National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Farewell from all your NASA colleagues

HISTORICAL ANALOGS 

FOR THE STIMULATION 

OF SPACE COMMERCE

Monographs in Aerospace History, no. 54

Roger D. Launius

www.nasa.gov
HISTORICAL ANALOGS 

FOR THE STIMULATION 

OF SPACE COMMERCE

Roger D. Launius
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Launius, Roger D.

Historical analogs for the stimulation of space commerce / Roger D.

Launius.

 pages cm. -- (The NASA history series) (NASA SP ; 2014-4554)

Summary: “The study investigates and analyzes historical episodes in

America where the federal government undertook public-private efforts to

complete critical activities valued for their public good and applies the

lessons learned to commercial space activities”--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Space industrialization--United States. 2. Space

industrialization--Government policy--United States. 3. United

States--Commerce. 4. Public-private sector cooperation--United

States--Case studies. 5. Public works--United States--Finance--Case

studies. 6. Common good--Economic aspects--United States--Case studies.

I. Title. 

HD9711.75.U62L28 2014

338.4’7629410973--dc23

 2014013228

9 781626 830189

9000 0

ISBN 978-1-62683-018-9
iii

HISTORICAL ANALOGS 

FOR THE STIMULATION 

OF SPACE COMMERCE

Monographs in Aerospace History, no. 54

Roger D. Launius

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Office of Communications

Public Outreach Division

History Program Office

Washington, DC

2014

SP-2014-4554
.
v

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................vi

Executive Summary and Findings ......................................................................................................1

Introduction......................................................................................................................................5

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History .......................................................................12

Commercial Activities in Space .......................................................................................................24

The Use and Abuse of Historical Analogs ........................................................................................35

Case Studies ...................................................................................................................................37

Developing the Transcontinental Railroad .................................................................................. 38

Fostering the Aerospace Industry ............................................................................................... 47

Creating the Telephone Industry ................................................................................................ 63

Supporting Scientific Research in Antarctica ............................................................................. 67

Advancing Public Works ............................................................................................................ 78

Making Accessible Scenic and Cultural Conservation Zones ..................................................... 82

Conclusion......................................................................................................................................88

Selective Annotated Bibliography ....................................................................................................96

Key Historical Studies ................................................................................................................ 96

Key Civil Space History Studies ................................................................................................. 98

Key Historical Analog Studies ..............................................................................................................117
vi

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express his appreciation to Brian Jirout, a doctoral student at the Georgia Institute 

of Technology; Marcus Jackson, an undergraduate student at Xavier University; and Lauren Binger, an 

undergraduate student at Smith College, for assistance in collecting information for this project. The 

author also wishes to thank NASA’s Emerging Space Office, which provided a grant to pursue this research.
1

Executive Summary and Findings

Executive Summary and Findings

The study that follows investigates and analyzes historical episodes in America in which the federal government undertook public-private efforts to complete critical activities valued for their public good. This 

combination largely resulted from a lack of either sufficient political will to fund them entirely out of 

the public treasury or insufficient profit motive for private firms to undertake them for purely business 

reasons. The six case studies include the following: 1) the development of the transcontinental railroad, 

supported by a unique land-grant approach to subsidy; 2) support for the airline industry through legislation, appropriate regulation, and subsidies to grow a robust air transport capability; 3) the regulatory 

regime put into place with the rise of the telephone industry and the creation of a government-sponsored 

monopoly that eventually had to be broken up; 4) government sponsorship of Antarctic scientific stations that evolved into a public-private partnership (PPP) over time; 5) the fostering of a range of public 

works projects and their success or failure over time; and 6) the establishment of scenic and cultural 

conservation zones in the United States and ways to balance economic development with preservation.

With the rise of a range of private-sector entrepreneurial firms interested in pursuing space commerce, 

the process whereby their efforts might be incubated, fostered, and expanded comes to the fore as an 

important public policy concern in a way never before present in the Space Age. In the United States, 

and really nowhere else in the world, we are witnessing the convergence of several powerful economic 

forces. These include the need to restore American capability to reach low-Earth orbit (LEO) for the 

servicing of the International Space Station (ISS), the rise of a hospitality/tourism/entertainment industry interested in space, the development of expansive remote sensing and other applications in Earth 

orbit, and the possibilities envisioned for opening commercial space activities in the cislunar region.

Through these case studies, we explore how to apply more effectively already-tested models of government support for commercial activities, as well as the interactions of both the public and private spheres 

in a new opportunity zone in space. In each case, a summation yields a range of key points. The following 

paragraphs relate key conclusions.

Transcontinental Railroad:The approach taken by government involvement in 19th-century transcontinental railroad development remains valid to some degree for orbital space operations. The government 

offered the following six inducements for private development:

1. Land grants as a means of offering potential future revenue, tied to success in creating the railroad system.

2. Direct government appropriations to the company involved in the endeavor.

3. Waivers/modifications to taxes and other regulatory requirements.

4. Contracts for services once capability was demonstrated.

5. Government endorsement and backing of corporate bonds/assets.

6. Indirect support for related but supplemental elements of the railroad transportation system.

In every case, these government initiatives were intended to leverage (and not replace) existing private 

funding, especially additional industry and venture capital.
2

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

To those six, we might add the following:

• 

• 

• 

Private financing supplemented with government loans.

Property and patent rights granted to participating firms.

Broadly construed revenues produced from transportation and other fees.

Regardless, one must ask these critical questions in the context of developing new space transportation 

structures: “How important, in the final analysis, is cheaper access to space? Is it really the key to the 

future growth of space activities?” This seems to be at the cusp of what will go into any stimulation of 

private space transportation effort.

Commercial Air Transportation: Between 1915 and the 1970s, government officials in the United 

States undertook a series of critical initiatives designed to create a commercial airline industry in 

private hands. Washington lawmakers saw the necessity of fostering new technology for the purposes 

of national security, economic competitiveness, and pride and prestige. That last reason was in no 

small measure because although Americans had invented the airplane in 1903, by 1914 leadership 

in the technology had moved to Europe—the United States had been left in the dust. Catching up 

became an important driver for federal investment. Government organizations took a multifaceted 

approach: military investment, research and development, regulatory efforts aimed at both promoting 

safety and efficiency and expanding operations, and direct subsidies to commercial entities until the 

1960s. Congress could have established a national airline run by civil servants, but instead created a 

favorable climate for private investment in airlines. For instance, the U.S. Congress established the 

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1915 to conduct research on flight, and 

in 1921 New York and New Jersey created a port authority with the power to issue bonds and collect 

fees for airfields.

In terms of space transportation, there are several lessons to be drawn from the aviation experience. 

Like the NACA, government agencies could conduct basic research and transfer that knowledge to 

private firms. In addition, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) could transfer 

its operational responsibility to private carriers. Congress could also create the authority—modeled 

on various earlier efforts such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation—to provide loans/

insurance to space line firms. Either the U.S. government or states could establish spaceport authorities to manage operations from the ground to orbit; federal agencies could also regulate routes and 

fares. Many of these efforts are already under way, and we are on the verge of seeing a new age of 

entrepreneurial space transportation efforts. There are, however, challenges to this approach, not the 

least of which is that NASA has a critical path with specific milestone deadlines and is hesitant to 

change this approach; the loans/insurance incentives may not produce services in time; and liability 

issues are especially burdensome. Nonetheless, major steps have been taken toward this capability in 

the last decade.

Telecommunications: Following the invention of the telephone in 1876, the federal government could 

have owned and operated telephone service—it did so during World War I—or it could have allowed a 

totally open market. Instead, it established phone companies as regulated monopolies under the Federal 
3

Executive Summary and Findings

Communications Commission (FCC), with monopolistic privileges left in place until 1980. In essence, 

the following structure emerged:

• Regulatory agencies provided patents, granted monopoly status, and chartered corporations.

• The U.S. Attorney General allowed the American Telephone and Telegraph Company 

(AT&T) to control telephone service as a regulated monopoly (1913).

• AT&T established Bell Laboratories (1925); Bell Labs developed the first orbiting communications satellite (Telstar 1, 1962).

• Congress created the Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), a public-private 

corporation with monopoly status, to promote satellite communications (1962).

• COMSAT represented the United States in the formation of INTELSAT and became its 

managing company.

Might the U.S. government foster a private space communications system that could serve the needs 

of all users on a commercial basis rather than having NASA own its own Tracking and Data Relay 

Satellite System (TDRSS) satellites? What is the future of space communications? Will the government 

encourage private entrepreneurs to construct, own, operate, and use lunar communications networks, 

Mars communications networks, deep space networks? A major challenge: recent experience (Iridium, 

Global Positioning System [GPS]) suggests that the cost of establishing certain space communications 

networks exceeds likely revenues.

Antarctica: Antarctica has a legal status similar to that of the Moon. It is utilized primarily for scientific 

research, and no nation can claim its land. Yet basic supplies and logistic support for U.S. operations on 

the continent are provided by nonfederal organizations. Might this become a possibility in the future on 

the ISS or the Moon? Fostering such an approach to space activities could mean that control of orbital 

lunar assets would remain with NASA, which would select and fund science projects, oversee policy, 

and cycle personnel as necessary. The operation of these stations, however, could fall to a company 

with experience in remote locations, staffed by its own employees. Transportation to and from these 

stations could also be provided by outside organizations. At the same time, commercial activities could 

be encouraged.

Public Works: Frequently in the history of the United States, the federal government has developed 

critical infrastructure, often for its national security purposes, but quickly leading to economic development. At times, it has relied wholly upon private entrepreneurs. One of the most creative approaches 

to this process has been the use of the government or quasi-government development commissions to 

develop resources as a public good. There are many instances of this approach to public-private partnership. For example, in the General Mining Act of 1872, the U.S. government set up an uncontrolled 

but highly entrepreneurial structure that emphasized the principle that discovery conferred ownership. 

It left a legacy of riches and ruin that few wanted to repeat. More recently, commissions have been 

formed to create a more controlled development of the resource. Examples include the Isthmian Canal 

Commission (1904); the Bonneville Power Administration (1937); and the subject of this discussion, the 

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA, 1933). This entity was decentralized, not a conventional government 

agency. Congress provided at least initial appropriation, but the organization was intended to become 
HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

4

self-sustaining while delivering a public service. Corporate entities associated with it were empowered 

to borrow and spend as well as market goods and services. TVA served an important economic and 

social purpose and, in the process, served as the catalyst for the wholesale transformation of the region.

In the context of lunar development, might an organization similar to TVA be capable of commercially 

developing the Moon? Questions abound:

• Should it begin with the establishment of a lunar development commission/corporation?

• Would a commission/corporation start by building and managing lunar infrastructure 

for NASA?

• Would this be followed by an effort to spur economic development?

National Parks: In terms of applicability to the space frontier, the experience of the National Park 

Service is most germane in terms of space tourism efforts. When Congress created the U.S. National 

Park Service in 1916 to conserve natural and historical resources “by such means as will leave them 

unimpaired,” a key component was to assist the public in reaching those scenic wonders. Accordingly, 

park managers, recognizing the need for public support to encourage future preservation, allowed private 

entrepreneurs to commercialize the parks in such a manner as to encourage public visitation. Accordingly, 

they encouraged railroad companies and other concessionaires to build hotels and related facilities in 

the national parks. Those concessionaires then paid fees, which the National Park Service used to build 

additional roads and trails. Americans rode and drove to the national parks, vastly expanding tourism 

and creating the family vacation tradition.

Government officials, as well as policy, could likewise encourage private-sector development in space 

tourism, both in low-Earth orbit and on the Moon. The following possibilities exist:

• Public officials could expand the use of government facilities by private entrepreneurs as a 

means of encouraging public use and visitation.

• Private firms could pay fees, which government agencies could then use to expand and develop 

facilities.

• Government could create a favorable regulatory climate for space tourism.

• Private citizens could then experience space through both remote access and direct participation.

Beyond these very specific possibilities, NASA could also award lease contracts for habitation/support 

services of facilities in orbit and on the Moon. Baseline development and operational costs could then 

be funded by NASA lease. As an additional revenue stream, companies could then add tourism for 

marginal costs. Such an environment could create a public-private space ecology with efficiencies of 

operations achieved through economies of scale.
5

Introduction

Introduction

With the rise of a range of private-sector entrepreneurial firms interested in pursuing space commerce 

in the first decade of the 21st century, the process whereby those efforts might be incubated, fostered, 

and expanded comes to the fore as an important public policy concern in ways never before confronted 

in the history of the Space Age.

The United States is witnessing the convergence of several powerful economic forces. These include 

the need to restore American capability to reach low-Earth orbit for the servicing of the International 

Space Station, the rise of a hospitality/tourism/entertainment industry interested in space, the place of 

remote sensing and other applications in Earth orbit as well as their commercial appeal, and the possibilities envisioned for opening commercial space activities in the cislunar region. Among those last 

efforts is the stimulation of several organizations to pursue a lunar lander and rover/hopper to capture 

a $25 million Google Lunar XPRIZE.

Because of this broad-based set of initiatives, there is a renewed necessity to explore historical analogs 

for the stimulation of private-sector investment in space activities. All of these represent various forms 

of public-private partnerships. The Council on Public-Private Partnerships defines this approach to big 

projects thusly: “A contractual agreement between a public agency (federal, state or local) and a private 

sector entity. Through this agreement, the skills and assets of each sector (public and private) are shared 

in delivering a service or facility for the use of the general public. In addition to the sharing of resources, 

each party shares in the risks and rewards potential in the delivery of the service and/or facility.”1

There are many instances of these models of financing/governance/operations having been used throughout history. The National Council for Public-Private Partnerships offers these 10 statements about their 

broad use:

1. Public-private partnerships are just what the name implies. Public-private partnerships are 

a contractual arrangement whereby the resources, risks and rewards of both the public agency 

and private company are combined to provide greater efficiency, better access to capital, and 

improved compliance with a range of government regulations regarding the environment and 

workplace. The public’s interests are fully assured through provisions in the contracts that 

provide for on-going monitoring and oversight of the operation of a service or development 

of a facility. In this way, everyone wins—the government entity, the private company and the 

general public.

2. Public-private partnerships are more common than you may think. Public-[p]rivate [p]artnerships have been in use in the United States for over 200 years and thousands are operating today. 

These contractual arrangements between government entities and private companies for the delivery of services or facilities [are] used for water/wastewater, transportation, urban development, 

1 National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, Testing Tradition: Assessing the Added Value of Public-Private Partnerships (Washington, DC: 

National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, 2012), p. 2.
HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

6

and delivery of social services, to name only a few areas of application. Today, the average 

American city works with private partners to perform 23 out of 65 basic municipal services. 

The use of partnerships is increasing because they provide an effective tool in meeting public 

needs, maintaining a high level of public control, [and] improving the quality of services, and 

[they] are more cost effective than traditional delivery methods.

3. They are an essential tool in challenging economic times. Even in the best of times, governments at all levels are challenged to keep pace with the demands of their constituencies. During 

periods of slow growth, government revenues are frequently not sufficient to meet spending 

demands, necessitating painful spending cuts or tax increases. Partnerships can provide a continued or improved level of service, at reduced costs. And equally important, partnerships can also 

provide the capital needed for construction of major facilities. By developing partnerships with 

private-sector entities, governments can maintain quality services despite budget limitations.

4. Successful partnerships can lead to happy employees. In many partnerships created today, 

public employees are retained and usually at equal or improved benefits. One of the greatest 

areas of improvement for employees is with opportunities for career growth—private companies spend two to three times more on training and personnel development than their publicsector counterparts, as a way of gaining the maximum efficiency out of every person, and the 

maximum amount of job satisfaction.

5. Successful partnerships can lead to better public safety. From Los Angeles to the District 

of Columbia, local governments have formed creative partnerships with private companies 

to enhance the safety of [their] streets and [their] citizens. By turning over the operation of 

parking meters or the processing of crime reports to private-sector partners, police officers can 

spend more time on the streets doing the jobs for which they are trained. This is particularly 

important as [h]ome[l]and [s]ecurity has risen as a concern for many.

6. Partnerships give many children better educational opportunities. In Virginia, publicprivate partnerships were instrumental in constructing over 30 new school buildings. By 

working with a private real estate development company, city and county school systems were 

able to build state-of-the-art facilities with a modern computer lab, gym and library. Often, 

allowing the private sector to utilize publicly-owned underutilized assets for commercial 

activities provides a major portion of the funding for these projects. Today, a number of other 

states are now following this example, driven by the need to address the problem of aging 

education infrastructures.

7. Drivers appreciate public-private partnerships. These are not easy times for America’s 

roads and highways. Increasing numbers of vehicles means more roadway wear and tear 

and increasing traffic congestion. In states like California, Virginia and Texas, private-sector 

companies are working with state and local governments to build roads, making it possible 

to finance construction and upkeep without having to impose general tax increases. While 

tolling [is] one means of generating the revenue to cover the investment, in a number of cases 
7

Introduction

Transportation Oriented Development (TOD) of adjacent properties can provide a significant 

portion of the revenue stream.

8. Clean, safe water is achieved through public-private partnerships. The stringent health 

and environmental standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act have 

presented difficulties for some local governments without the budget flexibility to make major 

capital improvements in water and wastewater facilities. Public-private partnerships have 

enabled the construction of state-of-the-art water management facilities, while using efficient 

operations to hold down costs to ratepayers and provide a way of meeting those “un-funded 

mandates” from the federal government.

9. Partnerships make the information revolution accessible to more Americans. This is the 

age of information technologies, but there can be a hefty cost of getting a system operating. 

Through public-private partnerships, many governments are now able to fully participate in 

“E-government” with their constituents, or effectively coordinate government activities and 

budgets. Better service, improved tools and saving money are exactly what public-private 

partnerships are all about.

10. Governments themselves are the biggest supporters of public-private partnerships. While 

there can be substantial misperceptions about the value of partnerships, a look at who endorses 

them should clarify the picture. Federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the 

Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration all use partnerships. And the number 

of state and local governments using this tool is even greater. For example, the U.S. Conference 

of Mayors is enthusiastically working with private-sector providers to discuss ways to make partnerships more effective. Numerous surveys indicate why—governments traditionally realize cost 

savings of 20 to 50 percent when the private-sector is involved in providing services.2 

While there have long been public-private partnerships, the trends for the future are that they will gain 

in use over the next several years. It makes sense that these will become the norm for space activities as 

well. They are increasingly used in infrastructure and investment-heavy sectors as a means of leveraging 

public funding, operational efficiency, and risk.

There are many reasons for this development in the last third of the 20th century. The most significant 

has been the need to reduce costs, but of almost as much significance has been the lack of both political will and expertise in the public sector (see figure 1).3

 Regardless of this approach and its long use 

in American history, there are those who question whether or not public-private partnerships intrude 

on the democratic traditions of the United States. Critics have argued that these partnerships open 

up opportunities for corruption, for conspiring to provide poor-quality services, and for depriving 

2 “Top Ten Facts About PPPS,” National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, available online at http://www.ncppp.org/ppp-basics/top-tenfacts-about-ppps/, accessed 24 November 2013, 6:36 p.m.

3 National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, For the Good of the People: Using Public-Private Partnerships To Meet America’s Essential 

Needs (Washington, DC: National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, 2012), p. 5.
8

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

underprivileged citizens of essential services. There is evidence to support these criticisms. There is also 

evidence to support counterarguments about success and win-win in public policy and the delivery of 

services to society.4

The reality is that public-private partnerships are neither a panacea for all ills of public policy nor a 

Pandora’s box of troubles. They offer appropriate responses to problems of society, especially those that 

have technological, infrastructure, or enormous investment challenges. There are always tradeoffs.5

Should there be a desire to develop a public-private partnership to resolve some challenge there are a 

series of best practices that have been developed:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Best Practice #1: Understand the Uniqueness of the Project. Over the past several decades PPPs 

have become an increasingly common tool throughout the world. This has resulted in experience and research which informed...

Best Practice #2: Include Everything, but Be Wary of Bias. Not including every aspect of public 

costs can mean the difference between finding that a PPP is or is not cost-effective.

Best Practice #3: PCC [I]s Not a Final Step. The PCC is just one way of exploring the possibility of public sector involvement and assessing [its] value for money. Furthermore, the PCC 

only provide[s] a partial picture. It is impossible to determine from only the public cost assessment whether a PPP will be beneficial without the comparative factor of what it would cost 

the private sector....

Best Practice #4: Be Realistic, Not Overly Optimistic. Study after study has shown that public 

sector cost estimates are consistently too optimistic in terms of a project’s cost, timeline, and 

ability to generate revenue. This has certainly proven to be the case for both PCCs and the 

costs of PPPs....

Best Practice #5: Identify Strengths AND Weaknesses...deciding whether to provide a service, the 

public sector needs to conduct a complete calculation of the cost of the project....6

Although there are positives and negatives of public-private partnerships, when they are prepared carefully and managed with aplomb, they have proven useful in wide array of settings and industries.

We are accordingly seeing this in the spaceflight arena as well as in the development of more mundane 

utilities and infrastructure. As only one example, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2008 created its 

Center Planning and Development Office with the objective of pursuing public-private partnerships in 

4 National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, Critical Choices: The Debate Over Public-Private Partnerships and What It Means for America’s 

Future (Washington, DC: National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, 2003), p. 6.

5 Bernard L. Ungar, “Public-Private Partnerships: Factors To Consider When Deliberating Governmental Use as a Real Property Management 

Tool,” General Accountability Office, October 1, 2001; Masafumi Hashimoto, “Public-Private Partnerships in Space Projects: An Analysis of 

Stakeholder Dynamics,” M.A. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 2009.

6 Claire Goldbach, Valerie Goldman, Richard Phillips, and Ashlyn Seymour, “Public Cost Comparator for Public-Private Partnerships,” American 

University Masters of Public Policy on behalf of the National Council for Private-Public Partnerships, 2011, pp. 23–25.
9

Introduction

Figure 1

Source: Used with permission of the Council of State Governments.

the construction and management of launch capabilities at the nation’s foremost spaceport.7 There have 

been some notable successes (Telesat’s Anik F2 and Hughes Early Bird), some spectacular failures (X-33/

VentureStar and Galileo navigation satellite development), and some that have yet to prove themselves 

one way or another, especially NASA’s present Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.8

In a pathbreaking 2013 study, “Public-Private Partnerships for Space Capability Development: Driving 

Economic Growth and NASA’s Mission,” the workability of these efforts has been studied for the spaceflight community in the following areas:

1. Satellite Servicing: On-orbit rescue, refueling, repositioning, repair, or inspection of satellites; 

can include mitigation and debris removal.

2. Interplanetary Small Satellites: Spacecraft that conduct missions beyond LEO and have a 

mass of <500 kg.

7 Amber N. Philman, “Public-Private Partnerships Expected To Launch a New Era of Space Flight at Kennedy Space Center,” Florida League of 

Cities, August 2012, pp. 43–44.

8 Hossein Ghandeharian and Ali Shoamanesh, “Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for Development of the Space Sector,” National Space 

Conference, Islamabad, Pakistan, 17–19 September 2012.
10

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

3. Robotic Mining: Extraction, processing, and transport of materials using autonomous or 

semi-autonomous equipment.

4. Cargo Transportation Beyond LEO: Transport of goods, equipment, and resources.

5. Crew Transportation Beyond LEO: Transport of crew, including astronauts and spaceflight 

participants.

6. Microgravity Research for Biomedical Applications: Used by researchers in biomedical science as a tool for discovery of medically-important applications.

7. Liquid Rocket Engines: Safe, reliable, cost effective engines.

8. Wireless Power: Transmitting power over both short and long distances without wires.

9. Space Communications: Technologies to transmit and relay data between satellites, vehicles 

in space, and assets on the ground.

10. Earth Observation Data Visualization: Comprises the massive volume and diversity of data 

collected by Earth observation satellite systems.9

Analysts found that public-private partnerships do help close the business case for U.S. companies, 

but only help—no more—because there is also an intrinsic role for the federal government in ensuring 

success in this arena, enticing private-sector investment in critical U.S. capabilities in space. In addition 

to other areas, they found that “[p]artnerships to develop commercial transportation systems capable 

of sending crew beyond LEO can provide NASA and other customers access to affordable crew transportation while stimulating new commercial markets.” Furthermore, the study found, “[b]y leveraging 

public-private partnerships as a regular part of the agency’s approach to space capability development, NASA’s programs can be a fundamental driver of U.S. economic growth in the 21st century” 

(emphasis in original). This study offered the following recommendations:

1. Integrate economic analysis and market evaluation into Agency strategic decision-making and 

acquisition process for program formulation.

2. Engage in public-private partnerships in those areas that have attracted private capital, which 

have technical merit, and [that] contribute to achieving NASA’s overall Mission and are in the 

national interest.

3. Develop a strategy and architecture for space exploration that includes public-private 

partnerships.10

In keeping with those recommendations, this study explores historical episodes in America in which 

the federal government fostered public-private partnerships to accomplish critical activities valued for 

their public good when they could not be achieved through commercial activities alone. These include 

the following six cases and their relationships to connected space activities: 1) the development of the 

transcontinental railroad, supported by a unique land-grant approach to subsidy; 2) support for the 

airline industry through legislation, appropriate regulation, and subsidies to grow a robust aerospace 

industry; 3) the regulatory regime put into place with the rise of the telephone industry and the creation 

9 NASA Office of Strategy Formulation, “Public-Private Partnerships for Space Capability Development: Driving Economic Growth and NASA’s 

Mission,” 30 July 2013.

10 Ibid.
11

Introduction

of a government-sponsored monopoly that eventually had to be broken up; 4) government sponsorship 

of Antarctic scientific stations that evolved into a public-private partnership over time; 5) the fostering 

of a range of public works projects and their success or failure over time; and 6) the establishment of 

scenic and cultural conservation zones in the United States and ways to balance economic development 

with preservation. Through these case studies, we may learn how to apply more effectively already-tested 

models of government support for commercial activities, as well as the interactions of both the public 

and private spheres in this new opportunity zone in space.

Specific questions in these six cases will revolve around the economic and political rationales for these 

activities—in greater specificity than I have seen before—and the application of those business and political models and practical experiences to the question of space commercialization. Specifically, I propose 

using these case studies to determine the applicability of analogies in the history of the United States to 

the present issues of building a space economy. Some examples may work better than others in specific 

settings, of course, but the probing questions about specific issues, problems, and solutions, and to specific 

issues, organizations, and individuals in this history, will help to illuminate possibilities for the future. 
HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

12

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

The dominant users of space from the beginning of the Space Age until the 1980s were governments, 

especially the two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. There were several entities 

in the United States dedicated to space operations. On the civil side, NASA quickly emerged as the 

preeminent entity, but several parts of the national security apparatus also undertook space research, 

development, and operations. Later, such organizations as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration (NOAA) entered the arena; by 2013, there were 14 separate U.S. government agencies 

with a role in space activities.11

NASA emerged in 1958 out of the “Cold War” rivalries of the United States and the Soviet Union. As the 

superpowers engaged in a broad contest over the ideologies and allegiances of the nonaligned nations of 

the world, space exploration was one major area contested. This served as the key that opened the door to 

aggressive space exploration, not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieving technological superiority 

in the eyes of the world. From the perspective of the 21st century, it is difficult to appreciate Americans’ 

near-hysterical preoccupation with nuclear attack in the 1950s. Far from being the Happy Days of the 

television sitcom, the United States was a dysfunctional nation preoccupied with death by nuclear war. 

