sky, and the sort that buys doomsday bunkers in New Zealand (often the same people) will also want their doomsday bunkers in space.¹⁷

Once initial footholds are established, in-situ production of structures and machines will drive a massive shift in the economy of orbital space. Some companies already exist to build and research 3D printing of components in space, but more traditional manufacturing will be beneficial up there as well. The ability to manufacture engines, fuel tanks, glass, space stations, etc., in space will further reduce the costs of getting people offworld, because none of those objects will need to be launched to support them. It will take significant time to establish a manufacturing industry in space, of course, because all the initial tooling would need to be launched, but some core processes can actually be done comparatively easily in space. Smelting metal, for instance, requires a lot of heat, and one thing that space has in abundance is sunlight to generate heat. The vacuum of space would make this process even more effective, since there’s extremely little heat loss. Once you can produce a solid block of metal, CNC machine tools can work it, and those are small enough to launch into space with ease even today. To my knowledge, though, very little work is currently being done in this area.

“The approaching future of cheap space launch will almost certainly entail a greater movement – of people, of equipment and structures, of economic activity – into space.”

This final step of producing actual devices and structures from material in space will leave rockets with only one significant use: transporting humans to LEO. The possibility of permanent migration to space becomes the price of a ticket on a rocket plus the price of necessities like housing, food, and energy, which are all mundane problems transposed into a new context. They have their challenges, but they’re familiar ones.

Socialists, or Barbarians, at the gate?

The approaching future of cheap space launch will almost certainly entail a greater movement – of people, of equipment and structures, of economic activity – into space. Cheap space launch is an engineering problem, and as far as anyone can tell, it is very close to being solved. The precise timeline of the technology’s rollout is hard to guess, but some of it will almost certainly be in use by 2030. Given present political arrangements, this means that the leading edge of human expansion into space will be mostly driven by capitalists, and so for the near future of space, Luxemburg’s question – socialism or barbarism? – must be answered with the latter.

The likelihood that the overwhelming majority of space expansion will involve funding from wealthy capitalists almost guarantees that the enclaves they set up in space – whether in the form of orbital special economic zones¹⁸ or techno-optimist secessionist enclaves – will be quite barbaric indeed. And the possibility of establishing footholds much deeper into space – on Mars, as Musk fantasizes, or in the asteroid belt, as Bezos proposes – combined with space’s silent vastness, almost guarantees that workers will be treated poorly without consequence.

This raises the question of what role socialists might play in space. We can prepare for the realities of space, or we can plug our ears and pretend like it’ll never happen and be completely unprepared for it when it does. If we choose to be prepared, then I believe there are a few options. In all cases, it’s important to understand that every job in the space industry requires a decent amount of education. Usually that’s science and engineering, but some of it is technical, such as machinist skills. Either way, folks are going to have to get educated and trained in order to get involved at all.

Photo of moon surface, Published on November 13, 2015, Courtesy of NASA via Unsplash.

Where labor organizing is concerned, engineers and other white-collar workers in the space industry are effectively out of reach currently, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. But factories – those that currently exist, as well as those that will be built to support the new industry – will be full of workers who are more open to labor organizing, at least if we judge by the actions of existing factory workers, as against those of tech workers.

The same will be true of those workers in orbit responsible for operating asteroid mining equipment, growing food, or, eventually, manufacturing and building. Orbital workers, however, won’t be able to count on help from organizers outside their industry. While normal organizing can take advantage of the possibility of meeting people outside the workplace, in a space setting, at least initially, there will be nothing but the workplace. It’ll be more akin to organizing oil rig workers, who live on the rig they operate, than organizing factory workers who merely commute to the factory for their shift. As such, organizers will have to also be workers, and socialists who wish to organize space workers will need to prepare for getting these jobs.

They’ll also have to be especially conscious of the dangers inherent to the isolated, secluded nature of this new workplace. Where regulatory oversight will be considerably harder to enforce, worker repression will be easier to inflict. As a result of the computerization of space ships and stations, combined with astronauts’ complete dependence on life support systems, strikes, slow downs, and other labor actions can be suppressed with the push of a button. “Accidental” loss of pressure, water system “malfunctions,” etc. are all very real risks that workers will need to prepare for long before launch, in order to ensure that they have appropriate mitigations available.

On the plus side, the remoteness of the location means that labor actions will have considerably more impact. While getting people to space will be drastically cheaper, it’s not as cheap as bussing people in from one town over. You can’t just hire scabs. So the initial space labor situation should at least make it possible for workers to significantly exert their power – at least, if they find ways to protect themselves from being thrown out an airlock.¹⁹

One form of organizing that doesn’t require direct participation in the space industry is to appeal to politicians. The various risks and dangers involved in space travel, even under ideal conditions, warrant pressure from regulators to ensure safety. The risks to workers in space only increase the need. Independent, open monitoring of worker safety is entirely feasible, given how computerized the environment will be. Ensuring that workers on site will have the highest level of control overrides for all their safety and life support systems will be vital.

View of Earth and a satellite from space, Published on November 6, 2015, Courtesy of NASA via Unsplash.

Another strategy that might be useful for socialists will be to build worker coops that provide the various services and goods that will form the basis of the early expansion. As mentioned, a few companies are already working on space refueling, but more will emerge. No companies are working on growing food or manufacturing (beyond 3D printing) in space. The first few companies that emerge in these areas will be very important, and if those are coops, then it will be possible to minimize exploitation by stopping it before it starts. But this requires socialists to consciously plan for a cooperative space industry by getting the appropriate education now, rather than waiting for capitalist companies to form. Despite the difficulties of getting coops positioned as important companies, the technical education required is the same that would be required of employee organizers in hierarchical companies, and coop businesses like Mondragon, and horizontal businesses such as Valve and Gore Associates, can act as models.²⁰

Space shuttle taking off, Kennedy Space Center, United States, Published on February 6, 2016, Courtesy of NASA on Unsplash.

Long-term prospects, at least for the development of socialist enclaves in space, are perhaps more hopeful than they might seem. The vast size of the solar system and its vast quantity of raw resources make it extremely difficult for fantasies of conquest to gain any purchase. Wars over resources are infeasible when everyone everywhere is swimming in material wealth. Wars of ideology will still exist, but the vastness of space, offering plentiful options for simply walking away from conflict to form separate communities, will likely diminish the urge to wage them. Compared to a planet’s surface, space is incomprehensibly vast, and there will never be a shortage of places to build space stations. This hopefully will result in a flourishing of socialist societies that can explore every possible mode of organizing we’ve ever dreamed up.

The earliest work on space travel, done by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, had a grand utopian vision and inspired early socialists the world over to look to space. Star Trek‘s future was also deeply socialistic, especially once it was permitted to flourish outside the shackles of 1960s American TV’s patriotic norms. With human expansion into space just on our doorstep, mere years away, socialists must turn to space again and be part of this future, or else it will be shaped exclusively by the worst people alive. ~

Author

Beka Valentine

Beka Valentine is an SF-based trans dyke and a cofounder of the queer anarchafeminist hackerspace Queerious Labs.
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