Schools required children to practice civil defense techniques and shield themselves from nuclear blasts—

techniques, in some cases, as simple as crawling under their desks. Communities practiced civil defense 

drills, and families built personal bomb shelters in their backyards.12 In the popular culture, nuclear attack 

was inexorably linked to the space above the United States, from which the attack would come.

The Soviets gained the upper hand in this competition on 4 October 1957, when they launched 

Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth, as part of a larger scientific effort associated with the 

International Geophysical Year (IGY).13 While U.S. officials congratulated the Soviet Union for this 

11 NASA, Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, Fiscal Year 2008 Activities (Washington, DC: NASA, 2009).

12 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), pp. 93–94, 104–113.

13 There are several works on the history of Sputnik worthy of consideration. See Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s 

Response to the Soviet Satellite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Walter A. McDougall, ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political 

History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985, rep. ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Rip Bulkeley, The 

Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); 

Matt Bille and Erika Lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 

2004); Paul L. Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker and Co., 2001); Matthew Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik 

and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age (New York: Times Books, 2007). Other aspects of this subject are recounted in Martin 

Collins, ed., After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age (New York: Collins, 2007); Asif A. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003); James J. Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America 

to the Moon (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997); Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 

1957–1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Peter J. Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 1995); Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University 

Press of Kansas, 2006); Homer Hickam, Rocket Boys (New York: Delacorte, 1999); Constance M. Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A 

History (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971).
13

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

accomplishment, clearly many Americans thought that the Soviet Union had staged a tremendous coup 

for the communist system at U.S. expense.

After an arms race with its nuclear component and a series of hot and cold crises in the Eisenhower era, 

coupled with the launching of Sputnik and Sputnik II in 1957, the threat of holocaust felt by most 

Americans and Soviets was now not just a possibility, but a seeming probability. For the first time, enemies 

could reach the United States with a radical new technology.14 It was a shock, introducing the illusion of a 

technological gap and providing the impetus for the 1958 act creating NASA. Sputnik led directly to several 

critical efforts aimed at “catching up” to the Soviet Union’s space achievements. Among them were these:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A full-scale review of both the civil and military programs of the United States (scientific satellite efforts and ballistic missile development[).]

Establishment of a Presidential Science Advisor in the White House who had responsibility 

for overseeing the activities of the Federal government in science and technology.

Creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense, and the 

consolidation of several space activities under centralized management.

Establishment of NASA to manage civil space operations.

Passage of the National Defense Education Act to provide federal funding for education in the 

scientific and technical disciplines.15

More immediately, the United States launched its first Earth satellite on 31 January 1958, when 

Explorer 1 documented the existence of radiation zones encircling Earth. Shaped by Earth’s magnetic 

field, what came to be called the Van Allen Radiation Belt partially dictates the electrical charges in the 

atmosphere and the solar radiation that reaches Earth. It also began a series of scientific missions to the 

Moon and planets in the latter 1950s and early 1960s.16

Because of this perception, Congress passed and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National 

Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. This legislation established the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration (NASA) with a broad mandate to explore and use space for “peaceful purposes for the 

benefit of all mankind.”17 The core of NASA came from the earlier National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics, with its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of $100 million, and its research laboratories. 

14 See Roger D. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith, eds., Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (Amsterdam, 

The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000).

15 Roger D. Launius, “Eisenhower, Sputnik, and the Creation of NASA: Technological Elites and the Public Policy Agenda,” Prologue: Quarterly 

of the National Archives and Records Administration 28 (summer 1996): 127–143; Roger D. Launius, “Space Program,” in Robert H. 

Ferrell and Joan Hoff, senior eds., Dictionary of American History: Supplement (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons Reference Books, 1996), 

2:221–223.

16 See James A. Van Allen, Origins of Magnetospheric Physics (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983); Matthew J. Von Benke, 

The Politics of Space: A History of U.S. Soviet/Russian Competition and Cooperation in Space (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).

17 “National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958,” Public Law #85-568, 72 Stat., 426, signed by the President on 29 July 1958, Record Group 

255, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC; Alison Griffith, The National Aeronautics and Space Act: A Study of the 

Development of Public Policy (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1962), pp. 27–43.
14

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

It quickly incorporated other organizations into the new agency, notably the space science group of 

the Naval Research Laboratory in Maryland, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California 

Institute of Technology for the Army, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama.18

The Soviet Union, while not creating a separate organization dedicated to space exploration, infused 

money into its various rocket design bureaus and scientific research institutions. The chief beneficiaries of Soviet spaceflight enthusiasm were the design bureau of Sergei P. Korolev (the chief designer 

of the first Soviet rockets used for the Sputnik program) and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which 

devised experiments and built the instruments that were launched into orbit. With huge investments 

in spaceflight technology urged by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union accomplished one public relations coup after another against the United States during the late 1950s and 

early 1960s.19

In the United States, within a short time after NASA’s formal organization, the new agency also took 

over the management of space exploration projects from other federal agencies and began to conduct 

space science missions—such as Project Ranger to send probes to the Moon, Project Echo to test the 

possibility of satellite communications, and Project Mercury to ascertain the possibilities of human 

spaceflight. Even so, these activities were constrained by a modest budget and a measured pace on the 

part of NASA leadership.

In an irony of the first magnitude, Eisenhower believed that the creation of NASA and the placing of so 

much power in its hands by the Kennedy administration during the Apollo program of the 1960s was 

a mistake. He remarked in a 1962 article: “Why the great hurry to get to the moon and the planets? 

We have already demonstrated that in everything except the power of our booster rockets we are leading the world in scientific space exploration. From here on, I think we should proceed in an orderly, 

scientific way, building one accomplishment on another.”20 He later cautioned that the Moon race “has 

diverted a disproportionate share of our brain-power and research facilities from equally significant 

problems, including education and automation.”21 He believed that Americans had overreacted to the 

perceived threat.

During the first 15 years of the Space Age, the United States emphasized a civilian space exploration 

program consisting of several major components:

• Human spaceflight initiatives—Project Mercury’s single-astronaut program (flights during 1961–63) to ascertain if a human could survive in space, Project Gemini (flights during 

18 Roger D. Launius, NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 29–41.

19 The standard works on this subject are Asif A. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-2000-4408, 2000); James J. Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive To Beat America to the Moon

(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997).

20 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Are We Headed in the Wrong Direction?” Saturday Evening Post, 11 August 1962, p. 24.

21 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Why I Am a Republican,” Saturday Evening Post, 11 April 1964, p. 19.
15

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

1965–66) to practice for space operations with two astronauts, and Project Apollo (flights 

during 1968–72) to explore the Moon.22

Robotic missions to the Moon (Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter), Venus (Pioneer 

Venus), Mars (Mariner 4, Vikings 1 and 2), and the outer planets (Pioneers 10 and 11, 

Voyagers 1 and 2).23

Orbiting space observatories (Orbiting Solar Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope) to view 

the galaxy from space without the clutter of Earth’s atmosphere.24

Remote sensing Earth satellites for information gathering (Landsat satellites for environmental monitoring).25

Applications satellites such as communications (Echo 1, Television Infrared Observation 

Satellite [TIROS], and Telstar) and weather-monitoring instruments.26

• 

• 

• 

• 

22 NASA has documented well the history of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs since its first histories appeared in the 1960s. See 

James M. Grimwood, Project Mercury: A Chronology (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4001, 1963); Mae Mills Link, Space Medicine in Project 

Mercury (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4003, 1965); Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander, This New Ocean: A 

History of Project Mercury (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4201, 1966; rep. ed. 1998); James M. Grimwood and Barton C. Hacker, with Peter J. 

Vorzimmer, Project Gemini Technology and Operations: A Chronology (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4002, 1969); Ivan D. Ertel and Mary Louise 

Morse, The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume I, Through November 7, 1962 (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1969); Mary Louise 

Morse and Jean Kernahan Bays, The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume II, November 8, 1962–September 30, 1964 (Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4009, 1973); Courtney G. Brooks and Ivan D. Ertel, The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume III, October 1, 1964–January 20, 

1966 (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1973); Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood, On Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project 

Gemini (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4203, 1977, rep. ed. 2002); Charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty, Moonport: A History 

of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4204, 1978); Ivan D. Ertel and Roland W. Newkirk, with Courtney 

G. Brooks, The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology, Volume IV, January 21, 1966–July 13, 1974 (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4009, 1978); 

Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4201, 1966; rep. ed. 1998); Roger E. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch 

Vehicles (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4206, 1980, rep. ed. 1997); Arnold S. Levine, Managing NASA in the Apollo Era (Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4102, 1982); W. David Compton, Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions (Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4214, 1989); Sylvia D. Fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4104, 1992); Robert C. 

Seamans, Jr., Aiming at Targets: The Autobiography of Robert C. Seamans, Jr. (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4106, 1996); Glen E. Swanson, 

ed., “Before This Decade Is Out...”: Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4223, 1999); Richard W. Orloff, 

comp., Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2000-4029, 2000); Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Project 

Apollo: The Tough Decisions (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2005-4537, Monographs in Aerospace History, No. 37).

23 On these missions, see the following NASA histories: R. Cargill Hall, Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger (NASA SP-4210, 1977); Homer 

E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (NASA SP-4211, 1980); Edward Clinton Ezell and Linda Neuman Ezell, On 

Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958-1978 (NASA SP-4212, 1984); John E. Naugle, First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space 

Science Experiments (NASA SP-4215, 1991).

24 Shami Chatterjee, “Exploring the Universe: The NASA Great Observatory Program,” 2004 presentation in possession of author; NASA 

Education Division, NASA Great Observatories (Washington, DC: NASA EP-1998-12-384-HQ, 1998).

25 Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of Landsat (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).

26 Andrew J. Butrica, ed., Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4217, 1997).
16

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

• 

• 

An orbital workshop for astronauts (Skylab).27

A reusable spacecraft for traveling to and from Earth orbit (the Space Shuttle).28

The capstone of this effort was, of course, the human expedition to the Moon, Project Apollo. A unique 

confluence of political necessity, personal commitment and activism, scientific and technological ability, 

economic prosperity, and public mood made possible the 25 May 1961 announcement by President 

John F. Kennedy to carry out a lunar landing program before the end of the decade as a means of demonstrating the United States’ technological virtuosity.29

Project Apollo, backed by sufficient funding, was the tangible result of an early national commitment 

in response to a perceived threat to the United States by the Soviet Union. NASA leaders recognized 

that while the size of the task was enormous, it was still technologically and financially within their 

grasp, but they had to move forward quickly. Accordingly, the space agency’s annual budget increased 

from $500 million in 1960 to a high point of $5.2 billion in 1965. A comparable percentage of the 

$1.9 trillion federal budget in 2006 would have equaled more than $77 billion for NASA, whereas the 

Agency’s actual budget then stood at $16.6 billion. NASA’s budget began to decline beginning in 1966 

and continued a downward trend until 1975. NASA’s fiscal year (FY) 1971 budget took a battering, 

forcing the cancellation of Apollo missions 18 through 20. With the exception of a few years during the 

Apollo era, the NASA budget has hovered at slightly less than 1 percent of all money expended by the U.S. 

Treasury. Stability has been the norm as the annual NASA budgets have incrementally gone up or down 

in relation to that 1 percent benchmark (see figure 2).30

While there may be reason to accept that Apollo was transcendentally important at some sublime level, 

assuming a generally rosy public acceptance of it is at best a simplistic and ultimately unsatisfactory 

conclusion. Indeed, the public’s support for space funding has remained remarkably stable at approximately 80 percent in favor of the status quo since 1965, with only one significant dip in support in the 

early 1970s. However, responses to funding questions on public opinion polls are extremely sensitive 

to question wording and must be used cautiously.31 Polls in the 1960s consistently ranked spaceflight 

near the top of those programs to be cut in the federal budget. Most Americans seemingly preferred 

27 Roland W. Newkirk and Ivan D. Ertel, with Courtney G. Brooks, Skylab: A Chronology (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4011, 1977); W. David 

Compton and Charles D. Benson, Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4208, 1983).

28 T. A. Heppenheimer, The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA’s Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4221, 1999); Clay 

Morgan, Shuttle-Mir: The U.S. and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2001-4225, 2001).

29 In addition to the above books on Apollo, see Edgar M. Cortright, ed., Apollo Expeditions to the Moon (Washington, DC: NASA SP-350, 1975); 

W. Henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); David West Reynolds, 

Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon (New York: Harcourt, 2002).

30 These observations are based on calculations using the budget data included in the annual Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, 

2003 Activities (Washington, DC: NASA Report, 2004), appendix E, which contains this information for each year since 1959; NASA, 

“National Aeronautics and Space Administration President’s FY 2007 Budget Request,” FY 2007 Budget Request, 6 February 2006, p. I, 

NASA Historical Reference Collection.

31 Stephanie A. Roy, Elaine C. Gresham, and Carissa Bryce Christensen, “The Complex Fabric of Public Opinion on Space,” IAF-99-P.3.05, 

presented at the International Astronautical Federation annual meeting, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 5 October 1999.
17

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

Figure 2 

NASA Budget as Percentage of Federal Budget

Source: Calculated from the Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, Fiscal Year 2008 Activities (Washington, DC: NASA, 2010), 

appendix D; NASA’s FY 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Budgets, available online at http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/.

doing something about air and water pollution, job training for unskilled workers, national beautification, and poverty before spending federal funds on human spaceflight. The following year, Newsweek

stated: “The U.S. space program is in decline. The Vietnam war and the desperate conditions of the 

nation’s poor and its cities—which make space flight seem, in comparison, like an embarrassing national 

self-indulgence—have combined to drag down a program where the sky was no longer the limit.”32

Nor did lunar exploration in and of itself create a groundswell of popular support from the general public. The American public during the 1960s largely showed hesitancy to “race” the Soviets to the Moon, 

as shown in figure 3. “Would you favor or oppose U.S. government spending to send astronauts to the 

moon?” these polls asked, and in virtually all cases a majority opposed doing so, even during the height 

of Apollo. At only one point, October 1965, did more than half of the public favor continuing human 

32 The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, III: 1959–1971, pp. 1952, 2183–2184, 2209; New York Times, 3 December 1967. Newsweek

is quoted in An Administrative History of NASA, chap. II, p. 48, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.
18

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

lunar exploration. In the post-Apollo era, the American public has continued to question the validity 

of undertaking human expeditions to the Moon.33

Figure 3

Should the Government Fund Human Trips to the Moon?

Source: Calculated from a set of Gallup, Harris, NBC/Associated Press, CBS/New York Times, and ABC/USA Today polls conducted 

throughout the 1960s, copies available in the NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Program Office, Washington, DC. 

Some conclude from these opinion polls that even though the American public might have been 

generally unsupportive of human lunar exploration, Project Apollo—wrapped as it was in the bosom 

of American virtue, advocated by the most publicly wholesome of astronaut heroes, and hawked by 

everyone from journalists to Madison Avenue marketers—enjoyed consistent popularity. There is some 

evidence to suggest this, but it is, on the main, untrue. From the 1960s to near the present, using the 

polling data that exist, there is little evidence to support public approval of an expansive lunar exploration 

and colonization program. One must conclude from hard evidence that the United States undertook 

and carried out Apollo not because the public clamored for it during the 1960s, but because it served 

other purposes. Furthermore, the polling data suggest that should the United States mount another 

human mission to the Moon in the future, it will also be because the mission serves a larger political, 

economic, or national defense agenda.34

33 This analysis is based on a set of Gallup, Harris, NBC/Associated Press, CBS/New York Times, and ABC/USA Today polls conducted throughout the 1960s, copies of which are available in the NASA Historical Reference Collection.

34 Roger D. Launius, “Public Opinion Polls and Perceptions of U.S. Human Spaceflight,” Space Policy 19 (August 2003): 163–175.
19

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

These statistics do not demonstrate unqualified support for NASA’s effort to reach the Moon in the 

1960s. They suggest, instead, that the political crisis that brought public support to the initial lunar 

landing decision was fleeting, and within a short period the coalition that announced it had to retrench.35

It also suggests that the public was never enthusiastic about human lunar exploration, especially about 

the costs associated with it. What enthusiasm it may have enjoyed waned over time until, by the end 

of the Apollo program in December 1972, one has the image of the program as something akin to a 

limping marathoner straining with every muscle to reach the finish line before collapsing.

The first Apollo mission of public significance was the flight of Apollo 8. On 21 December 1968, it 

took off atop a Saturn V booster from Kennedy Space Center. Three astronauts were aboard—Frank 

Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders—for a historic mission to orbit the Moon. After 

Apollo 8 made one and a half Earth orbits, its third stage began a burn to put the spacecraft on a lunar 

trajectory. It orbited the Moon on 24–25 December. The crew undertook a Christmas Eve broadcast, 

sending an image of Earth from lunar orbit while reading the first part of the Bible—“God created the 

heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form and void”—before sending Christmas greetings 

to humanity. The next day, they fired the boosters for a return flight, and they splashed down in the 

Pacific Ocean on 27 December. That flight was an enormously significant accomplishment because it 

came at a time when American society was in crisis over Vietnam, race relations, urban problems, and 

a host of other difficulties. And if only for a few moments, the nation united as one to focus on this 

epochal event. Two more Apollo missions occurred before the climax of the program, confirming that 

the time had come for a lunar landing.36

That landing came during the flight of Apollo 11, which lifted off on 16 July 1969 and, after confirmation that the hardware was working well, began the three-day trip to the Moon. Then, at 4:18 p.m. EST 

on 20 July 1969, the Lunar Module—with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard—landed 

on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the Apollo Command Module. After 

checkout, Armstrong set foot on the surface, telling millions who saw and heard him on Earth that 

it was “one small step for [a] man—one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin soon followed him out, and 

the two plodded around the landing site in the 1/6 lunar gravity; planted an American flag but omitted 

claiming the land for the United States, as had been routinely done during European exploration of the 

Americas; collected soil and rock samples; and set up scientific experiments. The next day, they launched 

back to the Apollo capsule orbiting overhead and began the return trip to Earth, splashing down in the 

Pacific on 24 July.37

Five more landing missions followed at approximately six-month intervals through December 1972, 

each of them increasing the time spent on the Moon. The scientific experiments placed on the Moon and 

35 Roger D. Launius, “Kennedy’s Space Policy Reconsidered: A Post–Cold War Perspective,” Air Power History 50 (winter 2003): 16–29.

36 Robert Zimmerman, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998).

37 In addition to the many histories of Apollo that give center place to Apollo 11, there have been several memoirs by the astronauts on this mission. See Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and 

Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., written with Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970); Buzz Aldrin, Return to Earth (New York: 

Bantam Books, 1973); Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974).
20

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

the lunar soil samples returned have provided grist for scientists’ investigations ever since. The scientific 

return was significant, with the latter Apollo missions using a lunar rover to enhance substantially the 

ability to undertake scientific investigation. None of them, however, equaled the excitement of Apollo 11.

Project Apollo in general should be viewed as a watershed in the nation’s history. It was an endeavor 

that demonstrated both the technological and economic virtuosity of the United States and established 

national preeminence over rival nations—the primary goal of the program when first envisioned by the 

Kennedy administration in 1961. At the same time, the Apollo program, while an enormous achievement, left a divided legacy for NASA and the aerospace community. The perceived “golden age” of Apollo 

created for the Agency an expectation that the direction of any major space goal from the president 

would always bring NASA a broad consensus of support and provide it with the resources and license to 

dispense them as it saw fit. Something most NASA officials did not understand at the time of the Moon 

landing in 1969, however, was that Apollo had not been conducted under normal political circumstances 

and that the exceptional circumstances surrounding Apollo would not be repeated.38

After Apollo—and the interlude of Skylab—the space program went into a holding pattern as nearly a 

decade passed. During that time it moved from its earlier heroic age to one that was more characterized 

as a “routinization” of activities, perspectives, and processes; it was an institutionalizing of critical elements from a remarkably fertile heroic time not at all unlike that analyzed by longshoreman philosopher 

Eric Hoffer in The True Believer.

39

The Space Shuttle was intended to make spaceflight routine, safe, and relatively inexpensive. Although 

NASA considered a variety of configurations, some of them quite exotic, it settled on a stage-andone-half partially reusable vehicle with an approved development price tag of $5.15 billion. On 5 January 

1972, President Nixon announced the decision to build a space shuttle. He did so both for political 

reasons and for national prestige purposes. Politically, it would help a lagging aerospace industry in key 

states he wanted to carry in the next election, especially California, Texas, and Florida.40 Supporters—

especially Caspar W. Weinberger, who later became President Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary—argued 

that building the shuttle would reaffirm America’s superpower status and help restore confidence, at 

38 As an example, see the argument made in George M. Low, Team Leader, to Richard Fairbanks, Director, Transition Resources and 

Development Group, “Report of the NASA Transition Team,” 19 December 1980, NASA Historical Reference Collection, advocating strong 

presidential leadership to make everything right with the U.S. space program.

39 Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), pp. 3–23, 137–155. See 

also Max Weber, “The Pure Types of Legitimate Authority,” in Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers, ed. S. N. 

Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 46.

40 George M. Low, NASA Deputy Administrator, Memorandum for the Record, “Meeting with the President on January 5, 1972,” 12 January 

1972, NASA Historical Reference Collection. The John Erlichman interview by John M. Logsdon, 6 May 1983, NASA Historical Reference 

Collection, emphasizes the political nature of the decision. This aspect of the issue was also brought home to Nixon by other factors, such 

as letters and personal meetings. See Frank Kizis to Richard M. Nixon, 12 March 1971; Noble M. Melencamp, White House, to Frank Kizis, 

19 April 1971, both in Record Group 51, Series 69.1, Box 51-78-31, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
21

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

home and abroad, in America’s technological genius and will to succeed. This was purely an issue of 

national prestige.41

The prestige factor belies a critical component. United States leaders supported the Space Shuttle not on 

its merits, but on the image it projected. As a result, the Space Shuttle that emerged in the early 1970s 

was essentially a creature of compromise that consisted of three primary elements: a delta-winged orbiter 

spacecraft with a large crew compartment, a cargo bay 15 by 60 feet in size, and three main engines; 

two solid rocket boosters (SRBs); and an external fuel tank housing the liquid hydrogen and oxidizer 

burned in the main engines. The orbiter and the two solid rocket boosters were reusable. The Shuttle 

was designed to transport approximately 45,000 tons of cargo into low-Earth orbit, 115 to 250 statute 

miles above Earth. It could also accommodate a flight crew of up to 10 persons (although a crew of 7 

would be more common) for a basic space mission of seven days. During a return to Earth, the orbiter 

was designed so that it had a cross-range maneuvering capability of 1,265 statute miles to meet requirements for liftoff and landing at the same location after only one orbit.42

After a decade of development, on 12 April 1981, Columbia took off for the first orbital test mission. 

It was successful, and after only the fourth flight in 1982, Reagan declared the system “operational.” It 

would henceforth carry all U.S. government payloads; military, scientific, and even commercial satellites 

could all be deployed from its payload bay.43

The Shuttle soon proved disappointing. By January 1986, there had been only 24 Shuttle flights, 

although in the 1970s NASA had projected more flights than that for every year. Critical analyses 

agreed that the Shuttle had proven to be neither cheap nor reliable, both primary selling points, and 

that NASA should never have used those arguments in building a political consensus for the program. 

In some respects, therefore, many agreed that the effort had been both a triumph and a tragedy. The 

program had been engagingly ambitious and had developed an exceptionally sophisticated vehicle, one 

that no other nation on Earth could have built at the time. As such, it had been an enormously successful program. At the same time, the Shuttle was essentially a continuation of space spectaculars, à la 

Apollo, and its much-touted capabilities had not been realized. It made far fewer flights and conducted 

far fewer scientific experiments than NASA had publicly predicted.44

41 Caspar W. Weinberger, Memorandum for the President, via George Shultz, “Future of NASA,” 12 August 1971, White House, Richard M. Nixon, 

President, 1968–1971 File, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

42 Alfred C. Draper, Melvin L. Buck, and William H. Goesch, “A Delta Shuttle Orbiter,” Astronautics & Aeronautics 9 (January 1971): 26–35; Charles W. 

Mathews, “The Space Shuttle and Its Uses,” Aeronautical Journal 76 (January 1972): 19–25; John M. Logsdon, “The Space Shuttle Program: A 

Policy Failure,” Science 232 (30 May 1986): 1099–1105; Scott Pace, “Engineering Design and Political Choice: The Space Shuttle, 1969–1972,” 

M.S. Thesis, MIT, May 1982; Harry A. Scott, “Space Shuttle: A Case Study in Design,” Astronautics & Aeronautics 17 (June 1979): 54–58.

43 The standard work on the Shuttle and its operational history is Dennis R. Jenkins, Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space 

Transportation System, the First 100 Missions (Cape Canaveral, FL: Dennis R. Jenkins, 2001, 3rd edition).

44 Roger D. Launius, “The Space Shuttle—Twenty-five Years On: What Does It Mean To Have Reusable Access to Space?” Quest: The History of 

Spaceflight Quarterly 13, No. 2 (2006): 4-20.
22

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

This crescendo of criticism reached its loudest point following the loss of Challenger during launch on 28 

January 1986. Although it was not the entire reason for the accident, the pressure to get the Shuttle schedule more in line with earlier projections throughout 1985 prompted NASA workers to accept operational 

procedures that fostered shortcuts and increased the opportunity for disaster. The accident, traumatic even 

under the best of situations, was made that much worse because Challenger’s crewmembers represented a 

cross section of the American population in terms of race, gender, geography, background, and religion. 

The explosion became one of the most significant events of the 1980s, as billions around the world saw 

the accident on television and empathized with any one or more of the crewmembers killed.45

After the Challenger accident, the Shuttle program went into a two-year hiatus while NASA worked 

to redesign the system. The Space Shuttle finally returned to flight without incident on 29 September 

1988.46 Tragedy struck again when Columbia was lost during reentry on 1 February 2003. Successful 

Shuttle missions throughout the program’s life included scientific and technological experiments, 

including the deployment of important space probes like the Magellan Venus radar mapper in 1989 

and the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, the flights of Spacelab, a dramatic three-person spacewalk in 

1992 to retrieve a satellite and bring it back to Earth for repair, and missions visiting the Russian space 

station Mir and contributing to the orbital construction of an International Space Station.47 With the 

end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, after 135 missions, the United States had no intrinsically 

national capability to reach orbit; it contracted for astronaut rides aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.

In 1984, as part of its interest in reinvigorating the space program, the Reagan administration called for 

the development of a permanently occupied space station. Although the station was first projected to cost 

$8 billion, within five years the projected costs had more than tripled and the station had become too 

expensive. NASA pared away at the station budget, and in the end the project was satisfactory to almost no 

one. In 1993, the international situation allowed NASA to negotiate a landmark decision to include Russia 

in the building of an International Space Station (ISS). By 1998, the first elements had been launched; in 

2000, the first crew went aboard. At the beginning of the 21st century, the effort involving 16 nations was 

a shadow of what had been intended. It had been caught in the backwash of another loss of a Shuttle and 

the inability to complete construction and resupply the ISS. Consistently, the ISS has proven a difficult 

issue as policy-makers have wrestled with competing political agendas without consensus.48

As this situation went unresolved, on 14 January 2004, President George W. Bush announced a vision of 

space exploration that called for humans to reach for the Moon and Mars during the next 30 years. As stated 

45 By far the best work on the Challenger accident is Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance 

at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

46 The story of the return-to-flight effort is related in John M. Logsdon, “Return to Flight: Richard H. Truly and the Recovery from the Challenger 

Accident,” in Pamela E. Mack, ed., From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners

(Washington, DC: NASA SP-4219, 1998), pp. 345–364.

47 On the Columbia accident, see Roger D. Launius, “After Columbia: The Space Shuttle Program and the Crisis in Space Access,” Astropolitics

2 (July–September 2004): 277–322.

48 A general history of space stations factual and fictional, planned and realized, is contained in Roger D. Launius, Space Stations: Base Camps 

to the Stars (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003).
23

A Breathless Survey of American Spaceflight History

at the time, the fundamental goal of this vision was to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic 

interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States would

• 

• 

• 

• 

implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system 

and beyond;

extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by 

the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;

develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to 

support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and

promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, 

security, and economic interests.

In so doing, the President called for the completion of the ISS and the retirement of the Space Shuttle 

fleet by 2010. Resources expended there would then be re-vectored toward creating the enabling technologies necessary to return to the Moon and eventually reach Mars. He also proposed a small increase 

in the NASA budget to help make this a reality. By the time of the 2008 presidential election, however, it 

had become a virtual certainty that the initiative would not be sustained in the next presidential administration. In the end, after years of lack of funding for Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration,” there was 

little reason to believe that this vision would not follow the same path as the aborted Space Exploration 

Initiative (SEI), which had been announced with great fanfare in 1989 but derailed by the early 1990s.49

A combination of technological and scientific advancement, political competition with the Soviet Union, 

and changes in popular opinion about spaceflight converged in the 1950s to affect public policy in favor 

of government space exploration. This found tangible expression in efforts of the 1950s and 1960s to 

move forward with an expansive space program and the budgets necessary to support it. After that initial 

rise of effort, however, space exploration reached the equilibrium in the 1970s that it has sustained 

through the present. The American public is committed to a measured program that includes a modest 

level of human and robotic missions, Earth science activities, and technology development efforts. A 

longstanding fascination with discovery and investigation has nourished much of the interest by the 

peoples of the United States in spaceflight. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, however, 

support for human space exploration has long been soft and there are no sustained efforts to return to 

the Moon or to go to Mars.

49 Frank Sietzen, Jr., and Keith L. Cowing, New Moon Rising: The Making of the Bush Space Vision (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2004); 

Craig Cornelius, “Science in the National Vision for Space Exploration: Objectives and Constituencies of the ‘Discovery-Driven’ Paradigm,” 

Space Policy 21 (February 2005): 41–48; Wendell Mendell, “The Vision for Human Spaceflight,” Space Policy 21 (February 2005): 7–10.
24

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Commercial Activities in Space

While much of the history of the Space Age is dominated by national actors, there has been, almost 

from the beginning, a significant private-sector involvement as well. The first commercial activities in 

space resulted from the initiatives of the telecommunications industry to extend operations beyond the 

atmosphere almost with the beginning of the Space Age. Indeed, satellite communication was the only 

truly commercial space technology to be developed in the first decade or so after Sputnik. Perhaps the 

first person to evaluate the technical and financial aspects of satellite communications was John R. Pierce 

of AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories, who in the mid-1950s outlined the utility of a communications 

“mirror” in space, estimating that such a satellite would be worth a billion dollars.50

The idea thrilled many space advocates, and with the dawning of the Space Age, the United States moved 

to exploit this opportunity. The first attempt was a NASA test program call Echo, which called for the 

orbiting of a 100-foot inflatable satellite covered with reflective material that scientists could bounce a 

radio beam off. Difficulties abounded in trying to launch an inflatable, passive satellite, but tests were 

finally successful on 12 August 1960.51

At the same time, Bell Telephone Laboratories pursued active-repeater communications satellites, the 

first of which was the Telstar project. In 1962, NASA contracted to launch the Bell-owned and -operated 

Telstar satellite, the first orbital device to relay television and telephone signals. In the years that followed, 

space-based telecommunications grew into a multibillion-dollar industry. Several generations of Telstars, 

as well as other types of communications satellites in Earth orbit, helped to make real-time global telecommunications a reality. By 1964, a range of satellites were operating—two AT&T Telstars, two Relays, and 

two Syncoms—and the global village promised by theorists was in the process of becoming. Moreover, the 

technological know-how for this first of all commercial activity in space had been transferred to companies 

other than AT&T. At the same time, live television broadcasts from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics provided 

to the public a glimpse of the dawning age of instantaneous global telecommunications.52

Seeing the enormous commercial potential of space-based communications, the U.S. Congress passed the 

Communications Satellite Act of 1962, creating a Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), 

with ownership divided 50-50 between the general public and the telecommunications corporations 

to manage global satellite communications for the United States. Near the same time, U.S. leaders 

recognized the possibility of competition and participated in the establishment of the International 

Telecommunication Satellite Consortium (INTELSAT), with COMSAT as the U.S. manager, to pro50 James Schwoch, Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1949–69 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 140–141; “A Down-to-Earth 

Look at Space Communications,” Bell Telephone Magazine 41/1 (spring 1962): 54; John R. Pierce, “Orbital Radio Relays,” Jet Propulsion, April 

1955, p. 44; J. R. Pierce, The Beginnings of Satellite Communications (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1968), pp. 9–12.

51 Donald C. Elder, Out from Behind the Eight-Ball: A History of Project Echo (San Diego, CA: Univelt, Inc., American Astronautical Society [AAS] 

History Series, Volume 16, 1995).

52 David J. Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002); Helen 

Gavaghan, Something New Under the Sun: Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age (New York: Copernicus Books, 1998); Andrew J. 

Butrica, ed., Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4217, 1997).
25

Commercial Activities in Space

vide an international communications satellite system. Founded by 19 nations, with eventual membership of well over a hundred, it was initially very much an American organization, with the United 

States controlling 61 percent of the voting authority and all the technology. This changed over time. 

INTELSAT oversaw the development of INTELSAT 1 in 1965, the first piece of the operational global 

communications satellite network. With this satellite system in orbit, the world became a far different 

place. Within a few years, telephone circuits increased from five hundred to thousands and live television coverage of events anywhere in the world became commonplace. On 6 April 1965, COMSAT’s 

first satellite, Early Bird, was launched from Cape Canaveral.53

Although the initial launch vehicles and satellites were American, other countries had been involved 

from the beginning. By the time Early Bird was launched, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, 

Brazil, and Japan had established communications ground stations. From a few hundred telephone 

circuits and a handful of members in 1965, the INTELSAT system grew to embrace more members 

than the United Nations and to possess the technical capability to provide millions of telephone circuits. 

Global satellite communications had begun. Other companies expanded this system thereafter. Cost to 

carriers per circuit, and to individual customers, declined dramatically as the system matured. By the 

end of the century, orbiting satellites were generating billions of dollars annually in sales of products and 

services and had transformed global communication by facilitating commercial broadcasting, business 

and scientific exchanges, and telephone and Internet communication among individuals worldwide.54

But the core question to be considered in the context of space-based global telecommunications is 

whether or not this is more of a governmental activity than anything else. While AT&T developed the 

first communications satellite, the U.S. government launched it on a reconditioned military missile. 

While AT&T sought an open system for business, the government moved to regulate and control it. 

International space telecommunications followed a similar close relationship between government and 

industry. Accordingly, should satellite communications be viewed as a public trust or one that was a 

free-market arena? How should such activities, whatever the specific industry, be administered? These 

were large questions in modern American history, economics, and society. Additionally, the manner in 

which space enterprises were stimulated—investment, business models, returns on investment, and the 

like—has been a uniquely important topic for some time, but few have looked at how historical case 

studies might inform future efforts to stimulate space commerce. The story of the COMSAT Corp. is a 

case study of how government and the private sector undertook the development of what has become 

a remarkably lucrative space business. With the rise of a range of private-sector entrepreneurial firms 

interested in pursuing space commerce in the last two decades, the process whereby those might be 

incubated, fostered, and expanded comes to the fore as important public policy concerns as never before 

in the history of the Space Age.

53 Burton I. Edelson, “Global Satellite Communications,” Scientific American (February 1977): 58–73; Burton I. Edelson and Louis Pollack, 

“Satellite Communications,” Science (18 March 1977): 1125–1133; John McDonald, “The Comsat Compromise Starts as Revolution,” 

Fortune (October 1965): 128–131, 202–212.

54 John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan, and Ashok Maharaj, NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space (New York: Palgrave 

Macmillan, 2013), chapter 5; John M. Logsdon, “The Development of International Space Cooperation,” in John M. Logsdon, gen. ed., Exploring 

the Unknown: Selected Documents in the Evolution of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume II (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407, 1996), pp. 7–10.
26

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

At sum, the story of satellite telecommunications is one of a mixed relationship. The government took 

the lion’s share of the risk and managed carefully the development and fielding of the technology during the first 25 years of the Space Age. Only with changes in the structure of government involvement 

in the 1970s did the market loosen and the satellite communication industry achieve a form of takeoff, 

more than an order of magnitude of growth in less than a decade and significant expansion continuing 

beyond. Now, in the 21st century, COMSAT operators are to be found in almost every nation. The 

1990s especially saw the rise of many Asian and African satellite operators, matching the growth seen 

in North America and western Europe in earlier decades. Actual hardware manufacture, however, has 

remained ensconced in the United States and Europe. Japan, India, China, and Russia have also built 

communications satellites, but their commercial viability is still undetermined.

From a few hundred telephone circuits and a handful of operators in the 1960s, this business has grown 

to a present-day system with millions of telephone circuits while costs to users have decreased immeasurably. Likewise, media telecommunications have been transformed through this capability. Western 

Union’s Westar I, the first U.S. domestic communications satellite, was launched on 13 April 1974. As 

historian David Whalen has noted:

In December of the following year RCA launched its own satellite, SATCOM F-1. In 

early 1976 AT&T and COMSAT launched the first of the COMSTAR series. These 

satellites were used for voice and data, but very quickly television became a major user. 

By the end of 1976 there were 120 transponders available over the U.S., each capable of 

providing 1,500 telephone channels or one TV channel. Very quickly the “movie channels” and “super stations” were available to most Americans. The dramatic growth in cable 

TV would not have been possible without an inexpensive method of distributing video.55

Into the 21st century, television still dominated domestic satellite communications, but data use has 

grown tremendously with the advent of new technologies making the transfer of data over such systems 

as the Internet possible.

A new age of space entrepreneurship in the United States really began with a set of decisions in the 1970s 

aimed at advancing commercial space activities. While economic growth and development, as well as 

international competitiveness, had long been goals of national space policy during the 1960s (with the 

emphasis on the space race), little had been accomplished to open space to commercial activities. This 

was reflected in a set of relatively narrow legislative and executive branch initiatives outlined in various 

laws and policy directives. Direct federal investment in space research and development (R&D) and technology served as the principal means of stimulating the commercial space community during that era.

For example, a 1977 NASA-funded study by the Hudson Institute made 100-year projections of space 

activities. This study was very unusual for NASA. It developed several scenarios detailing possible long55 Roger D. Launius, Erik M. Conway, Andrew K. Johnston, Zse Chien Wang, Matthew H. Hersch, Deganit Paikowsky, David J. Whalen, Eric Toldi, 

Kerrie Dougherty, Peter L. Hayes, Jennifer Levasseur, Ralph L. McNutt, Jr., and Brent Sherwood, “Spaceflight: The Development of Science, 

Surveillance, and Commerce in Space,” Proceedings of the IEEE 100 (13 May 2012): 1785–1818.
27

Commercial Activities in Space

term trends in space R&D, technology, defense, environmental, and economic development. Scenarios 

include both pessimistic and optimistic rates of growth and opportunities in space. Space was viewed 

as a resource and a place for economic enterprise. The study did not detail economic benefits but did 

make economic issues central to long-term space financing, exploration, and development. This is one 

of the first studies sponsored by NASA that gave equal weight to economic and technological trends 

and changes. The authors recognized that the purpose of the study was both to provide NASA with 

qualitative projections of the future for planning and public relations purposes and to provide very broad 

guidelines to answer questions about the value and long-term use of space.56

With the arrival of the Reagan administration in 1981, efforts to expand commercial activities in space 

became a much higher priority. These efforts yielded remarkable results. Accordingly, NASA undertook an 

in-depth legal and policy paper detailing the options available to NASA for stimulating commercial investments and opportunities. This study argued for a new way of thinking at NASA; as the authors noted, the 

Agency needed to consider commercial ventures rather than R&D for itself. It explicitly called for NASA 

to “more effectively encourage and facilitate private sector involvement and investment in civil space and 

space-related activities.” To that end, “NASA will redirect a portion of its space research and development 

activities to assure that its R&D program supports the research, development and demonstration of space 

technologies with commercial application”57 (emphasis in original). The study also recommended that 

NASA “explore new opportunities for the application of space technology and [improve] demonstrated 

technologies to achieve the extensive operational capabilities available today.”58 It sought to emphasize 

cost-sharing arrangements with NASA conducting R&D and the private sector undertaking operational 

activities. These efforts yielded remarkable results beginning in the 1990s (see figure 4).

At the behest of the White House, NASA created an Office of Technology Transfer to oversee this effort, 

which had some early successes, especially as NASA worked to alter the regulatory environment and 

incentivize investment. As Craig L. Fuller, a White House staffer for the Cabinet Council on Commerce 

and Trade, commented:

The entrance of free enterprise into space for commercial activities conforms with 

national traditions. Private initiative has been the foundation of our nation’s development and progress from its beginning. Even during the earliest explorations of the North 

American continent, explorers and pioneers were followed by traders and craftsmen 

who came to serve new settlements. Now, industrial entrepreneurs are following our 

astronauts into the new realms. Commercial expertise will perhaps do for space what 

the earliest American settlers did for our continent. They turned forbidding regions into 

prosperous and hospitable inhabited areas.59

56 William M. Brown and Herman Kahn, “Long-Term Prospects for Developments in Space (A Scenario Approach),” Hudson Institute, Inc., 30 

October 1977, NASW-2924, pp. 257–274, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

57 “Space Commercialization Meeting,” memo and agenda from the White House concerning a meeting on 3 August 1983.

58 Ibid.

59 Craig L. Fuller, “Memorandum for the Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade,” 10 April 1984, pp. 4–5, Space Policy Institute, George 

Washington University, Washington, DC.
28

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Figure 4

Worldwide Commercial Space Revenues

Source: Calculated from NASA, Aerospace Industry Association, and Facts on File data. Courtesy Roger D. Launius, Howard E. McCurdy, 

and Thomas Matula, “Historical Analogies for Space Commercialization,” Executive Lunar Commerce Roundtable, Cox School of Business, 

Maguire Energy Institute, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, 24 June 2005.

Commercial space policy initiatives were aided by projections that space commerce could exceed $60 

billion a year within 15 years. While highly controversial because of its optimism, this was still an influential study that sparked investment. Later revisions to the study offered more detail as well as more 

nuance to the analysis but still forecast a large rise in space commercial markets.60

In the last year of the Reagan administration, the Presidential Directive on National Space Policy offered, 

for the first time, a major section on commercial space efforts, reflecting positive commercial efforts in the 

communications satellite and launch vehicle sectors. The National Space Policy prohibited NASA from 

operating an expendable launch vehicle program and encouraged the government to purchase commercial 

launch services. It also called for open private space activities in microgravity, remote sensing, and other 

space ventures where there was potential for commerce.61 The Bush administration issued its Commercial 

60 New York Times, 24 June 1988, Section 3, p. 1; The Center for Space Policy, Inc., “Commercial Space Industry in the Year 2000, A Market 

Forecast,” CSP Associates, Cambridge, MA, June 1985.

61 Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “The President’s Space Policy and Commercial Space Initiative To Begin the Next Century,” 

11 February 1988, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
29

Commercial Activities in Space

Space Policy Guidelines in 1991, which expanded on some of these same themes and emphasized the 

stimulation of private investment in launch, satellite, and support activities. The Guidelines explicitly 

recognized the use of space for commercial purposes and directed government agencies to procure every 

space technology available on the open market from private firms. It also mandated that NASA and other 

agencies using space avoid practices that might be viewed as deterring commercial space activities.62

The Clinton administration’s 1996 Presidential Space Directive pushed these practices even further into 

the mainstream of national economic policy and international competitiveness. It explicitly stated: “To 

stimulate private sector investment, ownership, and operation of space assets, the U.S. Government 

will facilitate stable and predictable U.S. commercial sector access to appropriate U.S. Government 

space-related hardware, facilities and data.” A continuation and extension of earlier policies going back 

to the Reagan administration, this directive was also the first to specifically detail the process by which 

the government might stimulate economic and business activity from space programs. It reflected the 

end of the Cold War, the shrinking federal discretionary budget, the maturity of some parts of the space 

program, and international competitive pressures.63

Collectively, this policy milieu stimulated some investment in such arenas as space launch and satellite 

development and operation. The communications satellite effort led the parade of investment—especially Iridium Satellite LLC, Globalstar, and DirecTV—but remote sensing, navigation, and other 

applications satellites followed. Such launchers as Conestoga and Orbital Sciences’ Pegasus in the 1980s 

sought to alter the nature of space access. The only truly successful launch provider to come out of this 

period of ferment, however, was Orbital Sciences.64

Beginning in the mid-1990s, several startup companies were organized to develop new vehicles in response to 

the development of an expansive market for space access. Indeed, 1996 marked something of a milestone in 

the history of space access. In that year, worldwide commercial revenues in space for the first time surpassed 

all governmental spending on space, totaling some $77 billion. This growth continued in 1997, with 75 

commercial payloads lofted into orbit and approximately 75 more military and scientific satellites launched. 

This represented a threefold increase over the number the year before. Market surveys for the period thereafter 

suggested that commercial launches would multiply for at least the next several years; one estimate held that 

1,200 telecommunications satellites would be launched between 1998 and 2007.65 In that context, many 

space launch advocates believed that the market had matured sufficiently that government investment in 

launch vehicle development was no longer necessary. Instead, they asked that the federal government simply 

“get out of the way” and allow the private sector to pursue development free from bureaucratic controls.66

62 National Space Policy Directive 3, “U.S. Commercial Space Policy Guidelines,” White House, 12 February 1991, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

63 Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “National Space Policy, Fact Sheet,” 19 September 1996, NASA Historical Reference Collection.

64 Roger D. Launius, “Between a Rocket and a Hard Place: The Challenge of Space Access,” in W. Henry Lambright, ed., Space Policy in the 

21st Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 15–54.

65 Tim Beardsley, “The Way To Go in Space,” Scientific American (March 1999, special issue on “The Future of Space Exploration”).

66 Craig R. Reed, “Factors Affecting U.S. Commercial Space Launch Industry Competitiveness,” Business and Economic History 27 (fall 1998): 

222–236; Andrew J. Butrica, “Commercial Spaceports: Hitching Your Wagon to a VentureStar,” Space Times: Magazine of the American 

Astronautical Society 37 (September/October 2000): 5–10.
30

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

This modern “gold rush” sparked several new corporations to muscle their ways into the tight conglomerate of launch vehicle companies. One of the farthest along and best financed of this new breed is 

Kistler Aerospace Corporation, based in Kirkland, Washington. Seeking low-cost access to space, Kistler 

employed Russian-built engines as a centerpiece of its K-1 reusable launcher. It was intended to deliver 

up to 10,000 pounds to orbit, depending on inclination. The first stage of this vehicle would fly back to 

the launch site; the second would orbit Earth before returning. Both stages would descend by parachute 

and land on inflatable air bags. Pioneer, Inc., has also been developing the Pathfinder rocketplane, an 

aerial propellant transfer spaceplane that accommodates a crew of two and can deliver a payload of 5,000 

pounds to LEO. Kelly Space and Technology, Inc., has been at work on its Astroliner, a reusable spaceplane that can deliver 11,000 pounds to LEO for a cost of $2,000 per pound. Among these companies, 

the most interesting concept, albeit one that many people believe is doomed to failure, is the Roton by 

the Rotary Rocket Company. Roton was intended as a fully reusable, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) space 

vehicle designed to transport up to 7,000 pounds to and from LEO. Roton planned to enter commercial 

service in the year 2000 with a target price per flight of $7 million ($1,000 per pound).67

None of the myriad private efforts had yielded an operational space launcher by 2000. With the failure 

of the Iridium Corporation in spring 2000, a new satellite communications system that many believed 

would be the vanguard of a rapidly expanding space launch market, investment for space enterprises 

became even scarcer.68 In some measure because of this, although they had previously eschewed government investment and the corresponding red tape, many of these startups began seeking capital from 

NASA and the military to support their efforts. Accordingly, it seemed that as the 21st century began, 

there was still a pressing need for substantial government investment in space launch R&D.

This became all the more significant with the 1 February 2003 loss of Space Shuttle Columbia and the 

recommendation to replace the Space Shuttle with another human-rated launcher. President George W. 

Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration, challenging NASA to move beyond low-Earth orbit. 

What NASA came up with was the Constellation program, a presumed reuse of much of the existing 

Space Shuttle technology to build a new Ares I crew launch vehicle consisting of a Space Shuttle solid 

rocket booster as a first stage and an external tank as the beginning point for a second stage. A crewed 

space capsule, Orion, was to sit atop this system. A proposed second rocket, the Ares V cargo launch 

vehicle, would provide the heavy lift capability necessary to journey back to the Moon or to go beyond. 

Ares I was intended to carry a crew of up to six astronauts to low-Earth orbit in the Orion spacecraft, 

with the capability for expanding its use to send four astronauts to the Moon. Ares V was intended to 

serve as the Agency’s primary vehicle for the delivery of large-scale hardware and cargo supporting an 

expansive space exploration agenda.69

67 Trevor C. Sorensen, AlliedSignal Technical Services Corp., “From the Earth to the Stars: The Future of Space Flight,” presentation at the 

University of Kansas, 7 May 1999; Andrew J. Butrica, “The Commercial Launch Industry, Reusable Space Vehicles, and Technological 

Change,” Business and Economic History 27 (fall 1998): 212–221.

68 Geoffrey V. Hughes, “The Iridium Effect,” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 39 (March/April 2000): 23.

69 White House Press Release, “Fact Sheet: A Renewed Spirit of Discovery,” 14 January 2004, available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/

news/releases/2004/01/20040114-1.html, accessed 4 April 2004.
31

Commercial Activities in Space

Such was not the case when the Constellation Program was ended by President Barack Obama’s administration because of cost and technical challenges in 2010. In a move that could be described by the 

great Monty Python line—“and now for something completely different”—President Obama’s decision 

turned toward greater reliance on commercial space launch than ever before.70 The new president convened a blue-ribbon panel—chaired by Norm Augustine, the former chief executive officer of Lockheed 

Martin and a longstanding space guru—which recommended in the fall of 2009 the harnessing of 

private-sector, especially entrepreneurial, firms in supporting Earth orbital operations instead of relying on Constellation. Augustine’s report concluded: “Under current conditions, the gap in U.S. ability 

to launch astronauts into space will stretch to at least seven years. The Committee did not identify any 

credible approach employing new capabilities that could shorten the gap to less than six years.” This 

would be true even with increased funding for NASA’s program.71

The panel also noted that an increase of $3 billion per year for fiscal years 2010 to 2014 could return 

Constellation to health. Interestingly, there was no apparent enthusiasm in any corner of the political 

world for this type of expansion of the NASA budget. It was never considered as a serious solution to 

the Constellation Program’s misfortunes on either side of the political spectrum. Some might suggest 

that this was because of the national debate on the deficit, which was ballooning exponentially at the 

time by more than one and a half trillion dollars, and everyone was looking for places to reduce the size 

of government. Such a hesitancy to increase funding for Constellation—something that had had to be 

done for the Space Shuttle Program by the Carter administration in the latter 1970s, when overruns 

had mired down the program and the promised 1978 first-flight date had been missed—suggested that 

something else might have been at work. Could it be that the national commitment to human spaceflight 

had waned to the extent that attrition seemed a likely way of ending it?

Regardless, the Augustine panel offered another option beyond that $15 billion increase for the existing 

Constellation Program, and this proved, ultimately, an attractive solution for political leaders of many 

stripes. “As we move from the complex, reusable Shuttle back to a simpler, smaller capsule, it is appropriate to consider turning this transport service over to the commercial sector,” the panel concluded. “This 

approach is not without technical and programmatic risks, but it creates the possibility of lower operating costs for the system and potentially accelerates the availability of U.S. access to low-Earth orbit by 

about a year, to 2016. If this option is chosen, the Committee suggests establishing a new competition 

for this service, in which both large and small companies could participate.”72

70 Major analyses of this transformation may be found in Marcia S. Smith, “President Obama’s National Space Policy: A Change in Tone and a Focus 

on Space Sustainability,” Space Policy 27 (February 2011): 20–23; John M. Logsdon, “Change and Continuity in U.S. Space Policy,” Space Policy

27 (February 2011): 1–2; Gérard Brachet and Xavier Pasco, “The 2010 U.S. Space Policy: A View from Europe,” Space Policy 27 (May 2011): 

11–14; Yasuhito Fukushima, “An Asian Perspective on the New U.S. Space Policy: The Emphasis on International Cooperation and Its Relevance 

to Asia,” Space Policy 27 (May 2011): 3–6; Sergey Avdeyev, Jean-Francois Clervoy, Jean-Marc Comtois, Takao Doi, Jeffrey Hoffman, Mamoru 

Mohri, and Gerhard Thiele, “Human Space Exploration—A Global Trans-Cultural Quest,” Space Policy 27 (May 2011): 24–26.

71 Augustine Panel, “Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation,” 23 October 2009, available online at http://www.nasa.

gov/pdf/396093main_HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf, accessed 9 June 2011.

72 Ibid.
32

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

The response to this report from the space community was immediate. Some administration officials urged that the President cancel Constellation; others rallied to its defense. Edward Crawley, a 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and a member of the Augustine panel, remarked that 

Ares I was suffering from technical issues that could only be overcome with more money and time. “It 

was a wise choice at the time,” said Crawley, when asked about originating the program in 2005. “But 

times have changed...the budgetary environment is much tighter, and the understanding of the cost 

and schedule to develop the Ares I has matured.”73

Based on these responses, President Obama proposed on 1 February 2010 (with more details added in 

a presidential speech on 15 April) a new path for future U.S. human spaceflight efforts. Central to this 

would be the termination of Constellation as a single entity; the continuation of certain technology 

developments, such as the Orion space capsule; renewed commitment to operations on the International 

Space Station until at least 2020; and the fostering of private-sector solutions to human spaceflight 

operations in LEO. Since this declaration, numerous high-profile spaceflight advocates have weighed 

in on both sides. In April 2010, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11), Gene Cernan (Apollo 

17), and Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and Apollo 13) sent the President a letter warning that the proposed 

change to human spaceflight “destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature.”74

Proponents of the new strategy, among them Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, countered that the 

President’s approach would return NASA to its roots as a research and development organization, while 

private firms operate space systems. Turning LEO over to commercial entities could then empower 

NASA to focus on deep space exploration, perhaps eventually sending humans to Mars or elsewhere.75

Although it might have been an ideal time to discuss the prestige trap and the overarching rationale 

for human spaceflight, the debate has largely been over maintaining a traditional approach to human 

spaceflight with NASA dominating the effort, owning the vehicles, and operating them through contractors. That was the method whereby America went to the Moon; it has proven successful over 50 years 

of human space exploration. Then there are those from the “new space” world that emphasize allowing 

private-sector firms to seize the initiative and pursue entrepreneurial approaches to human spaceflight. 

Advocates of the more traditional approach believe that the other side will sacrifice safety; advocates of 

the entrepreneurial approach criticize the forces of tradition by pointing out their large, over-budget, 

and under-achieving space efforts.

While these concerns are ever-present in the current U.S. debate over the future of human transportation 

into space, the place of commercial activities in this arena seems assured. There does not look to be any consensus in favor of undertaking a traditional approach to space access, one that NASA dominates both from 

a market standpoint and an ownership imperative. As space policy analyst Stewart Money commented:

73 Amy Klamper, “NASA in Limbo as Augustine Panel Issues Final Report,” Space News, 23 October 2009, available online at http://www.

spacenews.com/article/nasa-limbo-augustine-panel-issues-final-report, accessed 29 April 2014.

74 Michael Sheridan, “Neil Armstrong, James Lovell Call Obama’s Plans for Space Exploration, NASA, ‘Misguided’,” New York Daily News, 14 April 

2010.

75 Stephanie Condon, “Neil Armstrong vs. Buzz Aldrin Over Obama’s Space Plans,” CBS News, available online at http://www.cbsnews.com/

news/neil-armstrong-vs-buzz-aldrin-over-obamas-space-plans/, accessed 29 April 2014.
33

Commercial Activities in Space

While the market for publically-funded commercial crew transport to ISS is clearly limited, it is becoming increasingly certain. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s emphatic 

declaration in support of commercial crew may well signify a bellwether date in space history.... The most significant implication may be that other opportunities for leveraging the 

spacecraft initially offered for ISS cargo and crew duties can begin to emerge in earnest.... 

The fact that several of the proposed crew transport craft are promoted as being able to 

launch on more than one rocket indicates an encouraging shift in the way some aerospace 

companies are approaching the marketplace. It is something more akin to an aircraft 

manufacturer’s role, an analogy Boeing was happy to make in the same announcement.76

As Money concluded: “Taken together, these developments, along with others, offer the tantalizing possibility of being the opening act in a new era of both public and private spaceflight to low-Earth orbit.”77

Because of this directive from the Obama administration, NASA is pursuing efforts to replace the Space 

Shuttle through a multiphase space technology development program known as Commercial Crew 

Development (CCDev). Intended to stimulate development of privately operated crew vehicles that 

travel to LEO, its first phase offered a token sum of $50 million during 2010 to stimulate five American 

companies to undertake research and development of new human spaceflight concepts and technologies. 

In its second phase, contracts of $269 million were awarded to four firms in April 2011; the objective 

was to move toward the establishment of one or more orbital spaceflight capabilities on which NASA 

could purchase cargo and eventually crew space.78 Additional phases are also being pursued, expanding 

the effort and the number of firms involved. The Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap, 

formerly CCDev 3) added to this effort in mid-2012 with a proposed set of Space Act Agreements 

because of Congressional funding reductions to the program for FY 2012.79

The awardees were all American firms, and their approaches ranged from lifting body to capsule spacecraft. 

Those companies—Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), 

and Boeing, with Paragon Space Development Corporation receiving some funding to develop an environmental control and life support system (ECLSS)—are envisioned as a vanguard that will be able to 

usher in a new era of innovative human spaceflight opportunities. As announced by Ed Mango, NASA’s 

Commercial Crew Program manager: “The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space 

76 Stewart Money, “Taking the Initiative: SLI and the Next Generation,” Space Review, available online at http://www.thespacereview.com/

article/1784/1, accessed 21 March 2011.

77 Ibid.

78 NASA Press Release 10-277, “NASA Seeks More Proposals on Commercial Crew Development,” 25 October 2010, available online at http://

www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/oct/HQ_10-277_CCDev.html, accessed 9 June 2011.

79 Frank Morring, Jr., “NASA Shifts CCDev Back to Space Act Procurement,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 15 December 2011, available 

online by subscription at http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_12_15_2011_p0-406939.xml, accessed 16 May 

2012; NASA Office of Procurement, “Announcement NASA-CCiCap, Commercial Crew Integrated Capability,” 7 February 2012, available 

in the NASA Historical Reference Collection; NASA, “Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, Announcement No. NASA-CCiCap,” February 

2012, available in the NASA Historical Research Collection.
34

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

is going to be a U.S. commercial provider. The partnerships NASA is forming with industry will support 

the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit.”80

This ferment of ideas and broad set of actions stimulated through the CCDev program suggest that the 

prestige trap of human spaceflight remains very much a part of the current human space exploration 

agenda at NASA. As the recent policy debate has illuminated, human spaceflight remains the priority 

despite compelling arguments against its continued centrality. The unsettled nature of the debate, which 

has now been going on for more than two years, may be interpreted as a signal that the prestige trap so 

long ago accepted as the raison d’être of NASA may be waning. Every serious observer of space policy 

has stated that he or she has never seen such a fight over next directions for NASA. While few credible 

commentators have challenged the endeavor altogether, a question to be considered is whether or not 

the prestige trap has finally been sprung and made it impossible to move forward with a shared vision 

for the future of humans in space. Instead, there is a cacophony of competing agendas being expressed, 

and an officially sanctioned way forward seeks to remove even the level of government support provided for the Space Shuttle Program from human space operations for the indefinite future. Further 

human spaceflight would rise or fall based on the ingenuity of its advocates to fashion activities that 

could become commercially self-supporting. One senior analyst recently commented that in 40 years 

of watching space policy, he has not seen such an unsettled situation.81

Without question, space commercialization has followed a path of struggle and diversion. Regardless, it has 

also followed a path forward—perhaps two steps forward, one step backwards, and three steps sideways with 

every development—but the change has been profound over the course of the history of the Space Age.

This brings to the fore the central element of this study, the manner in which historical analogs from 

the American past may inform current and future commercial activities in space.

80 Chris Bergin, “Four Companies Win Big Money via NASA’s CCDEV-2 Awards,” 18 April 2011, available online at http://www.nasaspaceflight.

com/2011/04/four-companies-win-nasas-ccdev-2-awards/, accessed 9 June 2011.

81 John M. Logsdon, “A New U.S. Approach to Human Spaceflight?” Space Policy 27 (February 2011): 15–19.
35

The Use and Abuse of Historical Analogs

The Use and Abuse of Historical Analogs

It is a truism that every person in every organization ever created uses history to make decisions on 

a daily basis. This is essentially accomplished through the use of analogy, suggesting that some issue 

under current scrutiny is like, may be compared to, or otherwise is related to some historical example. 

Understanding what happened in those past, analogous instances, therefore, serves a valuable purpose 

in considering what to do in the present. The difficulties of analogs, however, are that they are routinely 

poorly applied to considerations of policies, priorities, and decision-making that might effectively be 

informed by careful analog studies. Unfortunately, most uses of historical understanding are implicit, 

relying on personal anecdotes and employing faulty logic in the comparison. We have certainly seen 

this in the context of issues concerning the exploration of the space frontier since virtually the beginning of the Space Age. These range from analogs comparing modern cruise ship vacations and future 

space tourism to using the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1960s as 

an analog to predict a similar space race between the United States and China.

Central to the usefulness of this case study is the role of analogs in understanding current and future events. 

There is a long history of the use and abuse of analogs, offering perspectives on how they might be effectively 

employed in analysis of current challenges.82 This study will employ analog analysis to a set of terrestrial 

colonization stories to reach broad conclusions that may inform future efforts. I intend to structure this 

set of case studies along similar lines to those developed in Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May’s classic 

text, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers.

83 The methods employed were the fruit of 

several years’ worth of classes taught by the authors in the Harvard Business School. They offered a structure that called for an analysis of each analog along three dimensions: What are the similarities with the 

present situation? What are the differences? And then, what are the implications of these similarities and 

differences? This framework can be productive in analyzing innovation and strategic surprise.84

Political scientist Francis Gavin has refined this approach, laying out five key concepts that promise more 

effective historical analysis and their application to current situations. These include understanding and 

investigating the applicability of 1) vertical history, 2) horizontal history, 3) chronological proportionality, 4) unintended consequences, and 5) policy insignificance.85

82 Analogs have been a recurrent topic in the contemporary philosophy of science especially, with the work of Mary B. Hesse in 1966 beginning the 

discussion. Her Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) makes clear that analogies are integral 

to understanding scientific practice in general and scientific advancement in particular. Other important works on this subject include Paul F. A. 

Bartha, By Parallel Reasoning: The Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); D. Gentner, 

K. J. Holyoak, and B. N. Kokinov, eds., The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); K. D. Ashley, 

Modeling Legal Argument: Reasoning with Cases and Hypotheticals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990); H. Kyburg and C. M. Teng, Uncertain 

Inference (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); M. Mitchell, Analogy-Making as Perception (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).

83 Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986).

84 Some efforts along these lines have been attempted in the context of spaceflight previously. See especially Bruce Mazlish, ed., The Railroad 

and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965).

85 Francis Gavin, “Five Ways To Use History Well,” presentation at Long Now Foundation Lecture Series, San Francisco, CA, 12 July 2010, available online at http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/jul/12/five-ways-use-history-well/, accessed 6 April 2012.
36

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Vertical history focuses on understanding why events occurred in the past. This is a very standard task of historical investigation, and the best works published in the field all effectively 

present the whys of history and not just the hows.

Horizontal history explores the linkage of events across space, whether geographical, cultural, 

economic, political, or otherwise.

Chronological proportionality emphasizes the long-term consequences of events; as an example, 

understanding and applying which scraps of history concerning the Spanish experience in 

America that will be helpful in analog to the issue of space colonization. Instances universally 

hailed as significant may prove over time to be less important that initially thought.

Unintended consequences present the challenge of applying an analog initially seen as useful but 

turning out to be a negative in the long run, or vice versa.

Policy insignificance is the challenge of applying analogies without full appreciation that the 

analogs may be less useful than envisioned in the policy-making process.

These ideas, coupled with formal analog studies and historical perspectives from Neustadt and May, 

offer the methodological perspective to be applied to this current study.
37

Case Studies

Case Studies

The six historical case studies presented here investigate the manner in which the federal government—

through its broad mandate “to provide for the general welfare” of the people of the nation—fostered, 

through a range of efforts, many different initiatives that contributed to the nation’s economy, culture, 

and democratic status. Each of the six cases offers meaningful lessons in political culture and circumstances, legal precedent, methods of execution, and change over time. Many are considered positive 

stories of successful public involvement in the private sector; some offer cautionary tales of overreach 

and over-management; and some present lost opportunities that might have been more successful had 

circumstances been handled differently.

The following historical analogs inform this study:

1. The transcontinental railroad as a means of opening the American West—space transportation and the opening of cislunar space to commercial activities may be possible using related 

models to stimulate investment.

2. Support for the aerospace industry through legislation, appropriate regulation, and subsidies 

to grow a robust air transport capability—specifically exploring how best to harness these 

ideas to help foster a fully commercial space transportation industry that does not rely on 

government contracts for its profits.

3. The telephone industry’s rise as a means of enhancing communication throughout the 

nation and worldwide, with the government overreaching in seeking to regulate this activity 

as a public utility—and how this might inform decisions about the development of a space 

communication network.

4. U.S. sponsorship of Antarctic stations to establish geopolitical presence and scientific 

efforts in Antarctica, gradually becoming less inherently governmental and more private 

over time—and how this might relate to lunar base support and a gradual transition from 

government activity to public-private efforts.

5. TVA, rural electrification, Henry Clay’s American System, and other large public 

works projects—offering models for orbital, cislunar, and lunar infrastructure and 

economic development.

6. The National Park Service and preservation of scenic and cultural sites and how to balance the 

needs of preservation with development—offering lessons for fostering space tourism in suborbital, orbital, and lunar settings, an issue that has arisen specifically in the current Google 

Lunar XPRIZE and the need to ensure the integrity of landing sites on the Moon.
38

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

This study emphasizes the manner in which similar and related circumstances, priorities, economies, 

and other patterns have appeared in related instances. While much is known about the history of 

these earlier efforts in general, information about their details, especially their financing and political relations, have been largely unexplored in the context of space commercial activities. This study 

makes explicit these comparisons.

Developing the Transcontinental Railroad

In 1965, historian Bruce Mazlish edited the NASA-sponsored study The Railroad and the Space 

Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy, seeking to understand the historical record of government stimulation of private-sector investment in infrastructure for the public good. The study team 

explored several specific episodes of American railroad history. It took this as its mission: “In all of 

these studies an effort will be made to move from the impact of the railroad in the specific area under 

consideration to an analogy with the possible space impact today in similar areas.”86 The original study 

offered an outstanding overview of early American railroad history and technology, but it failed to 

present a compelling analog comparable to spaceflight. One of the essayists in the volume, Thomas 

P. Hughes, offered this insight: “Wherever and whenever nature in her non-animal manifestations 

frustrates man in the pursuit of his objectives, there exists a technological frontier.” He added that 

space exploration was a new case because it was a completely new arena of activity: “The most extreme 

result of technological frontier penetration is the creation of a man-made environment and the rendering of nature imperceptible.”87

While the result was disappointing at the time, there remain lessons to be gained in exploring the historical analog of railroad building and operation in the 19th century and benefits from applying those 

lessons to an expansion of space exploitation. While many are familiar with the promotion of American 

transcontinental railroad construction through land grants, that was far from the sum total of public 

assistance. National, state, and local governments engaged in a range of other stimulative efforts to 

facilitate railroad development. These included tax breaks, investment credits, and otherwise favorable 

decisions supporting these business interests. Public support also involved, in some instances, direct 

subsidies for a time, monopolies not only on railroad operations but also in ancillary and even tertiary 

industries, as well as changes to regulations to ease requirements for labor, safety, and other factors. 

If there is any one conclusion in this survey, it is that there is a broad range of options that have been 

pursued in the past to stimulate investment in infrastructure—in this case, railroads—that have application for future space operations.

The first issue to be considered in investigating the development of railroads in the United States is the 

close relationship between the government and the transportation industry. This predated the invention 

86 Earl P. Steveson, “Report of the CS,” Records of the Academy (American Academy of Arts and Sciences), 1963/1964, pp. 150–151, quoted 

in Jonathan Coopersmith, “Great (Unfulfilled) Expectations: To Boldly Go Where No Social Scientist Has Gone Before,” in Steven J. Dick, ed., 

Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2008-4703, 2008), p. 142.

87 Thomas P. Hughes, “A Technological Frontier: The Railway,” in Bruce Mazlish, ed., The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in 

Historical Analogy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), p. 53.
39

Case Studies

of the steam locomotive and the building of railroads, but it has been a persistent and impermeable 

aspect of the subject’s history. Government involvement might be considered positive or negative—it 

might be viewed as an intrusion on the free-enterprise economy or as a help in securing the public 

welfare—depending on perspective. According to Jeffrey R. Orenstein:

In the transportation field, especially, it started with the earliest road and canal building efforts, continued during the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 

the nineteenth century, and intensified with the temporary nationalization of railroads 

during World War I, the government promotions for emerging transportation modes, 

and the rail quasi-nationalization of the present era. Railroads, particularly, have been 

major targets of both direct and indirect interventionist public transportation policies 

for over a century and a half.88

The result of this approach to rail transportation produced both public subsidies and regulation, 

sometimes alternating between the two without apparent rationality.89 From the very beginning, the 

political economy of railroads entered into a codependent relationship with government. When held in 

creative tension, this could be a positive development, but it has not always maintained that balance.90

Prior to the 1830s, the U.S. government had waffled back and forth regarding direct construction of 

what were euphemistically titled “internal improvements,” especially roads, harbors, and canals. The 

National Road from the mid-Atlantic seaboard to Illinois—now the route of U.S. highway 40—was a 

famous example of government investment in national infrastructure. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky 

famously championed what he referred to as the “American System” to remake the nation into a modern state, and such investments in transportation systems were a direct result. When Andrew Jackson 

became President after the election of 1828, however, this philosophy met powerful opposition from 

a White House that believed in individualism and self-reliance. On 27 May 1830, Jackson vetoed the 

Maysville Road bill, which proposed a government subscription of $150,000 to a company building 

a 60-mile turnpike in Kentucky. Although the veto was partly the result of animosity toward Henry 

Clay, Jackson also described the bill as “a measure of purely local character...conferring partial instead 

of general advantages” and therefore not in the general interest of the nation.91 But Jackson went further in his farewell address in 1837, announcing that his actions had “finally overthrown...this plan 

of unconstitutional expenditure for the purpose of corrupt influence.”92

88 Jeffrey R. Orenstein, United States Railroad Policy: Uncle Sam at the Throttle (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1990), p. 1.

89 William Thoms, “Nationalization, No; Statelization, Yes,” Trains Magazine, April 1985, pp. 44–48; Roy Sampson, Martin Farris, and David 

Shrock, Domestic Transportation: Practice, Theory, and Policy (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1985, 5th ed.).

90 Orenstein, United States Railroad Policy, p. 22.

91 Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 40–42.

92 “Farewell Address of Andrew Jackson,” in Joseph L. Blau, ed., Social Theories of Jacksonian Democracy (New York: Hafner, 1947), p. 305.
40

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

That position remained national policy for several decades thereafter, although at the state and local level, considerable public money aided such construction projects. In essence, according to historian Carter Goodrich:

The national government might aid transportation in various ways which returned no 

direct income, but it must refrain from building revenue-producing public works. It was 

not to construct roads and canals on which tolls were to be collected. It was not to subscribe to the stock of improvement companies. Most certainly, it was not to undertake the 

burden and responsibility of a scientifically planned system of national improvements.93

All else, for many Jacksonian Democrats, should be left either to private enterprise or to the will of the 

local and state governments. It was those local and state authorities that spurred the first investment in 

railroad construction in the 1830s and 1840s.

The first railways in the United States emerged from a succession of experiments undertaken by dreamers and visionaries in the first part of the 19th century. They emphasized private-sector investment and 

free-market capitalism, but also predatory operations.94 Although it was a private enterprise, and the 

investors guarded their prerogatives on that score, there was always a significant public investment. 

As one scholar concluded: “Opposition of vested interests such as canals, and even farmers, and the 

difficulties of raising venture capital, on the one hand, coupled with the desire of many localities for 

improved transportation, on the other, led a number of states to embark upon railroad construction.”95

The first railroad to use a steam engine, the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, was 

chartered 19 December 1827 and began operations in downtown Charleston in February 1829 for 

hauling cotton bales. On 1 April 1830, a mile of double-tracked railroad entered into operation, 

and within three years, it had been extended to Hamburg, South Carolina, a distance of 136 miles 

from Charleston.96 Investors in the railway saw an immediate market, bringing cotton from midstate 

plantations to Charleston for shipment to textile makers elsewhere. Even so, they were unable to 

compete in the free market with canals already providing this service.

Accordingly, they sought and received support from the state to ensure solvency. This took a variety 

of forms: 1) direct South Carolina appropriations to the company, making the state an investor in the 

railway; 2) waivers of a portion of the state’s tariff on exports; 3) contracts to carry the state’s mail; 

4) state endorsement and backing of corporate bonds that ensured that they could be sold for face 

value; and 5) U.S. government indirect support for surveying and laying out the railroad because of 

93 Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, p. 43.

94 Robert Sobel, The Fallen Colossus (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1977), chapters 1 and 5; J. Daughen and P. Benzen, The Wreck of Penn Central

(Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971); Richard Saunders, The Railroad Mergers and the Coming of Conrail (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978).

95 Dudley F. Pegrum, Transportation: Economics and Public Policy (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1963), p. 52.

96 Association of American Railroads, American Railroads: Their Growth and Development (Washington, DC: Association of American Railroads, 

1956), pp. 5–6; Pegrum, Transportation, pp. 51–52; Samuel M. Derrick, Centennial History of South Carolina Railroad (Columbia, SC: State 

Publishing Company, 1933).
41

Case Studies

its use as a transportation means for military purposes.97 Even so, debt and bankruptcy forced the 

original railroad company to reorganize and restructure in the 1840s. As one scholar concluded: “Some 

of the aid was in the form of a tariff reduction on iron, of banking privileges, of tax abatements, of 

grants of parcels of land by right of way, and of construction. State and local aid was more generally 

in stock subscription, donation of state bonds, loans, and endorsement of railroad bonds.”98

The boom in railroad construction throughout the United States took place during the remainder of 

the antebellum period, also with considerable government stimulation of the industry. This took the 

form of state and local tax relief, project endorsement, public investment, and outright granting of subsidies. During the period before the Civil War, the states of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, 

Virginia, and Georgia all built railroads as public works. In other states—notably Massachusetts, 

North Carolina, and Missouri—railroads became public commodities when the state took ownership 

of bankrupt lines. Most of these turned out poorly, and the states divested themselves of ownership 

by the time of the Civil War.99

Local governments also directly supported railroad construction, especially when the Panic of 1837 sucked 

considerable investment capital out of the financial system. A good case study of this direct support may be 

found in the rivalry of Troy and Albany, New York, who both wanted control of shipment between New 

York and the Midwest. The Erie Canal of 20 years earlier had been a boon to Albany, but Troy sponsored 

the building of the Schenectady and Troy Railroad at a cost of $700,000. After it was completed in 1842, 

the city operated it as a municipal activity and began to gain market share from the Erie Canal. Not to be 

outdone, the city fathers in Albany supported the construction of the Mohawk and Hudson Line with a 

$250,000 investment. Neither proved successful over the long run, and both were acquired by the New York 

Central Railroad in the 1850s. Overall, more than $1.2 million—some $5 billion in 2010 dollars—was 

invested in railroads by local and state governments in New York between 1837 and 1860.100

Increasingly, as the century progressed, the federal government also scratched the railroad building itch. 

This came largely because of the rising realization that a transcontinental railroad would become necessary 

in the coming decades. In most instances, government investment took the form of direct land grants to 

railroad companies. The first of these came when the U.S. government granted land to the state of Illinois 

in 1850 and it, in turn, granted it to the Illinois Central Railroad. This came as a result of the Land Grant 

Act of 1850, which provided 3.75 million acres of land to the states to support railroad projects. By 1857, 

21 million acres of public lands had been transferred to railroads in the Mississippi River valley. Government 

land grants quickly followed along the same lines to the states of Mississippi and Alabama.101 Regardless 

of these government investments, many of the efforts went bankrupt. “The belief that the mere presence 

97 Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), pp. 132–220.

98 Kent T. Healy, The Economics of Transportation in America: The Dynamic Forces in Development, Organization, Functioning and Regulation

(New York: Ronald Press Company, 1940), p. 105.

99 Pegrum, Transportation, p. 54.

100 Harry H. Pierce, Railroads of New York: A Study of Government Aid, 1826–1875 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 

116–118, 178–192; Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, p. 58–62.

101 K. Austin Kerr, “Railroad Policy,” in Julian E. Zelizer, ed., The American Congress: The Building of Democracy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 288.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

of the Illinois Central would bring prosperity to the state, or that the railroad would actively bring it 

about,” historian Robert L. Brandfon concluded, “was an illusion.”102

This legislation pioneered a standard approach that the federal government followed thereafter: alternate even-numbered sections of 6 miles on either side of the proposed railways that the company could 

develop and sell. Since the land had not been attractive because of a lack of transportation—it had been 

available for sale to anyone for years at $1.25 per acre—the railroad now found a ready market for land 

useful to farmers. They were able to raise the price per acre to $2.50 and still find buyers. By the 1950s, 

about 8 percent of all railroad mileage in the United States had been constructed using money secured 

from federal land grants; some 131 million acres of public lands had been turned over to railroad companies for private use through this system.103

These efforts were nothing in comparison to the railroad construction that took place during the Gilded 

Age. Congress modified its approach for land grants with the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 because of 

the very present need to build a transcontinental railroad. In this effort, lawmakers resolved to “do 

enough, and only enough, to induce capitalists to build the Pacific railway.” Signed into law by President 

Abraham Lincoln on 1 July 1862, this act authorized extensive grants of public land along the rights 

of way and the issuance of 30-year government bonds at 6 percent. These subsidies went directly to 

the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad to support the construction of a continuous 

transcontinental railroad from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, California.104

The act’s most famous provisions dealt with the land grants. Section 2 provided each company with 

contiguous rights of way for their rail lines as well as all public lands within 200 feet on either side of 

the track. Section 3 granted an additional 10 square miles of public land for every mile of track laid 

except when running through cities or across rivers. It allocated this land as “five alternate sections per 

mile on each side of said railroad, on the line thereof, and within the limits of ten miles on each side.” 

This turned out to be a most lucrative transfer of public property to the private sector, giving the favored 

companies a total of 6,400 square acres for each mile of track. By the time of the completion of the 

first transcontinental line in 1869, something approaching 175 million acres of public land had been 

transferred to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.105 The central provisions included the following:

• 

• 

• 

• 

Granted 20 sections of land for every mile of completed railway.

Allowed railroads to use the value of the land as collateral for private loans.

Provided subsidy bonds, essentially a second mortgage, to lend funds to railroad firms.

Arranged for loans to be repaid largely by transportation revenues and land sales.

102 Robert L. Brandfon, “Political Impact: A Case Study of a Railroad Monopoly in Mississippi,” in Mazlish, The Railroad and the Space Program, p. 186.

103 Association of American Railroads, American Railroads, pp. 7–13.

104 “An Act to Aid in the Construction of a Railroad and Telegraph Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and To Secure to the 

Government the Use of the Same for Postal, Military, and Other Purposes,” 12 Stat. 489, 1 July 1862, available online at http://www.cprr.

org/Museum/Pacific_Railroad_Acts.html, accessed 29 August 2013.

105 Ibid.
43

Case Studies

• 

• 

Gave the government nonmonetary benefits (troop transport cost reductions).

Increased returns by some 2 percent.

Throughout this process, the Union Pacific undertook construction westward from a point near Omaha, 

Nebraska; the Central Pacific headed eastward from Sacramento, California. The meeting point of the two 

lines on 10 May 1869 proved memorable. Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific and Grenville Dodge 

of the Union Pacific linked the tracks at Promontory Summit (also known as Promontory Point), Utah.106

Railroad expansion provided new avenues of immigration into the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain 

West. The railroads made money doubly by transporting people, goods, and commodities for a price 

and by selling portions of their land to arriving settlers at a handsome profit. Lands closest to the tracks, 

of course, drew the highest prices.

The national government also levied requirements on the transcontinentals. Those receiving federal 

assistance were required to transport U.S. mail, troops, and property at reduced rates. A mail discount 

rate of 20 percent and a 50 percent reduction in all other government transportation fees served national 

interests. This arrangement only ended with congressional action in 1940. Dudley F. Pegrum concluded 

about this development:

Public aid to railroad development resulted in a very rapid expansion of the railroad 

network, which probably assisted in opening up the country more rapidly than would 

have been the case otherwise. At the same time it gave rise to abuses that were to have 

serious repercussions later on. The inevitable overbuilding and the extensive duplication 

of competitive lines created excess capacity that resulted in unsatisfactory earnings and 

financial failures that still plague the industry. Financial abuses flourished under public 

aid and the totally inadequate standards of financial responsibility of the period.107

Without the assistance of the U.S. government, railroad construction between 1860 and 1900 would 

certainly have proceeded at a less aggressive pace. At the end of the Civil War, only 45,000 miles of 

track had been laid. Between 1871 and 1900, another 170,000 miles were added to the nation’s railroad 

system. Much, but not all, of this growth came as a result of the efforts to construct transcontinental 

railroads.108 The investment of large startup costs—track surveying and construction, rolling stock 

acquisition, and support and logistics systems establishment, all before any revenue could accrue—meant 

106 Bruce Clement Cooper, Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad, 1865–1881 (Philadelphia: Polyglot Press, 

2005): pp. 1–15.

107 Pegrum, Transportation, p. 57.

108 George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1951); John F. Stover, The Railroads of 

the South, 1865–1900: A Study in Finance and Control (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955); John F. Stover, American Railroads

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); Robert W. Fogel, The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise (Baltimore, MD: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1960); Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Columbia 

University Press, 1960); Alfred Dupont Chandler, Henry Varnum Poor: Business Editor, Analyst, and Reformer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 

Press, 1956); Alfred Dupont Chandler, The Railroads, The Nation’s First Big Business: Sources and Readings (New York: Arno Press, 1965).
44

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

that both private banks and entrepreneurs shied away from investment. Government investment, largely 

but not entirely through land grants, contributed to the success of four out of the five transcontinental 

railroads that were built in the period between the Civil War and 1900. “The total aid in monetary terms 

of private citizens and local, state, and federal governments was estimated by the Federal Coordinator 

of Transportation to have amounted to $1.4 billion,” as reported by Dudley Pegrum.109 In 2013 dollars, 

that would amount to more than $45 billion.

There is more relevance to this story for spaceflight than might be immediately apparent. The direct 

comparison of the public-private partnership that created the transcontinental railroads is the potential 

for government stimulation of the launch industry. The challenge is technological in the sense that 

new launchers are necessary for efficient operations, just as the laying of track and the acquisition and 

operation of rolling stock were critical to the transcontinental carriers of the 19th century. The similarities include the high startup costs associated with new, more-efficient launchers; the highly regulated 

operational environment; and the high risk/high return potential of the endeavor. The question before 

policy-makers, like the Congress of 1862, is how best to “do enough, and only enough, to induce capitalists to build” new space transportation systems.

In the railroad example, the forms of support included the following:

1. Land grants as a means of offering potential future revenue, tied to success in creating the 

railroad system.

2. Direct government appropriations to the company involved in the endeavor.

3. Waivers/modifications to taxes and other regulatory requirements.

4. Contracts for services once capability is demonstrated.

5. Government endorsement and backing of corporate bonds/assets.

6. Indirect support for related but supplemental elements of the railroad transportation system.110

In every case, these government initiatives were intended to leverage (and not replace) existing private 

funding, especially additional industry and venture capital.

There are those who believe that the federal government has been responsible for the stagnation present 

in 50 years of rocket technology. No question, after half a century, access to space remains a difficult 

challenge. The technical challenge of reaching space with chemical rockets—particularly the high costs 

associated with space launch, the long lead times necessary for scheduling flights, and the modest reliability of rockets—has demonstrated the slowest rate of improvement of all space technologies. All space 

professionals share a responsibility for addressing these critical technical problems. The overwhelming 

109 Pegrum, Transportation, pp. 439–440.

110 Phillips, A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860, pp. 132–220.
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Case Studies

influence that space access has on all aspects of civil, commercial, and military space efforts indicates that 

it should enjoy a top priority for the 21st century.111

Of course, a key element in the spacefaring vision long held in the United States is the belief that inexpensive, reliable, safe, and easy spaceflight is attainable. Indeed, from virtually the beginning of the 20th 

century, those interested in the human exploration of space have viewed as central to that endeavor 

the development of vehicles for flight that travel easily to and from Earth orbit. The more technically 

minded recognized that once humans had achieved Earth orbit about 200 miles up, they had conquered 

the vast majority of the atmosphere and the gravity well and were then about halfway to anywhere else 

they might want to go.112

A central element in solving the current space access problem is to stimulate private-sector innovation—

accomplished through public-private partnerships—to develop new, safe, reliable, and inexpensive 

rockets. The private sector cannot solve all problems as if by magic. At the same time, the U.S. government must relax its restrictions on the transfer of rocket technology to foster private-sector space launch 

innovation across national boundaries. That is an exceptionally tall order since space is overrun with 

dual-use technology that is critical to national security. The problem here, as John Krige has noted, is 

that “collaboration has worked most smoothly when the science or technology concerned is not of direct 

strategic (used here to mean commercial or military) importance.” He added that as soon as a government 

feels that its national interests are directly involved in a field of R&D, it would prefer to protect these 

capabilities from proliferation. He also noted that the success of cooperative projects may take as their 

central characteristic that they have “no practical application in at least the short to medium term.”113

In the end, the six points noted above of government involvement in 19th-century transcontinental 

railroads remain valid to some degree or another with the exception of land grants: there are none to 

offer in orbital space. However, there is the related right of companies developing effective space transportation systems to access government assets in space—especially the International Space Station. To 

those six points, we might add the following:

• 

• 

• 

Private financing supplemented with government loans.

Property and patent rights granted to participating firms.

Broadly construed revenues produced from transportation and other fees.

111 More than 1,000 space access studies have reached this conclusion over the last 40 years. See Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, Imagining 

Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities, 1950–2050 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001), chapter 4; United States Congress, Office of 

Technology Assessment, Launch Options for the Future: Special Report (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1984); Vice President’s Space 

Policy Advisory Board, “The Future of U.S. Space Launch Capability,” Task Group Report, November 1992, NASA Historical Reference Collection; 

NASA Office of Space Systems Development, Access to Space Study: Summary Report (Washington, DC: NASA Report, 1994).

112 This is the premise of G. Harry Stine, Halfway to Anywhere: Achieving America’s Destiny in Space (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1996), a book 

that explores the historical path of launch vehicle development in the United States.

113 John Krige, “The Politics of European Collaboration in Space,” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 36 (September–

October 1997): 4–9.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Regardless, one must ask these critical questions in the context of developing new space transportation 

structures: “How important, in the final analysis, is cheaper access to space? Is it really the key to future 

growth of space activities?” This seems to be at the crux of what will go into any stimulation of private 

space transportation effort.

One of the central tenets of the new space community is that modern advances in technology and 

materials will allow inexpensive access to LEO. Unfortunately, this has not come to pass as yet. Current 

technological, economic, and regulatory realities combine to prohibit payload delivery to LEO for less 

than $1,000 per pound without significant changes to the current policy arena. Moreover, and this may 

be the core challenge for the future, no one has yet documented a clear, solid business model that would 

lead to a privately funded and operated space transportation system. Government customers are the 

major users of space transportation, not settlers on the American frontier homesteading land near the 

railroad. A market that could support the costs of creating such vehicles still seems far removed from 

the realities before the United States in the near term. Regardless, government investment has been 

significant to the present, and there may be some expansion in the future with continued adherence to 

the following points:

1. Government granting of use of publicly owned assets in low-Earth orbit, especially the 

International Space Station.

2. Direct government appropriations to the companies building space launchers, such as an 

expanded CCDev-type program.

3. Waivers for/modifications to taxes and other regulatory requirements.

4. Contracts for services once capability is demonstrated.

5. Government endorsement and backing of corporate bonds/assets.

6. Indirect support for related but supplemental elements such as range management, indemnification, and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

7. Technological knowledge transferred from government research organizations to private-sector 

firms developing revolutionary launch capabilities.

Beyond low-Earth orbit, especially in terms of a lunar transportation capability, might the government 

foster private-sector development through the creation of such a system? Another question to ponder: 

Is a privately developed lunar transportation corridor possible? The experience of the railroad suggests 

that it might be privately financed, although it would still need to be supplemented with government 

loans/bonds or other means of limiting private risk. Revenues produced from transportation fees could 

become a boon to the companies, just as they were for the transcontinental railroads of the 19th century. 

Property and patent rights could be granted to participating firms. There are, of course, challenges to 

this approach. Fundamental would be an overturning of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon 

Treaty—of the latter of which the U.S. is not a signatory—since there are no possibilities of lunar land 

grants in the current international treaty system. There might be opportunities short of outright ownership that would allow for the right to use land and extract minerals. Moreover, there might be a delta 

between the costs to be incurred and the value of future patents, thereby limiting large investments. 

Regardless, there are applicable ideas from the railroad experience that might be pursued.
47

Case Studies

Fostering the Aerospace Industry

During the first 40 years of the Air Age, government officials in the United States undertook a series 

of initiatives designed to foster the development of a commercial aerospace industry in private hands. 

Of course, even before the first flight of the Wright brothers on 17 December 1903, the United States 

government had been involved in the quest to fly with heavier-than-air vehicles. It contributed $100,000 

toward the flying experiments of Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel P. Langley that failed in the 

fall of 1903.114

Since that first ill-fated investment, the United States government has recognized the importance of 

fostering aerospace development for issues of national security and economic viability. Over the years, 

this has taken place in three distinct and significant arenas, all of them contributing to the national 

air transportation objective. The first was the military aeronautics endeavor: employing aeronautical 

equipment and proficiency for the defense of the nation. By far this has been the largest outlay of federal spending on aerospace, funding basic research, development of new and ever-more-sophisticated 

weapons systems, and operational capabilities.

Second, the government has been fundamentally involved in fostering the research and development 

of air technologies principally through civilian agencies such as the National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics (NACA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Finally, the 

government has been intrinsically involved in the direction and regulation of commercial aerospace 

activities, both domestic and overseas, to facilitate air commerce and such aerospace operations as satellite communications. All of these actions represented a general industrial policy focused on developing 

a commercial air transportation industry.115

Such an approach recognizes that the overall health of the American aerospace industry is critical both 

for national security and for economic competitiveness. Even so, it is something of a truism to suggest 

that anything other than what has passed for aerospace policy in this nation has been both ad hoc and 

114 Norriss S. Hetherington, “The Langley and Wright Aero Accidents: Two Responses to Early Aeronautical Innovation and Government 

Patronage,” in Roger D. Launius, ed., Innovation and the Development of Flight (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), pp. 

18–51.

115 Lewis M. Branscomb, “Toward a U.S. Technology Policy,” Issues in Science and Technology 7 (summer 1991): 50–55. See also Lewis M. 

Branscomb, ed., Empowering Technology: Implementing a U.S. Strategy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Lewis M. Branscomb and James 

H. Keller, eds., Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy that Works (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Bruce L. R. 

Smith and Claude E. Barfield, eds., Technology, R&D, and the Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1996); David C. Mowery and 

Nathan Rosenberg, Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); David 

C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Nathan 

Rosenberg, Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

expeditious.116 Since the 1980s, it has become increasingly important to be more aggressive in ensuring 

this type of direct support as a matter of industrial policy because of incursions of foreign competitors 

into the aerospace sector and the direct subsidies they enjoyed from their governments. “In effect, the 

federal government was limping toward a sort of industrial policy,” claimed Norman E. Bowie in 1994. 

“Since American industry was failing to invest in sufficient research and development to bring new 

products to market that could compete internationally, especially with the Japanese, the government 

provided public funds to universities to help move the fruits of basic research in to the marketplace.”117

This came as a direct result of foreign competition in the aerospace arena; as an example, one of the 

major factors energizing U.S. government subsidies was the necessity to respond to the ever-present and 

widespread subsidization of aerospace industrial development in Europe.

As early as 1908, Congress glimpsed something of the potential of aviation in the nation’s defense, 

setting the stage for the most important and sustained United States government involvement in aerospace activities in the 20th century. Congress provided, in the Army Appropriations Act of 1908, for 

the procurement of one Wright “Flyer” by the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps. The military 

possibilities of this new environment, documented by Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois in a July 1908 

staff paper to the Signal Corps School at Fort Leavenworth, suggested that in future conflicts, aircraft 

would be employed to limit “the strategic movement of hostile forces before they have actually gained 

combat.” The possibility of aerial interdiction, coupled with the destruction of an enemy’s means of 

producing war materiel through strategic bombing, ensured that the military would acquire some aircraft 

for combat missions. Foulois anticipated the striking changes in warfare that would spring from the use 

of a third dimension above Earth’s surface for combat, transportation, and reconnaissance.118 His ideas 

represented a merger of theoretical ideas with technological reality, and that merger represented a new 

way of war, the new high ground of the battlefield of the 20th century.

Even so, the pace of change was slow. As late as 1914, the United States stood 14th in total funds allocated by nations to military aviation, far behind even Bulgaria and Greece. To a very real extent, the 

result of Samuel P. Langley’s lack of success—I hesitate to call it failure because aerospace R&D is, at a 

fundamental level, a process of trial and error, build-test-retest, that ultimately leads to an advancing of 

the state of the art—served to stunt the development of the airplane in America. Although the United 

116 The problem of aerospace policy is related to the larger theme of industrial policy. For discussions of this issue, see Malcolm L. Goggin, ed., 

Governing Science and Technology in a Democracy (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986); Manfred Stanley, The Technological 

Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise (New York: Free Press, 1978); Sylvia Doughty Fries, “Expertise Against Politics: 

Technology as Ideology on Capitol Hill, 1966–1972,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 8 (spring 1983): 6–15; David McKay, Domestic 

Policy and Ideology: Presidents and the American State, 1964–1987 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

117 Norman E. Bowie, University-Business Partnerships: An Assessment (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Publishers, Inc., 1994), p. 19.

118 Benjamin D. Foulois and Carroll V. Glines, From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts: The Memoirs of B. D. Foulois (New York: McGraw-Hill, 

1968), p. 43. See also Eugene M. Emme, “The American Dimension,” in Alfred F. Hurley and Robert C. Ehrhart, eds., Air Power and Warfare: 

The Proceedings of the 8th Military History Symposium, United States Air Force Academy, 18–20 October 1978 (Washington, DC: Office of 

Air Force History, 1979), p. 57; Roger D. Launius, “A New Way of War: The Development of Military Aviation in the American West, 1908–

1945,” Military History of the West 25 (fall 1995): 167–190. On Foulois’s career, see John F. Shiner, Foulois and the U.S. Army Air Corps, 

1931–1935 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983).
49

Case Studies

States invented the airplane, by the time of World War I it was obvious that the knowledge required to 

fly efficiently had moved offshore and resided in Europe. This was true for two reasons.

First, European governments, as well as industrial firms, tended to be more supportive of what might be 

called “applied research.” As early as 1909, the internationally known British physicist Lord Rayleigh was 

appointed head of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; in Germany, Ludwig Prandtl and others 

had begun the sort of investigations that soon made the University of Göttingen a center of theoretical 

aerodynamics. Additional programs were soon under way in France and elsewhere on the continent. As 

Smithsonian Institution Secretary Charles D. Walcott wrote to Congress in 1915:

As soon as Americans demonstrated the feasibility of flight by heavier-than-air machines, 

France took the matter up promptly, and utilized all the available agencies, including 

the army, navy, and similar establishments, both public and private. Large sums were 

devoted to the research work by wealthy individuals, and rapid advance was made in 

the art. Germany quickly followed, and a fund of one million seven hundred thousand 

dollars was raised by subscription, and experimentation directed by a group of technically trained and experienced men.119

Walcott added that England, Germany, and Russia followed suit, leading the way into the air age. He 

noted that when World War I began in 1914, about 1,400 military aircraft existed, of which only 23 

belonged to the United States.

Second, fueled by military necessity, the nations of Europe invested heavily in aeronautical technology 

and built flying machines of great complexity and significant capability, capability far outstripping anything that the United States could accomplish in the mid-1910s.120 As a result, the small, fast, maneuverable, and heavily armed fighter aircraft emerged as a major component of the World War I battlefield. 

Although powered flight had been possible since 1903, as late as 1914 there was little understanding of 

what might be possible in warfare by extending it into three dimensions with the use of the airplane. 

European combatants on both sides transformed airplanes into “warplanes,” evolving these vehicles 

through five essential generations during the Great War. Each stage represented a major technological 

breakthrough and was dominated by one side of the belligerents. It also forced the development of fighter 

tactics to make aerial combat more effective. In turn, each stage was made obsolete by its successor, and 

while vestiges of aircraft types and tactics might remain throughout the rest of the war, they became less 

significant as later developments passed them by.121

119 Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, to Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, 

“Memorandum on a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,” 1 February 1915, reprinted in Alex Roland, Model Research: The National 

Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958 (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4103, 1985), 2:594–595.

120 John H. Morrow, Jr., German Air Power in World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 3–13; John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great 

War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

121 Richard P. Hallion analyzes this transformation in his masterful Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914–1918 (Baltimore, MD: Nautical and Aviation 

Press, 1984).
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Similar progress in the United States was slow in coming. Aware of European activity, Secretary Walcott 

of the Smithsonian obtained funds to dispatch two Americans on a fact-finding tour overseas. Albert 

F. Zahm taught physics and experimented in aeronautics at Catholic University in Washington, DC, 

while Jerome C. Hunsaker, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was developing a 

curriculum in aeronautical engineering at the institute. Their report, submitted to Congress early in 

1915, emphasized the galling disparity between European progress and American inertia. The visit also 

established European contacts that later proved valuable to the NACA.122

Congress began a buildup of aeronautical capability and created a permanent Aviation Section of the 

War Department as Europe descended into a treacherous conflict. When the U.S. entered World War I 

in April 1917, this process accelerated and the government made significant investments in the aviation industry and expanded the procurement of military aircraft from 350 on order to an ambitious 

program to develop and produce 22,000 modern military aircraft by July 1918. Even without achieving 

this goal—U.S. manufacturers delivered 11,950 planes to the government during the war—the massive military appropriations gave the nascent aviation industry a huge boost. Equally important, the 

infrastructure of military aviation was solidified, and by 1919, the Army Air Service had established 69 

airfields in the United States. All of these bases became part of a nationwide network of airways and 

landing fields that permitted rapid movement of units across the country for military purposes.123

Although there was a lull in aeronautical interest for the military following World War I and expansion 

slowed to a trickle, the military aspects of aviation would not go away. The amount of funding for military 

aviation declined every year by more than 10 percent after 1918 until it reached a low of $12.6 million 

in 1924. Many people questioned these government expenditures virtually as soon as the war was won. 

In response, Glenn L. Martin commented:

Only a failure of the United States government to place orders with our successful 

airplane designers and builders will cause our aircraft industrial strength to slip back 

into the position it occupied three years ago. A vital point is being overlooked by the 

American people. It is immediately evident that the industrial strength of the United 

States must be at the war strength all the time.... The government must stimulate and 

aid in the application of aircraft industrially, and also aid in foreign trade, furnishing 

sufficient outlet for industrial aviation and guaranteeing a continuity of production at 

the required rate.124

Martin was right when he said this in 1920. He complained that the government required a strong 

aerospace industry as a guarantee of national defense and should put money into it as a matter of indus122 Walcott to Tillman, “Memorandum on a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,” 1 February 1915, reprinted in Roland, Model Research, 2:593–

597. See also William F. Trimble, Jerome C. Hunsaker and the Rise of American Aeronautics (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002).

123 On the U.S. effort in the First World War, see Charles J. Gross, American Military Aviation: The Indispensable Arm (College Station: Texas A&M 

University Press, 2002), pp. 26–47.

124 Quoted in Lt. Col. Ellen M. Pawlikowski, “Surviving the Peace: Lessons Learned from the Aircraft Industry in the 1920s and 1930s,” Thesis, 

Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 1994, p. 1.
51

Case Studies

trial policy. A major breakthrough came with the Army Air Corps Act of 1926, which renamed the 

Air Service as the Army Air Corps, provided for an Assistant Secretary of War for Air and mandated a 

five-year Air Corps expansion program.125

As the United States began to rearm in the latter 1930s, the nation’s leaders first officially recognized 

that the strength of the Army’s air arm was critical and found it woefully inadequate. General George C. 

Marshall recalled that it “consisted of a few partially equipped squadrons serving the continental United 

States, Panama, Hawaii, and the Philippines; their planes were obsolescent and could hardly have survived 

a single day of modern aerial combat.”126 Harry Hopkins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s confidant, 

commented shortly after Pearl Harbor that “[t]he President was sure that we were going to get into 

the war and believed that air power would win it.”127 Because of these inadequacies, in 1934 Congress 

appropriated $23.3 million for the use of the Army Air Corps, 8.4 percent of all Army appropriations. 

In 1936, Congress funded the construction of another wind tunnel at Langley and the lengthening 

of a tank used for seaplane research. It provided the impetus for additional funding through a special 

“Deficiency Appropriation Act” to fund the construction of new facilities, all because of war sentiment 

in Europe. In 1938, Roosevelt suggested that the Air Corps was operating with what could be politely 

called “antiquated weapons” and advocated increasing its strength to 30,000 airplanes from only a few 

hundred outdated biplanes.128 In April 1939, when Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1940, 

it authorized the Army Air Corps to develop and procure 6,000 new airplanes, to increase personnel to 

3,203 officers and 45,000 enlisted, and to spend $300 million. As a result, the Army Air Forces received 

$70.6 million, 15.7 percent of the Army’s direct appropriations. This was only the beginning of a massive 

wartime expansion of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.129

Virtually every study speaks of devastation to the aerospace sector of the U.S. economy that came with 

demobilization following World War II. From late 1943 on, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure of eventual victory and began to trim defense contracts for aircraft and war materiel. The result was that 1944 

became the peak year of production, with 95,272 aircraft delivered, with another 48,912 delivered in 

the last year of the war. This was nearly half of the total of 316,495 aircraft produced during World 

War II. The next year, production slipped to just over 36,000 aircraft, but the vast majority of these were 

125 On this subject, see James P. Tate, The Army and Its Air Corps: Army Policy Toward Aviation, 1919–1941 (Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], AL: 

Air University Press, 1998); Robert P. White, Mason Patrick and the Fight for Air Service Independence (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute 

Press, 2001); Harry Howe Ransom, “The Air Corps Act of 1926: A Study of the Legislative Process,” Ph.D. Diss., Princeton University, 1953.

126 U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Biennial Report, July 1, 1943–June 30, 1945 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945), p. 117.

127 Quoted in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950 ed.), p. 100.

128 Report of the Secretary of War, FY 1938, pp. 26–27, U.S. Air Force (USAF) Historical Research Center, Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL; 

Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 219.

129 Wesley Frank Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The United States Air Force in World War II, 6 vols. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 

1948), 1:104, 6:171–173; “Some Important Facts Regarding Expansion of NACA Research Facilities and War-time Status of NACA,” 

17 January 1946, NASA Historical Reference Collection; A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and 

Activities to 1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 363.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

commercial aircraft purchased after years of waiting for newer models. In 1947, production declined 

by more than half of its 1946 level.130

The postwar period brought sweeping organizational changes. The National Security Act of 1947 abolished 

two cabinet-level organizations, the Departments of War and the Navy, and established in their place the 

Department of Defense, transforming the air arm into the United States Air Force, coequal with the Army 

and the Navy. Since that time, several acts have followed that reformed various aspects of the Department 

of Defense and the aerospace infrastructure but left the basic institutional arrangements intact.131

Without question, the Cold War precipitated a continuation of the expansion of military aerospace 

activities. The military air and space component in the Cold War also involved a broad range of activities. The development, training, equipping, and employment of aerospace military power have extended 

from aircraft to missiles to satellites to other systems of both a passive and an active nature. Much of this 

has been carried out in a highly classified environment, such as satellite reconnaissance, with neither 

details nor records of government available for ready inspection. All have been justified as a means of 

maintaining the integrity of the nation against an aggressive communist menace.132

Post–Cold War national security concerns since 1990 have brought a new challenge to the American military 

aerospace sector. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a different set of priorities has replaced the powerful 

secular ideologies of democracy, communism, nationalism, fascism, and socialism that dominated international politics since the Enlightenment. These were not so much new priorities as ancient traditions based 

on ethnic, religious, kinship, or tribal loyalties that reemerged full-blown in the 1990s as all the great ideologies, save democracy, collapsed worldwide—and even democracy was none too stable outside the West.133

130 Herman O. Stekler, The Structure and Performance of the Aerospace Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 14, 34; 

Roger E. Bilstein, The American Aerospace Industry (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), pp. 226–227; Richard Lampl, exec. ed., The 

Aviation & Aerospace Almanac (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), p. 703.

131 On this subject, see R. Earl McClendon, Autonomy of the Air Arm (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996); Bernard 

C. Nalty, ed., Winged Shield, Winged Sword: A History of the USAF (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997); 

Herman S. Wolk, Toward Independence: The Emergence of the United States Air Force, 1945–1947 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and 

Museums Program, 1996).

132 See Roger D. Launius, “End of a Forty Year War: Demobilization in the West Coast Aerospace Industry After the Cold War,” Journal of the West

36 (July 1997): 85–96.

133 On the reorientation of world politics in the 1990s, see John Lewis Gaddis, “Toward the Post-Cold War World,” Foreign Affairs 70 (spring 1991): 

101–114; Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, ed., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 1993); Francis Fucayama, “The End of History,” The National Interest 16 (summer 1989): 3–18; Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, 

The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1993); James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, “A 

Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post–Cold War Era,” International Organization 46 (spring 1992): 467–491; Kenneth N. Waltz, “The 

Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security 18 (fall 1993): 44–79; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the 

Eve of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Scribner, 1993); Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1993); William S. Lind, “North-South Relations: Returning to a World of Cultures in Conflict,” Current World Leaders 35 

(December 1993): 1073–1080; Donald J. Puchala, “The History of the Future of International Relations,” Ethics and International Affairs 8 (1994): 

177–202; Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).
53

Case Studies

In the two-plus decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military has placed much faith in 

bombing, both as a quick attack tactic and as a pre-invasion one. What the future of airpower may 

bring is anyone’s guess, but the rise of airpower technology available for the United States is a significant 

determinant of the structure and possibilities of U.S. military force applications. At the same time, the 

rise of U.S. military aerospace capability has not significantly changed the nature of warfare. As analyst 

Anthony H. Cordesman observes: “War still requires a presence on the ground and a willingness to 

take casualties. This lesson should be obvious. Air power is incapable of holding territory, dealing with 

political issues, gathering human intelligence, and destroying dug-in enemy positions. It cannot seal 

off territory or deal with highly dispersed forces.”134 Ironically, this means that wars may only be won 

by putting forces on the ground, from which casualties will result. For all of the apparent changes, easy, 

casualty-free victory is no more possible today, even with the enormous aerospace power available to the 

United States, than it was during the first use of airplanes in combat. Still, the government’s involvement 

in this arena is enormous and will remain so indefinitely.

The investment in military aeronautical technology indirectly affected the course of commercial aviation, whereas other activities directly benefited the construction of the air transportation system in the 

United States. Well into the 20th century, there was in the United States little appreciation of scientific 

and technical research and even less inclination to allocate government funding for such an uncertain 

activity. But because of a truly poor response at the time of World War I, the U.S. created the National 

Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1915. Sentiment for some sort of center of aeronautical research had been building for several years. At the inaugural meeting of the American Aeronautical 

Society in 1911, its members discussed a national laboratory financed by the public treasury. But the 

American Aeronautical Society’s dreams were frustrated by bureaucratic infighting and questions about 

the appropriateness of government investment in technological R&D. Only through the passage of 

enabling legislation for the NACA on 3 March 1915, as a rider to the Naval Appropriations Act, did 

anything happen. In this legislation, Congress established the NACA “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their practical solution.”135

The NACA became an enormously important government research and development organization for 

the next half century, materially enhancing the development of aeronautics. It pursued investigations that 

promised the compilation of fundamental aeronautical knowledge applicable to all flight, rather than 

working on a specific type of aircraft design, to avoid any charge of catering to a particular aeronautical 

firm. Most NACA research was accomplished “in-house” by scientists or engineers on the federal payroll. 

The results of these activities appeared in more than 16,000 research reports of one type or another, 

distributed widely for the benefit of all. As a result of this work, the NACA received the coveted Robert 

J. Collier Trophy, given annually for “great” achievement in aeronautics and astronautics in America, 

five times between 1929 and 1954.136

134 Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Old-New Lessons of Afghanistan,” 4 March 2002, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC.

135 The story of the NACA’s creation is told in Roland, Model Research, 1:1–25; Roger E. Bilstein, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA 

and NASA (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4404, 1989), chapter 1.

136 On this subject, see Pamela E. Mack, ed., From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project 

Winners (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4219, 1998).
54

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

The NACA’s research was conducted in government facilities, and its government scientists and engineers 

developed a strong technical competence, a commitment to collegial in-house research conducive to 

engineering innovation, and a definite apolitical perspective. The 8,000 employees worked in locations 

including a small Washington headquarters; three major research laboratories—the Langley Aeronautical 

Laboratory established in Hampton, Virginia, in 1917, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory activated 

near San Francisco in 1939, and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory built in Cleveland, Ohio, in 

1940—and two small test facilities in Muroc Dry Lake in the high desert of California and Wallops 

Island, Virginia. This organization remained a significant entity until it was transformed into NASA in 

1958. The National Air and Space Act of 1958 gave NASA a broad mandate to “plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities”; to involve the nation’s scientific community in these activities; 

and to disseminate widely information about them.137

The vast majority of breakthroughs in aeronautical technology have been the result of R&D organizations usually funded by government largesse. The experience of the NACA and NASA suggests that 

great leaps forward in technological capability almost always require significant long-term investment 

in research and development—research and development that does not have explicit short-term return 

to the “bottom line” and may not yield even long-term economic return. Without that large-scale 

investment in aerospace technology, however, the United States will become a second-class aerospace 

power. I would suggest that today we are on the road to becoming one. That is the result of two related 

developments. First, since the end of the Cold War and the ensuing belief that the United States stood 

alone as the world’s only superpower, the level of aerospace R&D investment by the federal government 

has eroded. It was no longer viewed as necessary for national defense. Second, many public officials 

believe—mistaken though they are—that aerospace technology is mature and that private industry 

should be able to sustain aerospace advances without significant government investment.

Another major theme in government involvement in aerospace activities is in the regulation of aerospace commerce. The earliest involvement came with legislation to manage an airmail system, but in 

1926, the Air Commerce Act assigned responsibility for the fostering of air commerce to the Commerce 

Department. With this went responsibility to establish airways, test and license pilots, inspect and certificate aircraft, establish navigation systems, investigate accidents, and generally provide for an orderly 

development of American aviation. Bumps and bruises were inflicted on all sides during the years that 

followed as a new technology and a new industry, as well as a relatively new government regulatory 

thrust, began to be played out. By the time of the creation of the Civil Aeronautics Authority in 1938, 

however, the major trends had been developed and much that followed was refinement.138

Three additional pieces of legislation were important in the regulation of aerospace operations. The 

Federal Aviation Act of 1958 transformed the Civil Aeronautics Authority into the Federal Aviation 

Agency (FAA), giving it broad powers to manage and regulate commercial aviation in the United States. 

137 On the creation of NASA, see Roger D. Launius, NASA: A History of the Civil Space Program (Malabar, FL: Krieger Pub. Co., 1994), pp. 29–42.

138 See Arnold E. Briddon and Ellmore A. Champie, Federal Aviation Agency Historical Fact Book: A Chronology, 1926–1963 (Washington, DC: 

Federal Aviation Agency, 1966).
55

Case Studies

In 1966, the FAA underwent a minor name change—Agency to Administration—and was assigned as 

a major component of the newly established Department of Transportation.

Perhaps the most important regulatory action since the Air Commerce Act of 1938, however, was the 

Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. In this legislation, Congress ended the federal enforcement of route 

structures and prices and allowed competition to reign in flights between American cities. This broke 

the near-monopolies of the major carriers—especially American, TWA, United, Eastern, Western, 

Northwest, Delta, and Braniff Airlines—and opened the door for numerous smaller and nonscheduled 

air carriers to enter the passenger market. Several of the major airlines either went out of business—such 

as Braniff and Eastern—and others, such as Delta Airlines, absorbed numerous other firms weakened 

by the competition. The airline business, therefore, became a sharply different arena than it had been 

before 1978. Whether the Airline Deregulation Act has ultimately been good for the nation and its 

flyers remains an open and hotly contested question.139

Among the key issues to be explored are the origins and development of airports in the United States and 

their governance and polity. Across the country, Americans take for granted the convenience of air flight 

from one city to another. The federal role in managing air traffic and the cooperative corporate planning 

of major airlines mask, to some degree, the fact that those airports are local public responsibilities that 

work in concert with federal and private interests. The early history of experimentation and innovation 

in the development of municipal airports—beginning with pressures from the U.S. Post Office and the 

military, neither of which had the independent resources to develop a network of terminals—led to 

American cities becoming responsible for air access.

Later, the federal government provided assistance for airport construction, maintenance, and improvement, especially through the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) program. As part of 

a general trend during the 1930s toward a strong, direct relationship between cities and the federal 

government, cities began to lobby for federal aid for their airports, a demand that was eventually met 

when World War II increased the federal stakes in their functioning. The evolution continued into the 

era of the Cold War, and a unique public-private relationship has remained the norm to the present 

(see figure 5).140

139 A beginning in this direction may be found in Roger E. Bilstein, Flight Patterns: Trends of Aeronautical Development in the United States, 

1918–1929 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983); Nick A. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy Under the Air 

Commerce Act, 1926–1938 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Janet R. Daly Bednarek, America’s Airports: Airfield 

Development, 1918–1947 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

140 See Janet R. Daly Bednarek, America’s Airports: Airfield Development, 1918–1947 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001).
56

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Figure 5

Major U.S. Legislation Affecting Aerospace Activities

Public Act Date Signed Public Law (P.L.) 

Number

Major Provisions

Naval Appropriations 

Act of 1915

12 April 1915 63-271 A rider to this appropriations act established 

the National Advisory Committee for 

Aeronautics “to supervise and direct the 

scientific study of the problems of flight, with a 

view to their practical solution.”

Air Mail Act of 1925 2 February 

1925

69-309 The Kelly Act authorized the Post Office 

Department to contract for the delivery of 

domestic mail by commercial air carriers.

Air Commerce Act of 

1926

20 May 1926 69-254 Instructed the Secretary of Commerce to 

foster air commerce, designate and establish 

airways, set up air navigation aids, arrange 

for R&D, license pilots, inspect and certificate 

aircraft, and investigate accidents.

Army Air Corps Act of 

1926

2 July 1926 69-446 Renamed the Air Service as the Army Air 

Corps and provided for an Assistant Secretary 

of War for Air and for a five-year Air Corps 

expansion program.

Air Mail Act of 1930 29 April 1930 71-178 The Watres Act amended the 1925 Air Mail 

Act to give the Postmaster General broad 

regulatory control over route locations, route 

consolidations and extensions, contract 

bidding conditions, service conditions, 

equipment and personnel, and compensation.

Air Mail Act of 1934 12 June 1934 73-308 The Black-McKellar Act provided for the 

commercial contracting of airmail routes 

throughout the United States. Also created the 

Federal Aviation Committee to set broad policy 

on all phases of aviation and the relation of the 

government to it.

Civil Aeronautics Act

of 1938

23 July 1938 75-706 Created the Civil Aeronautics Authority and 

Air Safety Board, both with broad powers to 

establish and operate airways and to regulate 

commercial air operations.
57

Case Studies

Public Act Date Signed Public Law (P.L.) 

Number

Major Provisions

National Defense Act 

of 1940

3 April 1939 76-18 Authorized the Army Air Corps to develop and 

procure 6,000 new airplanes, to increase 

personnel to 3,203 officers and 45,000 

enlisted, and appropriate $300 million.

Civilian Pilot Training 

Act of 1939

27 June 1939 76-153 Established the Civilian Pilot Training 

Program under the management of the Civil 

Aeronautics Authority to train pilots at various 

educational institutions in the United States as 

a war preparedness measure.

Federal Airport Act of 

1946

13 May 1946 79-377 Appropriated $500 million for continental 

United States and $20 million for Alaska and 

Hawaii for the construction of airports on a 

matching fund basis.

National Security Act 

of 1947

26 July 1947 80-253 Abolished the Departments of War and the 

Navy and established in their place the 

Department of Defense. In so doing, split the 

Army Air Forces out and made it a separate 

service, the United States Air Force, coequal 

with the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.

Airways 

Modernization Act

14 August 

1957

85-133 Established the Airways Modernization 

Board “to provide for the development and 

modernization of the national system of 

navigation and traffic control facilities to 

serve present and future needs of civil and 

military aviation.”

National Air and 

Space Act of 1958

29 July 1958 85-568 Transformed the National Advisory Committee 

for Aeronautics into the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration.

Defense 

Reorganization Act of 

1958

6 August 1958 85-599 Provided for a stronger Secretary of Defense, 

vesting control of research and development 

activities in that office. This provided for more 

centralized management of aerospace R&D.

Federal Aviation Act 23 August 

1958

85-726 Transformed the Civil Aeronautics of 1958 

Authority into the Federal Aviation Agency 

and made the Civil Aeronautics Board 

an independent organization. The new 

organization had broad powers to manage 

and regulate commercial aviation in the 

United States.
58

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Public Act Date Signed Public Law (P.L.) 

Number

Major Provisions

“Crimes in the Sky” 

Act

5 September 

1961

87-197 Amendment to Federal Aviation Act of 1958 

to provide for the enforcement of crimes 

committed in the air, especially for interfering 

with the performance of duties by flight crews.

Communications 

Satellite Act of 1962

31 August 

1962

87-624 Created Communication Satellite Corporation, 

a public-private corp. managing satellite 

communications for the United States.

Department of 

Transportation Act of 

1966

15 October 

1966

89-670 Created the Department of Transportation 

as a cabinet-level organization. The Federal 

Aviation Agency was assigned to the new 

department and given the name Federal 

Aviation Administration.

National Science and 

Technology Policy, 

Organization, and 

Priorities Act of 1976

11 May 1976 94-282 Created an Office of Science and Technology 

Policy reporting to the President.

Airline Deregulation 

Act

24 November 

1978

95-504 Provided for fare reductions of up to 70 

percent without Civil Aeronautics Board 

(CAB) approval and the immediate entry of 

air carriers into routes not protected by other 

carriers. The CAB’s regulation of fares, routes, 

and mergers would be phased out by 1983, 

and unless Congress acted, the CAB would 

shut down by 1985.

Land Remote Sensing 

Commercialization 

Act

17 July 1984 98-365 Commercialized the Landsat remote sensing 

system launched by the United States in the 

1970s.

Commercial Space 

Launch Act of 1984

30 October 

1984

98-575 Commercialized launch operations within the 

United States to open them to competition.

Department 

of Defense 

Reorganization Act of 

1986

1 October 

1986

99-433 The Goldwater-Nichols Act provided for 

greater control of the individual services at 

the Secretary level and centralized even more 

aerospace R&D activities.

Sources: U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Space Law and Related Documents: International Space 

Law Documents, U.S. Space Law Documents (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 443–605; Alex Roland, Model 

Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958 (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 

1985), 2:393–422; Arnold E. Briddon and Ellmore A. Champie, Federal Aviation Agency Historical Fact Book: A Chronology, 1926–1963 

(Washington, DC: Federal Aviation Agency, 1966); Richard I. Wolf, ed., The United States Air Force: Basic Documents on Roles and Missions

(Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1987), pp. 325–338.
59

Case Studies

The rapid growth in aerospace technology within the United States during the 20th century was in part 

a result of investment by the United States government. Since the end of the Cold War, that investment has withered, and as it did so national leadership in the field declined as well. Between the 1960s 

and the 1990s, the share of the market enjoyed by American aerospace manufacturers fell sharply as 

foreign corporations—both private and state-run—gained greater portions of the market. In 1986, 

for example, United States high-technology imports exceeded exports for the first time. The aerospace 

industry was one of the only remaining fields with a trade surplus, 90 percent of which was from sales 

of aircraft and aircraft parts. Compared to an overall U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods of $136 

billion in 1986, the aerospace industry had a surplus of $11.8 billion. But the U.S. lead in aerospace 

was shrinking rapidly. In 1980, the U.S. market share of large civil transport sales was 90 percent. By 

1992, that percentage had dropped to 70 percent and was in danger of falling even further. The lead in 

the commuter aircraft market had already been lost. During the 1990s, the United States lost its lead in 

the space launch market as well. Several factors account for this loss of market share and are complex.

First, there are the inherent difficulties of the aerospace marketplace. As aerospace technology became more 

complex and expensive, it also became more difficult for individual companies to shoulder the entire financial 

burden for researching and developing new technology and products themselves. Building airplanes has 

always been a marginal economic enterprise in all its myriad permutations. Aerospace manufacturers literally bet the company on a new design because of the enormous cost associated with developing an aircraft 

or rocket. Malcolm Stamper, former president of Boeing Aircraft Corporation, remarked that “Locating 

the break-even point is like finding a will-o’-the-wisp.”141 Not until 20 to 35 production aircraft have actually been manufactured do production costs become predictable. For rockets and other space technology, 

which do not have large production runs, the economics of manufacturing are even more problematic.142

Second, American aerospace executives were too often complacent in maintaining their competitive technological edge. Aerospace corporations, like a lot of other organizations, have a decided “not invented 

here” syndrome. Ideas emanating from beyond the recognized corporate structure too often get short 

shrift: to cite but two examples, Northrop Aircraft Corporation’s hesitation to embrace retractable landing gear in the 1920s and Boeing’s rejection of the so-called “glass cockpit” technology in the 1980s. 

While the “glass cockpit” offered cutting-edge avionics displays, this American-made technology found 

its first use at Airbus Industrie in Europe. Airbus made it a centerpiece of its newest generation of transports, in the process helping itself compete more effectively in the marketplace. Losing market share as 

a result, Boeing raced to adopt the new technology into its own designs.143

Third, there has been the success of industrial policy by the nations of Europe aimed at securing greater 

market share for non-U.S. aerospace companies. These governments often directly subsidize their national 

141 Quoted in John Newhouse, The Sporty Game (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 4.

142 Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearings, Weapons Systems Acquisition Process (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972), 

92d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 152.

143 See Walter G. Vincenti, “The Retractable Airplane Landing Gear and the Northrop ‘Anomaly’: Variation-Selection and the Shaping of 

Technology,” Technology & Culture 35 (January 1994): 1–33; Lane E. Wallace, Airborne Trailblazer: Two Decades with NASA Langley’s 

Boeing 737 Flying Laboratory (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4216, 1994), pp. 26–39.
60

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

manufacturers. There is no question that one of the major reasons for the European community to 

invest in aerospace technology has been to wrest economic market share from the United States. The 

Europeans have developed an industrial policy aimed at this goal, and they have been quite successful. 

Less successful, but nonetheless making inroads, are the Japanese, who have long pursued policies, and 

directly subsidized key industries, to help move the fruits of basic research to the marketplace for the 

purpose of gaining economic advantage vis-à-vis the United States.144

Finally, a major problem of the aircraft business was its cyclic nature, leading to boom and bust periods. 

Complicated by the enormous infrastructure necessary to support the design and manufacture of aircraft, 

these firms were exceptionally limited as to their markets and their capabilities. President Ronald Reagan’s 

science advisor noted in 1982 that “aircraft are now the dominant common carrier for inter-city travel, 

and the safety and control of that travel are a federal responsibility.”145 He recommended pressing hard 

for government support of basic research that could then be transferred to American private firms.

Since 1903, the United States has spent more than 1 trillion dollars (in 2013 dollars) on developing 

aerospace technology, on the management of the infrastructure necessary to support its operations, 

and on the military and other practical applications that it affords. Accordingly, through a century of 

heavier-than-air flight, the federal government has been the major actor in developing and using aircraft. The United States did not have to make that investment—it could have chosen to act like many 

other major nations such as China and Brazil and Turkey—but because it did, the nation became the 

foremost air- and spacefaring power in the world. In truth, the impact of federal investments in aviation and space has been felt most directly in aerospace science and engineering, but it has also rippled 

through other fields of scientific and technological endeavor and across social, cultural, economic, 

and political arenas in the United States and worldwide. Apart from past theoretical developments in 

physics and the art and science of flight, federally supported R&D efforts have been a major factor—in 

some instances, the key factor—driving innovation.

The U.S. government’s investment in both aviation and space has supported activities performed by 

a wide range of parties, including both civilian and military federal agencies, nonprofit quasi-governmental entities, private corporations, and educational institutions. A number of important conclusions 

emerge from this review of federal aerospace investment.

First, for good or otherwise, critical innovation in both the space and aviation sectors has been driven by 

external crises. Both world wars, particularly World War II, had a motivating effect on aerospace engineering 

and mass-production processes. Industrial techniques developed by Henry Ford for automobile production were applied to the war effort—Ford Motor Company mass-produced bombers and other aircraft in 

144 See, for example, the Convention for the Establishment of a European Space Agency (CSE.CD(73)19. rev.7: Paris, 30 May 1975). Article 

VII (I) (b) states: “The industrial policy which the Agency is to elaborate and apply by virtue of Article II (d) shall be designed in particular 

to:...b) improve the world-wide competitiveness of European industry by maintaining and developing space technology and by encouraging 

the rationalisation and development of an industrial structure appropriate to market requirements, making use in the first place of the existing industrial potential of all Member States.”

145 Bowie, University-Business Partnerships, p. 19.
61

Case Studies

numbers unimaginable before the war.146 Following World War II, the Cold War saw the development of 

intercontinental ballistic missiles that provided the technological foundation and legacy for space launch 

vehicles.147 This era also witnessed the development of advanced reconnaissance programs, such as the 

SR-71 aircraft and the Corona satellite, to gather information about areas that were otherwise inaccessible. These activities led directly to many of the present space science efforts, such as the Hubble Space 

Telescope, whose technologies and advanced engineering were based on these early intelligence programs.148

The launch of Sputnik and piloted Russian spacecraft and the outcry that followed so stung the United 

States that it was propelled to accelerate the U.S. human spaceflight programs to a vast scale and cost 

previously considered unacceptable by the public.149

Second, the federal government’s role in fostering innovation appears to have followed different paths 

in aviation R&D. Specifically, in aviation, the government, from virtually the beginning, focused on 

supporting inquiries into basic principles of aerodynamics and materials and propulsion, as well as 

creating facilities for conducting basic aviation science with the results available to all. This investment, 

in turn, helped the private aviation industry to progress from a small-scale, essentially craft-centered 

node of development and production to the vast, mass-production enterprise it became, with its own 

flourishing R&D component. By contrast, the federal government’s role in fostering R&D in space 

146 See Jacob Vander Meulen, The Politics of Aircraft: Building an American Military Industry (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991); John 

B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968); I. B. Holley, Jr., Buying Aircraft: 

Material Procurement for the Army Air Forces (Washington, DC: Center for Military History, 1964); Roger D. Launius, “World War II Military 

Aviation in the Rockies: From Natural to National Resource,” Journal of the West 32 (April 1993): 86–93.

147 See Ray A. Williamson and Roger D. Launius, “Rocketry and the Origins of Spaceflight,” in Roger D. Launius and Dennis R. Jenkins, eds., To 

Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), pp. 33–69; Launius, “Between a 

Rocket and a Hard Place,” in Lambright, ed., Space Policy in the 21st Century, pp. 15–54.

148 Three important recent books on the early satellite reconnaissance program have been published: Dwayne A. Day, John M. Logsdon, and 

Brian Latell, eds., Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellite (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998); Robert A. 

McDonald, Corona Between the Sun and the Earth: The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space (Bethesda, MD: ASPRS Publications, 1997); 

Curtis Peebles, The Corona Project: America’s First Spy Satellites (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). See also William E. Burrows, 

Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York: Random House, 1987); Jeffrey T. Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space: 

The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).

149 This argument has been effectively made in Rip Bulkeley, The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the 

Historiography of Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the 

Soviet Satellite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Dwayne A. Day, “New Revelations About the American Satellite Programme Before 

Sputnik,” Spaceflight 36 (November 1994): 372–373; R. Cargill Hall, “Origins of U.S. Space Policy: Eisenhower, Open Skies, and Freedom of 

Space,” in John M. Logsdon, gen. ed., Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume I, 

Organizing for Exploration (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407, 1995), pp. 213–229; Roger D. Launius, “Eisenhower, Sputnik, and the Creation of 

NASA: Technological Elites and the Public Policy Agenda,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 28 (summer 

1996): 127–143; R. Cargill Hall, “Earth Satellites: A First Look by the United States Navy,” in R. Cargill Hall, ed., Essays on the History of Rocketry 

and Astronautics: Proceedings of the Third Through the Sixth History Symposia of the International Academy of Astronautics (San Diego, CA: 

Univelt, Inc., 1986), pp. 253–278; R. Cargill Hall, “The Eisenhower Administration and the Cold War: Framing American Aeronautics To Serve 

National Security,” Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives 27 (spring 1995): 61–70; Dwayne A. Day, “Not So Black and White...: The 

Military and the Hubble Space Telescope,” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 34 (March–April 1995): 20–21.
62

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

innovation often appears to have reversed the typical progression from basic research to development. 

Instead, federal investment in space innovation concentrated on technology development and engineering, with little emphasis on basic research. By the time the U.S. space program began scaling up 

to produce spacecraft in the 1950s, the basic principles of rocketry and spaceflight were already well 

understood. The practical problems of launching viable spacecraft, however, were not. In turn, spaceflight 

facilitated the deployment of new scientific instrumentation and the conduct of new experiments that 

fueled advances in basic science.150

Third, the cross-fertilization between national security (defined as the military and intelligence communities) and civilian innovation has been central to the success of both the aviation and space enterprises. 

Because the military and civilian industrial bases in both sectors overlap substantially and many technologies are “dual-use,” U.S. national security and civilian programs have often benefited from innovations 

emerging from the other domain or from joint efforts. Yet different organizational missions have also led 

to differing institutional focus and emphasis: for the NACA and NASA, on basic aviation and space science and R&D; for the national security community, including the military services, more often applied 

R&D of advanced weapon systems. While the development of a particular technology by one agency 

may not have led to the direct production of an operational system by another agency and thus could be 

construed as a failure of innovation, in other instances that technology development led to unanticipated 

breakthroughs in other technologies or system approaches that could be applied across organizational and 

institutional boundaries. Applying performance measures to pure research has not always worked, yet 

many would argue that taxpayer dollars for focused federal investment in aerospace R&D should provide 

a worthwhile return on investment. Nevertheless, opportunities for cross-fertilization between federal 

organizations, driven by decreasing federal investments in aerospace R&D and other factors, are having 

the effect of encouraging greater numbers of joint or interagency activities to pursue dual-use technologies.

Fourth, the evolution of large-scale engineering techniques and methodologies has yielded important 

lessons for similar-scale projects in other areas. These accumulated lessons have enduring relevance—from 

the days of the NACA and large-scale wind tunnels for testing aircraft to the large-scale engineering 

projects involved in human spaceflight. From the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs to the Space 

Shuttle, the International Space Station, and the exploration of the Moon and Mars, they continue to 

guide and inform.151 One can clearly speculate where the future of flight may go, but whatever the course, 

success will hinge on continued federal stimulation of private-sector activity so that in the future it can 

build on the foundation of past successes and failures.152

Between 1915 and the 1970s, government officials in the United States undertook a series of critical 

initiatives designed to create a commercial airline industry in private hands. Washington lawmakers saw 

the necessity of fostering new technology for the purposes of national security, economic competitiveness, 

150 See Roger D. Launius, ed., Innovation and the Development of Flight (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999).

151 James E. Webb, Space Age Management: The Large Scale Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1969), p. 15.

152 On the future of flight, see Paul McCready, “Atmospheric Talents,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 76 (June 1995): 1019–

1021; Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities, 1950–2050 (San Francisco: 

Chronicle Books, 2001), pp. 166–168.
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Case Studies

and pride and prestige. That latter reason was in no small measure, because although Americans had 

invented the airplane in 1903, by 1914 leadership in aviation technology had moved to Europe and the 

United States had been left in the dust. Catching up became an important driver for federal investment. 

Government organizations took a multifaceted approach: military investment; research and development; 

regulatory efforts aimed at promoting safety, efficiency, and expanded operations; and direct subsidies 

to commercial entities until the 1960s. Congress could have established a national airline run by civil 

servants, but instead created a favorable climate for private investment in airlines. For instance, the U.S. 

Congress established the NACA in 1915 to conduct research on flight, and in 1921, New York and New 

Jersey created a port authority with the power to issue bonds and collect fees for airfields.

In terms of space transportation, there are several lessons to be drawn from the aviation experience. Like 

the NACA, government agencies could conduct basic research and transfer that knowledge to private 

firms. In addition, NASA could transfer its operational responsibility to private carriers. Congress could 

also create the authority—modeled on various earlier efforts such as the Overseas Private Investment 

Corporation—to provide loans and insurance to space line firms. Either the U.S. government or states 

could establish spaceport authorities to manage operations from the ground to orbit; federal agencies 

could also regulate routes and fares. Many of these efforts are already under way, and we are on the verge 

of seeing a new age of entrepreneurial space transportation efforts. There are, however, challenges to this 

approach, not the least of which is that NASA has a critical path with specific milestone deadlines and 

is hesitant to change this approach; the loans/insurance incentives may not produce services in time; 

and liability issues are especially burdensome. Nonetheless, major steps have been taken toward this 

capability in the last decade.

Creating the Telephone Industry

Everyone agrees—or almost everyone, since there are a few pretenders to this title and each has champions—that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts. A year 

later, he organized the Bell Patent Association to lease equipment to users.153 At first, as the inventor 

of the telephone, Bell held all rights to the technology; as time progressed, he worked to ensure that 

it gained as near monopoly status as possible. What became known as the American Telephone and 

Telegraph Company expanded over time, operating the full system, to which subscribers paid a fee for 

use as well as equipment rental, built at its laboratory, Western Electric Company.154

At this point, the Bell system was essentially a Massachusetts corporation providing this newly developed technology to users in New England. The Massachusetts legislature assisted in its expansion by 

153 Alexander Graham Bell, “Alexander Graham Bell Recalls Early Days of the Telephone,” Boston Daily Globe, 5 November 1911; Nandini 

Chandar and Paul J. Miranti, “Integrating Accounting and Statistics: Forecasting, Budgeting, and Production Planning at the American 

Telephone and Telegraph Company During the 1920s,” Accounting & Business Research 39, no. 4 (2009): 373–395.

154 “The Bell Telephone Company and the People,” New York Times, 8 February 1886; Curtis Sweet, “The Passing of the Telephone Age,” 

Business Communications Review 33, no. 4 (2003): 16–17; Louis Galambos, “High-Technology Industries,” Business History Review 66, 

no. 1 (spring 1992): 95–126.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

subscribing government resources to it, increasing its capital by $20,000 to $30,000.155 This enabled 

the expansion of the system over so-called “long lines” to New York City and other major cities in the 

United States. By 1895, the Bell system had over 300,000 phones, but this was nothing compared to 

the system’s expansion over the next 10 years, to 2,284,587 phones in 1905.156

Until this time, the Bell system had been loosely organized—to call it a system was a misnomer—but in 

the first part of the 20th century, AT&T’s leadership pressed to create a tightly managed, universally interconnected telephone system under a single company with a single set of policies. It moved effectively to 

undertake horizontal integration of the industry, advancing services broadly throughout American society 

and reducing competition while it increased its market share. In theory, economies of scale achieved in 

this way would increase the efficiency of the industry, although decreased competition might not result 

in savings to the customer.157

AT&T began buying out the competition and consolidating various telephone providers into an everlarger network. Company president Theodore Vail aggressively pursued this corporate strategy, epitomizing it by the slogan, “One Policy, One System, Universal Service.” AT&T began buying out competing 

companies (including the powerful telegraph company, Western Union), reducing their prices to gain control of competitors and then, once establishing a monopoly, raising the prices charged. The Mann-Elkins 

Act of 1910 extended the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to include the regulation of telephone companies, and these business practices immediately focused attention on AT&T.158

During World War I, the United States Post Office took control of all telegraph and telephone services 

for one year and then returned the telephone and telegraph services to private firms after the Armistice; 

at the end of the war, the Post Office returned these corporate assets to private control with the caveat 

that AT&T must accept close monitoring and tight regulation as a public trust under the ICC. The 

federal government and AT&T co-established terms of government regulation and ownership:

The federal government...agreed to pay to AT&T 41⁄2 percent of the gross operating revenues of the telephone companies as a service fee; to make provisions for depreciation 

and obsolescence at the high rate of 5.72 percent per plant; to make provision for the 

amortization of intangible capital; to disburse all interest and dividend requirements; and 

in addition, to keep the properties in as good a condition as before.159

155 “The Bell Telephone Company and the People,” New York Times, 8 February 1886.

156 Galambos, “High-Technology Industries,” pp. 95–126.

157 Jill Hills, “Regulation, Innovation and Market Structure in International Telecommunications: The Case of the 1956 TAT1 Submarine Cable,” 

Business History 49, no. 6 (2007): 868–885; Glenn Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1920 (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 

1992 ed.).

158 David Gabel, “Competition in a Network Industry: The Telephone Industry, 1894–1910,” Journal of Economic History 54, no. 3 (September 

1994): 543–572.

159 N. R. Danielian, quoted in Adam D. Thierer, “Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments in the Development of the Bell System Monopoly,” Cato 

Journal 14, no. 2 (fall 1994): 267–285, quotation from p. 275.
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Case Studies

Thereafter, AT&T had to negotiate with governmental entities for rates and standards of service. The 

company did very well in this heavily regulated environment. By 21 January 1919, long-distance rates 

had increased by 20 percent. Additionally, the company was also able to establish long-distance rates 

based on average cost, enabling them to charge more money to callers in big cities to subsidize callers 

in rural areas. Before the end of 1919, AT&T had received an estimated $42 million in rate increases. 

“Additionally, the government cut AT&T a $13 million dollar check at the end of the period to cover any 

losses they may have incurred, despite the fact that none were evident.”160 This was only the beginning. 

By 1925, almost every state had instituted strict rate regulations that discouraged telephone competition.

In 1934, the regulation of interstate telephone and telegraph services was transferred from the ICC to the 

Federal Communications Commission. The FCC was given the power to act in public interest over the 

telephone service, setting up AT&T as a government-sanctioned monopoly. Not without misgivings, elected 

officials embraced the AT&T monopoly. The argument for it rested on the concept of “natural monopoly,” 

a workable approach when a single firm dominates the market and when economies of scale are necessary to 

ensure effective service. Telecommunications represented a classic case of one firm being viewed as capable 

of serving consumers at lower costs than two or more firms.161 As economist Adam D. Thierer commented:

For example, telephone service traditionally has required laying an extensive cable network, 

constructing numerous call switching stations, and creating a variety of support services, 

before service could actually be initiated. Obviously, with such high entry costs, new firms 

can find it difficult to gain a toehold in the industry. Those problems are compounded 

by the fact that once a single firm overcomes the initial costs, their average cost of doing 

business drops rapidly relative to newcomers.162

This proved a compelling argument for Congress: “There is nothing to be gained by local competition in 

the telephone business.”163 State and national regulatory agencies actively sought to reduce competition 

for AT&T during the interwar period, calling it “wasteful duplication.”164

The Communications Act of 1934 transferred the control of telephone regulations from the ICC to 

the newly established Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC regulated rate changes, 

consolidations, connections, and the licensing of new companies. Even so, AT&T continued to operate as a monopoly until the 1970s, when the FCC suspected that AT&T was violating antitrust law. 

In 1974, United States vs. AT&T was filed by the Department of Justice, and in 1982, a settlement was 

reached in which the Bell system divided into several separate businesses.165

160 Ibid., p. 276.

161 D. F. Spulber, “Deregulating Telecommunications,” Yale Journal of Regulation 12, no. 1 (1995): 25–67.

162 Thierer, “Unnatural Monopoly,” p. 268.

163 Quoted in G. H. Loeb, “The Communications Act Policy Toward Competition: A Failure To Communicate,” Duke Law Journal 1 (1978): 1–56, 

quote from p. 14.

164 Gabel, “Competition in a Network Industry,” p. 562.

165 Paul J. Miranti, “Integrating Accounting and Statistics: Forecasting, Budgeting and Production Planning at the American Telephone and 

Telegraph Company During the 1920s,” Accounting and Business Research 39, no. 4 (2009): 373.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

At the time of divestiture, the Bell System was composed of American Telephone & Telegraph, its 22 

operating companies, Western Electric, and Bell Laboratories. This system served 84 percent of the 

nation’s telephone subscribers while the other 16 percent was served by 2,100 independents. AT&T 

had a little over $5 billion in assets, 685,000 stockholders, and an annual income of slightly more than 

$1 billion. All of Bell Systems resources—24,000 buildings; 177,000 motor vehicles; 1,000,000 employees; 142,000,000 telephones; and 1,700,000,000,000 miles of cable, microwave radio, and satellite 

circuits—had to be evenly distributed through nine viable corporate operations. Throughout the history 

of the land telephone, AT&T and Bell systems have given the United States an underground system of 

wire placement, metallic circuits, switchboards, long-distance communications between distant cities, 

and, above all, transcontinental telephone lines.166

The service provided to the American customer, and the costs incurred for this service, prompted the 

breakup of AT&T and the creation of the so-called “Baby Bells” in the 1980s: Bell South, Bell Atlantic, 

Nynex, Ameritech, SBC, U.S. West Communications, and Pacific Telesis. Much of this was a positive 

development. The Bell conglomerate was less innovative, less committed to customer service, and more 

costly to consumers than other systems. This changed with the Bell cartel’s breakup, at least for a time. 

By the latter part of the 1990s, especially with the advancing capabilities of telecommunications available 

to serve consumers, various telephone, cable TV, and other service providers began to merge, create joint 

ventures, and enlarge market share. Every time that happened, the services might become more transparent and convenient to the user, but the costs for their use increased. Many have questioned the beneficial 

nature of these more recent changes, and some of have advocated for a stricter regulatory environment. 

There is no resolution at present to this conundrum.167

This brings to the fore the issue of satellite telecommunications and the role of the U.S. government in 

helping to bring it about, facilitate it, and regulate it from the 1960s to the present. With the dawn of the 

Space Age, AT&T sought to extend its telecommunications monopoly into space by gaining approval to 

build its own communications satellites and operate as an approved monopoly. The Eisenhower administration had been warm to this approach, approving the development of Telstar, launched in 1962, as a 

corporate activity. At the same time, the Kennedy administration had a different approach to satellite communications. It sponsored the Communications Satellite Act of 1962. Key to this was the public-private 

COMSAT Corporation chartered to oversee the operation of communications satellites. Some free-market 

advocates believed then and since that the federal government’s intervention in this arena was heavy-handed 

and, in some instances, punitive. AT&T was quite willing to develop this technology without government 

involvement; the company questioned why it should not have been allowed to do so. The approach that 

a public-private entity would oversee space communications worked for a number of years but has been 

166 W. Brooke Tunstall, “The Breakup of the Bell System: A Case Study in Cultural Transformation,” California Management Review 28, no. 2 

(1986): 110–124; Leland L. Johnson, “Technological Advance and Market Structure in Domestic Telecommunications,” American Economic 

Review 60, no. 2 (1970): 204–208.

167 Tunstall, “Breakup of the Bell System,” pp. 120–124; Jerry A. Hausman, “Competition in Long-Distance and Telecommunications Equipment 

Markets: Effects of the MFJ,” Managerial and Decision Economics 16, no. 4 (July–August 1995): 365–383.
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superseded by a new business arrangement. There is still considerable regulation—especially for launch, 

orbital slots, and frequencies—but the result has been more open than anything since earlier eras.168

In terms of lessons learned for space commercialization, there are several issues to be addressed. The 

government’s role in providing patents is a given, but the granting of monopoly status and chartering 

special corporations with protections of a wide nature did not serve to foster an effective system that led to 

further enhancement of business opportunities. Will the government encourage private entrepreneurs to 

construct, own, operate, and use lunar communications networks, Mars communications networks, and 

deep space networks? This is a fundamental challenge for the future: Recent experience (Iridium, GPS) 

suggests that the cost of establishing certain space communications networks exceeds likely revenues. In 

such an environment, is the public-private partnership, with both sides investing, the best way forward?

Following the invention of the telephone in 1876, the federal government could have owned and operated telephone service—it did so during World War I—or it could have allowed a totally open market. 

Instead, it established phone companies as regulated monopolies under the FCC, with monopolistic 

privileges only removed in 1980. In essence, the following structure emerged:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The government provided patents, granted monopoly status, and chartered corporations.

The U.S. Attorney General allowed AT&T to control telephone service as a regulated 

monopoly (1913).

AT&T established Bell Laboratories (1925); Bell Labs developed the first orbiting communications satellite (Telstar 1, 1962).

Congress created COMSAT, a public-private corporation with monopoly status, to promote 

satellite communications (1962).

COMSAT represented the United States in the formation of INTELSAT and became its 

managing company.

Might the U.S. government foster a private space communications system that can serve the needs of 

all users on a commercial basis, rather than having NASA own its on TDRSS satellites? What is the 

future of space communications?

Supporting Scientific Research in Antarctica

The American involvement in Antarctica dates to the 19th century, but it was limited to separate 

spheres of private commercial ventures and public scientific pursuits much of the time. Many of the 

19th-century private interests in Antarctica centered on the sealing and whaling industries. By the 

early 20th century, according to Richard E. Byrd, “in summertime, its waters swarm with Norwegian 

whalers who annually harvest a revenue of $15,000,000 from their catch.”169 The expeditions of Robert 

F. Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and others revealed Antarctic deposits of iron, coal, titanium, and copper. 

168 David J. Whalen, The Origin of Satellite Communication (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002); Andrew J. Butrica, ed., 

Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4217, 1997).

169 Richard Evelyn Byrd, Little America: Aerial Exploration in the Antarctic The Flight to the South Pole (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1930), p. 39.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Yet beyond the few natural resources discovered and the sealing and whaling industries, there was little 

private interest in the continent.

Richard Byrd recounted several reasons why this was the case in the interwar period. He noted that 

the continent was geographically isolated and its weather conditions were highly inhospitable. Prior 

to the heavy scientific investment of the postwar era, little was known about the continent in terms of 

how to navigate it, and little was known of its geology, geomagnetism, or glaciological formations. In 

this regard, there was little certainty of how navigational instruments would operate. Flight was still 

in its infancy and incapable of doing much to open the territory. Byrd fully believed that there were 

reasons to exploit the resources of Antarctica, but he recognized that use and profit had a long way 

to go before realization. He did not discount the scientific community’s interest in Antarctica, but he 

wanted to advance commercial motivations.170 Byrd recounted that “Antarctica[,] ‘a vast wonderland 

laid out on a giant scale, in which littleness has no place,’ cannot be judged, or appraised, according 

to limited values.” He expressed disappointment: “[V]ainly did I [Richard Byrd] try to impress this 

fact upon a well-known American business man. ‘But where’s the money in it? Where’s the profit[?]’ 

he demanded.”171 After his failure to convince others of the commercial opportunities in Antarctica, 

scientific inquiry and discovery remained America’s chief interests in Antarctica other than the offshore 

private whaling and sealing industry.

This did not change until the opening of major U.S. permanent sites on the continent during the 

International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58. The initial mission of the IGY was to study the 

geophysics of Earth’s polar regions, but this mandate eventually expanded to include a wide range of 

scientific efforts. The Antarctic program fostered collaborative research with other countries and “comprises research by scientists selected from universities and other research institutions and operations and 

support by a contractor and other agencies of the U.S. Government.”172

Everyone realized that human exploration of the polar regions and scientific research there were both 

costly and life-threatening. The U.S. federal government pursued these activities for the public good 

throughout much of the 20th century. These were fundamentally governmental activities. In particular, 

the government sought to establish human research stations in Antarctica, mobilizing considerable public 

resources to do so. The Navy and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the principal entities involved 

in Antarctic operations, led this effort, operating them for presumed altruistic scientific purposes.173

170 Lisle A. Rose, Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), pp. 405–411.

171 Byrd, Little America, p. 39.

172 National Science Foundation, “United States Antarctic Program,” available online at http://www.nsf.gov/geo/plr/antarct/usap.jsp, accessed 

13 June 2013.

173 Numerous works capture the American experience and motivation to explore the poles; see, in particular, Michael Robinson, The Coldest 

Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Kenneth Bertrand, Americans in Antarctica, 

1775–1948 (Washington, DC: American Geographical Society, 1971); G. E. Fogg, A History of Antarctic Science (Cambridge, U.K.: 

Cambridge University Press, 1992); Stephen Pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988). These are recent, 

ambitious works that address the various science missions undertaken in Antarctica and argue for their importance.
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Case Studies

In many respects, the history of human actions in Antarctica mirrors the larger story of how the various 

great powers have interrelated since the conclusion of World War II. If one were to characterize it accurately throughout the last 50-plus years, the undeniable conclusion is that all parties have participated 

in an uneasy relationship in which they have recognized that they were better off cooperating to ensure 

that the icy continent was not developed. Instead, they sought to preserve it as a pristine continent. 

This approach to dealing with Antarctica is really a relic of the Cold War rivalries of the latter 1950s, 

and especially of the remarkable scientific endeavor known as the International Geophysical Year (IGY). 

Twelve nations participated directly in Antarctic research during that organized scientific research effort. 

The approach, in essence, ensured that since one side could not exploit the continent, no one would 

be allowed to do so.174

Because of the success of this approach during the IGY, which was managed by an international consortium, within a year afterward the 12 nations already in Antarctica met in Washington, DC, to sign 

the Antarctic Treaty, which “internationalized” Antarctica on a limited basis as a “continent dedicated 

to peace and science.” Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty suspended (or “froze” in the official pun of the 

conference) all sovereignty claims to the continent for its duration, bringing to an end the active phase 

of very real disputes between Great Britain, Argentina, and Chile over control of the continent. To 

many people at the time, it appeared as if the idealism of science had trumped Cold War geopolitics. 

Historians have tended to follow this idealistic interpretation of the connection between the IGY and the 

Antarctic Treaty, and the southern continent tends to be held up as an all-too-rare example of scientific 

cooperation fostering political harmony.175

Of course, the IGY did indeed play an important role in the resolution of the Antarctic sovereignty 

dispute, but not in quite the idealistic way that the traditional narrative has suggested. The actual science 

of the IGY, and the improved understanding of the Antarctic environment that it facilitated, played an 

important role in the partial resolution of the question of sovereignty. As officials in the treaty nations, 

especially in Great Britain and the United States, learned more about the reality of the Antarctic environment through the work of the IGY—in particular the realization that it contained little or nothing 

of immediate economic value—they acceded to arguments in favor of internationalizing the continent. 

There was, in any eventuality, not much of a downside in the foreseeable future.176

174 See Roger D. Launius, James Rodger Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, eds., Globalizing Polar Science: Reconsidering the International Polar 

and Geophysical Years (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

175 M. J. Peterson, Managing the Frozen South: The Creation and Evolution of the Antarctic Treaty System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1988); Jeffrey D. Myhre, The Antarctic Treaty System: Politics, Law, and Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986); Steven J. Burton, 

“New Stresses on the Antarctic Treaty: Toward International Legal Institutions Governing Antarctic Resources,” Virginia Law Review 65 (April 

1979): 421–512; Paul Arthur Berkman, “Common Interests in the International Space of Antarctica,” available online at Antarctic Treaty 

Summit 2009, http://www.atsummit50.aq/media/journal-6.pdf, accessed 21 January 2011.

176 The idealistic position is maintained in Richard S. Lewis, A Continent for Science: The Antarctic Adventure (New York: Viking Press, 1965); 

A. Elzinga, “Antarctica: The Construction of a Continent by and for Science,” in Elisabeth Crawford et al., eds., Denationalizing Science

(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1993), 73–106. More realpolitik positions are offered in Peter Beck, The International Politics 

of Antarctica (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics in Antarctica: Views from the Southern Oceanic Rim (New York: John 

Wiley, 1997); Paul Arthur Berkman, Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2002).
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Accordingly, the United States led an effort to defuse geopolitical tensions in Antarctica by internationalizing the continent. As the various nations accepted this position, they found themselves members of 

the Antarctic Treaty System’s (ATS’s) “exclusive club,” which continues to govern the continent to this 

day. Initially the Antarctic Treaty signatory countries disagreed on the question of the Soviet Union’s 

role on the continent. U.S. officials, perhaps somewhat naively, believed that they could create a treaty 

regime for Antarctica that would exclude the Soviet Union. British officials—who were especially 

keen to resolve the dispute—argued, more realistically, that the communist superpower would have 

to be included for any internationalization of Antarctica to work. After some discussion, the British 

position prevailed.177

The Antarctic Treaty has been quite successful overall. In addition to having an intrinsic value of its 

own—especially at a time of growing awareness of the centrality of the southern continent to the global 

environment—science has also done much to keep the peace in Antarctica. Scientific cooperation has 

laid the basis for half a century of peaceful coexistence in a region that was becoming increasingly 

contentious in the 1940s and 1950s.178

Once a permanent presence in Antarctica was established, how would it be maintained? This would be, 

without question, a highly regulated environment because of the treaty system governing the Antarctic 

continent. Not only banning Great Power actions that might upset the status quo there, the treaty 

system also barred natural-resource exploitation. Despite attempts to deregulate and effectively open 

Antarctica to resource extraction, international policy has remained firmly opposed through the present. Accordingly, the Antarctic Treaty System has thus far kept corporate objectives in check. At the 

same time, it has turned off a profit motive for and expansion of access to the continent, in the process 

keeping prices of support high and fundamentally a government-supported activity.

With that as the case, there are a small number of organizations that could provide support to 

American efforts in Antarctica. Since there is no permanent population and no normal economic 

activity, supplies need to be transported in at government expense to sustain the American presence 

there. And it is important to note that the government presence is the only one in Antarctica because 

of the treaty system in place prohibiting commercial development. In the 1950s, the United States 

had traditionally been represented by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Navy. As late 

177 Rip Bulkeley, “The Political Origins of the Antarctic Treaty,” Polar Record 46 (2010): 9–11; Paul Arthur Berkman, “Common Interests in the 

International Space of Antarctica,” Polar Record 46 (2010): 7–9; Christy Collis and Quentin Stevens, “Modern Colonialism in Antarctica: 

The Coldest Battle of the Cold War,” in Gunter Lehman and David Nichols, eds., Proceedings of the 7th Australasian Urban History/Planning 

History Conference (Geelong, Australia: Deakin University, 2004), pp. 72–95, quote from p. 95. See also Quentin Stevens and Christy Collis, 

“Living in the Cold Light of Reason: Colonial Settlements in Antarctica,” in Maryam Gusheh and Naomi Stead, eds., Proceedings of Progress: 

The 20th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (2003): 291–297.

178 M. J. Peterson, “Antarctica: The Last Great Land Rush on Earth,” International Organization 34, no. 3 (summer 1980); J. Dugger, “Exploiting 

Antarctica’s Mineral Resources, University of Miami Law Review 33 (December 1978).
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Case Studies

as 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued a Presidential Memorandum affirming that NSF would be 

the managing body for the United States’ presence in Antarctica. It gave NSF responsibility to

• 

• 

• 

• 

budget for and manage the entire United States national program in Antarctica, including 

logistic support activities so that the program may be managed as a single package;

fund university research and federal agency programs related to Antarctica;

draw upon logistic support capabilities of government agencies on a cost reimbursable 

basis; and

use commercial support and management facilities where these are determined to be cost 

effective and will not, in the view of the [Antarctic Policy] Group, be detrimental to the 

national interest.179

It allowed other agencies to undertake short-term programs of scientific activity related to Antarctica, 

but only under strict regulation.

The American permanent presence really began with Operation Deep Freeze I (ODF), an expedition to 

Antarctica in 1955 and 1956 with the goal to establish a permanent settlement for the United States. 

An American force of 19 aircraft, 10 ships, and 1,000 men departed the United States for New Zealand, 

where the military already had in place icebreakers—the USS Glacier and the USS Edisto—and several 

transport planes at Christchurch International Airport. The IGY was the impetus for ODF, and the 

military was to provide logistics for the National Committee IGY scientists, conduct mapping and 

special projects, establish permanent stations as directed by the American scientific community (what 

would become NSF), and conduct scientific investigations for the Department of Defense (DOD).180

ODF’s first priorities were logistics and establishing the Little America IV station and what became Byrd 

Station. In order to begin air operations, ODF established an Air Operating Facility on the Ross Ice 

Shelf. This way, flights could be conducted on the Antarctic surface instead of relying on the constant 

presence of aircraft carriers.

The project relied on America’s agreements with New Zealand to use the Christchurch International 

Airport as a reliable airport and byway for cargo. The Navy and Air Force carried out the operations 

during the Antarctic summer months between 1955 and 1956 to completion. Those included making 

nine successful long-range exploratory flights, building the Little America base, assembling the parts for 

Byrd Station, building the Air Operating Facility at McMurdo, exploring less-known parts of Antarctica 

in the Astrid Coast, and locating sites for the U.S.–New Zealand IGY station and IGY sites near the 

Weddell Sea and Vincennes Bay on the Knox Coast.181

179 “President’s Memorandum Regarding Antarctica,” Memorandum 6646, 5 February 1982, available online at http://www.nsf.gov/geo/plr/ant/

memo_6646.jsp, accessed 15 September 2013.

180 “Deep Freeze I, Summary of Operations, 1955–56,” Naval History & Heritage Command, available online at http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/

exploration/deepfreeze/ctf.htm, accessed 23 July 2013.

181 Ibid.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Essentially, the first significant American initiative to establish a permanent human existence in Antarctica 

required a huge influx of government-funded personnel, materiel, and strong logistics support, which 

continues to this day. The Navy ended its involvement with the Antarctic Program in 1998. The Air 

Force and National Guard remain active players.

Human presence in Antarctica has increasingly included tourists since 1958, when 194 people made their 

way to the continent. The tourism industry began to flourish in the 1990s, when, for the first time, over 

5,000 visitors reached Antarctica in 1992. When environmental protection became a significant pillar of 

the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), tourism policy began to be stringently regulated. As tourism rose, so 

too did the regulations governing it. Signed by the ATS members at their 1991 meeting in Madrid, the 

Protocol on Environmental Protection and its seven annexes maintained Antarctica’s status as a natural 

reserve for science and peace but further designated it as a continent free of mineral resource extraction (except in the interest of science), subjected human activity to environmental impact assessment 

(EIA), and ensured the protection of flora and fauna through pollution mitigation and waste disposal 

procedures. The Protocol also established a Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) to advise 

and provide recommendations to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM).182

One of the key regulatory instruments the Protocol called for was the EIA. The EIA is in place to assess 

numerous environmental concerns such as “translocating species whether floral or faunal,” transitory 

damage from tourists, and chemical pollution; however, the EIA has some drawbacks.183 Legal analysts 

Kees Bastmeijer and Ricardo Roura describe how the EIA assesses tourism’s impact on Antarctica:

The three tiered EIA system of the Protocol refers to whether impacts are less than, no 

more than, or more than “minor and transitory”. The greater the intensity and duration 

of impacts, the greater the detail and scrutiny required in the EIA. Cumulative impacts, if 

and when they occur, may also be more serious. For example, tourism could plainly be a 

factor in introducing or translocating alien species or diseases, but this process is not well 

understood or monitored. Although the risk may be low, the potential consequences may 

be severe, and the impacts are difficult to assess in an Antarctic EIA.184

In these ways, the EIA requires extensive scrutiny by both the CEP and the ATCM itself, but the EIA 

does not effectively regulate tourism because it does not account for long-term environmental effects 

or assess the cumulative impact of human activities.

182 Daniela Liggett and Alan D. Hemmings, eds., “Exploring Antarctic Values: Proceedings of the Workshop Exploring Linkages Between 

Environmental Management and Value Systems: The Case of Antarctica,” held at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, 

5 December 2011, available online at http://antarctica-ssag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/SSAG-proceedings-2013.pdf, accessed 

11 November 2013.

183 Daniela Liggett, “Tourism in the Antarctic: Modi Operandi and Regulatory Effectiveness,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Canterbury, 2009, pp. 46–49.

184 Kees Bastmeijer and Ricardo Roura, “Regulating Antarctic Tourism and the Precautionary Principle,” American Journal of International Law 98, no. 4 

(October 2004): 763–781, quote from p. 770. For more on the implementation of regulations, see Mike G. Richardson, “Regulating Tourism in the 

Antarctic: Issues of Environment and Jurisdiction,” in Davor Vids, ed., Implementing the Environmental Protection Regime for the Antarctic (2000).
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Case Studies

Bastmeijer and Roura argue that there will be an uphill battle to ensure Antarctic preservation efforts into 

the future. This is largely because of the rise of eco-tourism and the radical expansion of the pleasurecruise industry. Moreover, the Antarctic Treaty System has not implemented a full system for monitoring 

and auditing the results of human activity. There are also no worthwhile studies of the limits of tourism, 

their activities, and their impacts on the environment.185

What is clear is that there are very clear pressures on the system from tourism groups that will seek to 

exploit cracks in the Antarctic Treaty System for commercial gain. There is little question that tourism 

will eventually become a major economic activity in Antarctica. The core questions are what forms it will 

take—especially short visits versus four-star hotels and tourist compounds on the Antarctic coast—how 

it will be regulated, and how will it be logistically supported. A corollary question is, what technologies 

and methodologies will need to be pursued to ensure that this is done expeditiously and safely? This 

raises the specter of serious issues to be wrestled with in developing Antarctic tourism, some of them the 

same concerns that relate to eco-tourism in other places on Earth. Many of these issues have seemingly 

not been sufficiently understood and appreciated by those advocating for Antarctic tourism.

Central to this pressure on the Antarctic Treaty System, the National Science Foundation stands as the 

sole American entity overseeing U.S. efforts on the continent. It is the central organization that provides 

grants and contracts for activity in both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. NSF came into being 

in 1950 through a congressional act, largely at the behest of the scientific community. In particular, 

physicist Vannevar Bush published a study entitled Science: The Endless Frontier, which argued for an 

organization to coordinate basic science in America and science policy-making.186 American involvement in the International Geophysical Year, a global civilian scientific initiative, inspired considerable 

interest in Antarctica. Thus, NSF created the United States Antarctic Program to coordinate American 

efforts on the continent. The structure of this program is as follows:

NSF Organization

National Science Foundation  Directorate for Geosciences (GEO)  Office of Polar 

Programs (PLR)  United States Antarctic Program (USAP)

Federal government interagency concerns affected the efforts in Antarctica in the late 1950s. IGY-Navy 

tensions emerged surrounding the command structure in Antarctica; for example, should a scientist lead, 

or perhaps a military officer should do so? NSF and the Navy settled on a dual-command system; despite 

185 Bastmeijer and Roura, “Regulating Antarctic Tourism and the Precautionary Principle,” pp. 763–781.

186 Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier, A Report to the President, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 

1945 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945), available online at https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm, accessed 

24 July 2013. Also see Daniel Kleinman, Politics on the Endless Frontier (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995). In a revisionist 

approach, Daniel Kevles decenters Bush as the impetus for NSF in “The National Science Foundation and the Debate over Postwar Research 

Policy, 1942–1945,” Isis 68 (1977).
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

the rivalry, historian Dian Belanger argues that it proved a reasonable approach to governing activities 

on the continent.187

Private interests have driven one particular arena of Antarctic politics since the early Cold War: the exploitation of mineral and Earth resources. The Antarctic has been subject to exploitation since the 18th century, 

when explorers pursued sealing and whaling. By the 20th century, mineral resources had become a valuable 

pursuit, yet it is this arena that has largely been stifled from commercialization.

Throughout the 1980s, the several states with claims in the Antarctic debated the Convention on the 

Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities. For roughly six years, 33 states debated the international agreement’s provisions. Essentially, the bill would have legalized oil and mineral resource extraction 

upon the Antarctic continent. The United States and New Zealand, among others, expressed support for 

the bill. The State Department claimed “it is better to have regulated exploitation than a legal vacuum,”188

in which no restraints had been formalized. However, the governments of Australia and France, among others, expressed deep environmental protectionism of the Antarctic continent and thus rejected the motion.

The Convention garnered 19 signatories, yet none ratified it, thus it never came into force. As such, 

there remained no tangible provision for environmental regulation in the Antarctic until the Protocol on 

Environmental Protection was added to the Antarctic Treaty in 1998; it received ratification by 33 states. 

Ultimately, the Protocol reserved “Antarctica as a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science.”189 In this 

regard, the United States can only promote certain types of private industry below the 60th parallel, given 

the international regulations it is subject to. Logistical support through contracts remains the primary 

opportunity for private ventures in the Antarctic.

In 1998, the U.S. government contracted with Air New Zealand to service aircraft for the U.S. Antarctic 

Program. The contract was essentially a five-year extension of the work Air New Zealand had already been 

conducting, but the U.S. Navy’s decision to relinquish most logistical operations signaled a transition in 

the support program for American efforts on the continent. Instead, the Air National Guard and a contractor group, Antarctic Support Associates (ASA), provided the services previously handled by the Navy. 

NSF representative William Bryant announced that the contract presented the “most cost-effective and 

best operational option,”190 which would provide for depot and vehicle maintenance and repair service 

for NSF facilities. Along with these benefits for the American program, Bryant stressed local benefits 

to the Christchurch, New Zealand, community, in the area of 20 to 26 million dollars. This contract 

signified not only the collaborative nature of American scientific initiatives abroad but also an opening 

for the private sector, given the withdrawal of the Navy. Antarctic Support Associates filled the void left 

by government displacement.

187 Dian O. Belanger, “The International Geophysical Year in Antarctica: A Triumph of ‘Apolitical’ Science, Politics, and Peace,” in Launius, 

Fleming, and DeVorkin, eds., Globalizing Polar Science, p. 266. See also Dian O. Belanger, Deep Freeze: The United States, the International 

Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2006).

188 Malcolm W. Browne, “France and Australia Kill Pact on Limited Antarctic Mining and Oil Drilling,” New York Times, 27 September 1989.

189 “The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty,” 4 October 1991, available online at http://www.ats.aq/e/ep.htm, accessed 20 June 2013.

190 “NZ Wins $2m Contract for Ice Aircraft Work,” The Press (Christchurch, NZ), 24 January 1998, p. 7.
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Case Studies

Antarctic Support Associates is a Colorado-based civilian contractor. In October 1989, ASA submitted 

its proposal to NSF as a joint venture of Holmes & Narver Services, Incorporated (HNSI), and EG&G 

Incorporated (EGGI). HNSI is an Orange, California, management, architectural, and building services 

organization. EGGI is an Albuquerque, New Mexico–based technical services company specializing 

in systems engineering; integration; equipment design for command, control, and security systems; 

and data acquisition and monitoring. Both organizations have a history of government contracting, 

both locally and federally. The contract required ASA to support “operation of research laboratories, 

the procurement of equipment and supplies for laboratories and field parties of various sizes, design, 

procurement and construction of facilities.”191

The agreement also specified that ASA would hold total operational accountability for both the Palmer 

and Amundsen-Scott South Pole stations as well as maintenance services for McMurdo Station. ASA also 

supplied travel for USAP and NSF personnel to and from Antarctica. The contract also left a provision 

for subcontracts from ASA. Moreover, ASA provided travel through the United States; Christchurch, 

New Zealand; and South America. NSF expected ASA to be in contact with the research projects and 

their investigators to ensure data and specimen delivery. NSF also expected ASA to provide general 

science support with vehicles, with data collection, and through meeting attendance. The contract also 

assigned ASA the task of infrastructure maintenance, such as plumbing, electrical service, power supply, 

scientific equipment, and housing. Essentially, NSF contracted out many of its operational objectives 

to ASA. The contract also specified the logistical support ASA was to provide.

Logistically, the contractors operated beyond the aforementioned Antarctic stations; the contract also 

supported the USAP from Port Hueneme near Oxnard, California, and in Punta Arenas, Chile, as well 

as Ushuaia, Argentina, and, as mentioned, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Each locale served a particular 

purpose of the operation. Port Hueneme functioned as the assembly and processing center, with office 

space and a warehouse. The port also served as a point of contact in the United States. Vendors in Punta 

Arenas, Chile, and Ushuaia, Argentina, supplied warehouse space, coordination, and support for vessel 

operations. Christchurch, New Zealand, operators also provided warehousing, cargo processing, and 

the facilitating of accommodations for American personnel.

In 2000, Raytheon Technical Services Company won a contract from the USAP to provide logistics, 

operations, and staffing to the NSF program, particularly at the McMurdo Station. Raytheon created 

a division specifically to carry out the 12-year contract called the Raytheon Polar Services Company 

(RPSC). The contract expired on 30 March 2012, fulfilling its duties to operate transport vessels, provide 

scientific support, and continually resupply the McMurdo Station.

Near the expiration of RPSC’s contract in 2011, Lockheed Martin won a $2 billion Antarctic support 

contract from NSF. The contract began on 1 April 2012 and is set to last for a maximum of 4.5 years, 

191 “Antarctic Support Associates Contract for Logistical Support to the U.S. Antarctic Program, NSF Contract No. DPP-8922632, available online 

at http://www.nsf.gov/about/contracting/rfqs/support_ant/historical.jsp, accessed 26 June 2013.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

although it has milestones that, if not met, allow its cancellation. The competitive contract awarded by 

NSF mandates that Lockheed provide technological and infrastructural support to the USAP.192

Contemporary U.S. government policies, such as the various support service contracts awarded and the 

official end of the Navy’s operation, suggest an increase in private involvement since the 1990s. In the 

21st century, the National Science Foundation has been interested largely in finding contractors capable 

of providing transport services, facility maintenance, and operations and logistical support. Raytheon and 

then Lockheed took over many of the operations originally supported by the Navy. If the Coast Guard 

and Air National Guard were to similarly end their operations, it is plausible that NSF would contract 

their operations out to the private industry as well. The scientific investigations and research projects will 

remain the responsibility of American universities, research institutions, and federal agencies and will be 

provided for through government grants. The private industry, however, has increasingly assumed more 

logistical and infrastructural duties, absorbing them as contracts from the U.S. armed forces.193

Antarctica long has been a site of largely public interest rather than of private enterprise. I remain skeptical that the U.S. government is heavily interested in fostering commercialization. If the government is 

reluctant to encourage commercial enterprise in Antarctica, this could be due to a number of factors. 

There is considerable liability involved in an Antarctic undertaking, given the inhospitable conditions 

and geographic isolation. What I find most significant is the international community’s privileging of 

environmental and scientific operations in Antarctica and in the preserving of the continent. Attempts to 

prevent the continent from being exploited by private natural-resource developers have used overwhelming international opposition to stifle a potentially profitable enterprise.

Also, environmentalist sentiment has prompted the regulation of the whaling and sealing industries. 

International regulations have subdued private involvement in resource exploitation overwhelmingly 

during the postwar years. While government contracting has fostered commercial interest in Antarctica 

since the 1980s, there is still an official shyness in fostering economic enterprises. Previously, the military 

supported the logistical and infrastructural operations of Antarctic exploration and human settlement 

without any private involvement whatsoever. This small movement toward increased competitive contracting for these operations to U.S. private industry is akin to the transition of air operations from a 

government entity to private-sector contractors. It portends the beginning of expanded economic activities in Antarctica.

As in that earlier air carrier transition in the 1920s, the U.S. government invested heavily in Antarctica 

to establish a lasting human presence. The military and the scientific community have also played 

a significant role, especially since the 1950s. Historian Marc Rothenburg states it best: “it would 

be incorrect, however, to assume that polar research truly became routine with better planning and 

the subsequent technological innovations of the 20th century.”194 Much of the success in corralling 

192 Jeffrey Mervis, “Updated: NSF Picks Lockheed for Huge Antarctic Support Contract,” ScienceInsider.com, 29 December 2011, available online 

at http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/12/updated-nsf-picks-lockheed-huge-antarctic-support-contract, accessed 11 November 2013.

193 “About That Antarctic Contract Rebid...,” available online at http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/ncs/ncs.html, accessed 11 November 2013.

194 Marc Rothenburg, “Making Science Global,” in Launius, Fleming, and DeVorkin, eds., Globalizing Polar Science, p. 32.
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Case Studies

Antarctica only for science research was because of the efforts of military leaders as facilitators, NSF 

as a funding source, and scientists as advocates. They did not, fortunately, have much in the way of 

organized opposition from commercial entities. Private industry was active in the region prior to World 

War II, but only in the niche markets of whaling and sealing. As international environmental regulations have restricted those practices as well as those of natural resource development, large sectors of 

private interests have been ruled out. Tourism and logistics, however, have become major avenues of 

Antarctic commercial activity.

Insisting that Antarctica remain a site of scientific inquiry with a limited commercial presence will ensure 

that support efforts will be limited to government contracts and the existing regulatory regime. It will 

also mean that scientific interest and overwhelming international environmentalist sentiment will be 

buttressed in efforts to defeat commercialization. Unless there is a significant change in international 

environmental policy toward the Antarctic continent, private interests may well be heavily restricted and/

or regulated. That is not to say that the private sector has no place on the icy continent. Two significant 

areas of private involvement are active in Antarctica:

• 

• 

Tourism: While the ATS is currently resolving how to regulate and monitor the effects of the 

tourist industry on the Antarctic environment and scientific pursuits, it remains an area of 

significant private interest represented by the International Association of Antarctica Tour 

Operators (IAATO), cruise lines, and travel agencies.

Logistics: In the early 1990s, American contractors began to provide logistical, administrative, 

and technical support to governmental efforts.

The fact that this commercial activity has not progressed further is because of international, environmental, and industrial policy. The ATS’s central tenets are threefold: safeguarding international peace, 

ensuring freedom of scientific research, and protecting the Antarctic environment. The third tenet of 

environmental protection became official with the 1991 adoption of the Protocol on Environmental 

Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This provision officially disallowed the exploitation of Earth resources 

by mining interests. Other private industrial operations would require an environmental impact assessment (EIA), in particular for interference with “Antarctic flora and fauna, introducing non-native species 

into Antarctica, and entering Antarctic Specially Protected Areas.”195

NASA’s efforts in space closely mirror those of NSF in Antarctica. Both are inhospitable environments 

that are difficult to access. Both are zones protected from weapons, a Cold War trait, as well as mineral and other resource development. However, space, unlike Antarctica, is not strictly protected from 

environmental degradation. “Space junk” is becoming a concern for spaceflight, given the numerous 

decommissioned satellites, parts from multistage rockets, and many other pieces of floating debris. 

Anti-satellite tests, the Project Westford communications test, geostationary satellites, and other orbiting devices overpopulate both low-Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. In essence, there are numerous 

195 Bastmeijer and Roura, “Regulating Antarctic Tourism and the Precautionary Principle,” p. 768.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

layers of space pollution. The U.S. military is monitoring the roughly 20,000 orbiting pieces of debris; 

however, there are no currently planned efforts to retrieve any of them.196

Thus, for the United States to promote space commercialization, it must make industry aware of 

the spatial conditions in which flight will take place. Spaceflight is already a risky business, but it is 

increasingly becoming more so with more and more devices flying over Earth in as many flightpaths. 

I recommend that the federal government begin to think about space debris and their corresponding 

flightpaths to ensure greater safety in space.197 International organizations and national space organizations also should begin to think about regulating space as an environment prone to pollution and 

find a way to restrict which types of satellites should be orbited. Alternatively, the international community could develop a set of standards for satellites such as satellite durability and lifetime. This type 

of agreement will face harsh resistance but may well be necessary should orbital accidents begin to 

take place as we humans overpopulate our skies with satellites. If we avoid accidents not only during 

takeoff and landings but also during flight, space commercialization has a greater chance for success.

Antarctica has a legal status similar to that of the Moon. It is utilized primarily for scientific research, 

and no nation can claim its land. Yet basic supplies and logistic support for U.S. operations on the 

continent are provided by nonfederal organizations. Might this become a possibility in the future on 

the ISS or the Moon? Fostering such an approach to space activities could mean that control of orbital 

lunar assets would remain with NASA, which would select and fund science projects, oversee policy, 

and cycle personnel as necessary. The operation of these stations, however, could fall to a company 

with experience in remote locations, staffed by its own employees. Transportation to and from these 

stations could also be provided by outside organizations. At the same time, commercial activities could 

be encouraged.

Advancing Public Works

Frequently in the history of the United States, the federal government has developed critical infrastructure, often for its national security purposes, but then quickly transitioned it to the private sector for 

economic development. One of the most creative approaches to this process has been the use of the 

government or quasi-government development commission. There have been several of these in U.S. 

history. Among the most celebrated have been the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Rural 

Electrification Administration, both of which originated as New Deal programs in the 1930s. Both of 

these efforts were viewed as a “public good” assisting in the enhancement of the general welfare of the 

196 Nickolay Smirnov, Space Debris: Hazard Evaluation and Mitigation (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2002); Richard Talcott, “How We Junked Up 

Outer Space,” Astronomy 36, no. 6 (June 2008): 40–43; Daniel Michaels, “A Cosmic Question: How To Get Rid of All That Orbiting Space 

Junk?” Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2009.

197 David Whitlock, “History of On-Orbit Satellite Fragmentations,” NASA Johnson Space Center, 2004, available online at http://www.

orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/SatelliteFragHistory/13thEditionofBreakupBook.pdf, accessed 11 November 2013.
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Case Studies

people of the United States. Both served as investments that enabled regions that had not been developed 

to enhance economic competitiveness almost overnight.198

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created by an act of Congress on 13 May 1933 as part of President 

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda. The agency was to have the greatest effect on the daily life 

of Alabama residents. Many goals for TVA outlined by the act included flood control, improvement 

of navigation, reforestation of the lands in the valley, agricultural and industrial development, and the 

operation of defense plants at Muscle Shoals, a mass of jagged rocks that made boat passage impossible. 

By the late 1930s, TVA hydroelectric facilities had been built in Alabama. They were powered by the 

water behind three huge dams—Wilson, Wheeler, and Guntersville. Thereafter, electricity was available 

in places it had never been before and at rates that most local people could afford.199

As a federal corporation, TVA could not make a profit from its electric power sales. Its goal was to keep 

its electric power rates as low as possible while providing as much service as possible. Still a major entity 

in the Deep South, the agency’s service area covers all of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, 

Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. Electricity from its plants flows through 17,000 miles 

of transmission lines to three million customers in an 80,000-square-mile service area. TVA’s electrical 

power system remains the largest in the United States.

The establishment of TVA was only possible because of the Great Depression and the need to remediate 

economic suffering. As analyst Roscoe C. Martin concluded:

At very long last, a combination of circumstances occurred which created a climate favorable to adoption of a public development measure. The principal elements which entered 

into the combination were the depression of the early nineteen-thirties, the depressed 

state of the Tennessee Valley, the continued support of Senator Norris, the leadership 

of President Roosevelt, and the state of mind of both the country and the organs of 

government, including principally and specifically the Congress. In the spring of 1933, 

President Roosevelt recommended to Congress action looking to the public development 

of the Muscle Shoals site. Senator George Norris and Representative (now Senator) Lister 

Hill joined in support of a measure which Congress accepted, and on May 18, 1933, the 

Tennessee Valley Authority Act became law.200

198 Basic histories of these organizations include North Callahan, TVA: Bridge over Troubled Water, A History of the Tennessee Valley Authority 

(New York: A. S. Barnes, 1980); Edwin C. Hargrove, Prisoners of Myth: The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933–1990 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Richard A. Colignon, Power Plays: Critical Events in the Institutionalization of the Tennessee 

Valley Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Richard A. Pence and Patrick Dahl, The Next Greatest Thing: Fifty Years 

of Rural Electrification in America (New York: Consultants Library, 1984); Robert T. Beall, “Rural Electrification,” United States Yearbook of 

Agriculture (Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1940), pp. 790–809.

199 “Tennessee Valley Authority,” International Directory of Company Histories, Encyclopedia.com, 2003, available online at http://www.

encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2845400109.html, accessed 11 November 2013.

200 Roscoe C. Martin, “The Tennessee Valley Authority: A Study of Federal Control,” Law and Contemporary Problems 22 (1957): 351–377, quote 

from p. 354.
HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

80

Congress created TVA in an effort to utilize the natural resources of the valley to “promote the well-being 

of the people” and to “bring about healthy agricultural and economic conditions.”201

Charles McCarthy, Assistant General Counsel of TVA in 1950, argued that since private companies would 

have no interest in the public purposes of flood control and navigation, it was necessary for TVA to have direct 

responsibility for developing the river. However, private industries and local governments had direct control 

over other resources in the valley, and TVA provided only technical assistance and encouragement. TVA 

could propose plans, but it could not enforce them, according to McCarthy, and had to rely on the “stimulation of local initiative.” He added, “TVA has insisted...that the people of the Region must do the job. The 

TVA approach has been one of education, with reliance on demonstration rather than on compulsion.”202

In terms of flood control, TVA had a powerful effect by harnessing the Tennessee River with nine dams 

and a management program aimed at making it an integral part of the Inland Waterways System. 

According to McCarthy, by 1950 the Norris Dam of 1936 had prevented no less than $41.5 million 

in flooding damage to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The system also fostered dramatic improvements to 

the agricultural community and created a well-received recreational system in the region. “More than 

$16,000,000 has been expended since 1933 for recreation facilities along TVA lake shores—for summer cottages, resorts, public parks, boats, mooring facilities, and the like,” commented McCarthy. “The 

tourist industry, insignificant in 1933, is now recognized as the third industry of the Valley, amounting 

to some $175,000,000 annually.” He also insisted that the contribution of TVA remade the Tennessee 

Valley into a desirable location for economic investment because of inexpensive electricity and the creation of a favorable business climate.203

TVA has been a public-private partnership from the beginning. The vast majority of its operations have 

been funded and managed by the government entity. The building of dams and other facilities, the 

production of electricity, and the delivery of other services have been largely the province of the government. Indeed, Roscoe Martin argued that it was an inherently governmental function:

But the production of electricity is, by nature, a monopoly, whether a private or a public 

monopoly is not material: there is room for only one generating system in a given territory. The Act recognized this fact and directed the TVA to acquire whatever properties 

might be necessary to make its system effective. The TVA responded by negotiating the 

purchase of all generating systems within its “natural” power area. The last major purchase 

was completed in 1945, since which time the TVA has occupied a monopoly position with 

respect to the production of power in a region which covers some 92,000 square miles and 

which is, therefore, somewhat more than twice the size of the river basin.”204

201 Charles McCarthy, “TVA and the Tennessee Valley,” The Town Planning Review 21, no. 2 (July 1950): 116–130, quote from p. 117.

202 Ibid., pp. 117, 126.

203 Ibid., pp. 123, 129.

204 Martin, “The Tennessee Valley Authority,” p. 363.
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Case Studies

The private part of this partnership involved TVA’s selling electricity, according to McCarthy, to “local 

distributors at wholesale rates under contracts which contain provisions requiring the distributor not 

to charge in excess of stipulated maximum retail rates and to devote to the reduction of rates surplus 

revenues which remain after meeting all obligations, including taxes in the case of co-operatives or taxequivalent payments in the case of municipal distributors.”205 The private retailers were free to pursue 

their business model in the manner they deemed best. Through this relationship, TVA provided consumers with electricity at a rate lower than elsewhere in the nation and returned an average of 5 percent 

per year on the net investment in the TVA system.

The success of TVA prompted the creation of a similar effort elsewhere, overseen by the Rural 

Electrification Administration (REA). Taking electric power to the far reaches of the United States 

was unprofitable for private electricity firms, especially in far-flung rural areas of service. As late as the 

middle part of the 1930s, 9 out of 10 rural homes were without electrical service and had depressing 

living and working standards. In such settings, agriculture was the only viable economic activity, and 

even it was inefficient and less than fully profitable because of the lack of electrical power. Commenced 

on 11 May 1935, the REA began as a New Deal emergency measure and then expanded into an ongoing government activity, essentially offering electricity as a public utility. The REA undertook research 

to enhance the capacity and efficiency of electrical systems, pursued creative financing to allow private 

investors to build lines and offer services to farms, encouraged cooperatives to oversee the utility, and 

sought to turn the whole affair into a self-sustaining program. By the 1950s, more than 80 percent 

of all farms had electricity; by the 1960s, virtually all had power available. There have been efforts 

to make the system more efficient and less costly—with numerous reforms and regulations put into 

place to resolve these issues—but the overall result has been one of a strong public-private cooperative 

approach over the years.206

Frequently in the history of the United States, the federal government has developed critical infrastructure, often for its national security purposes, that quickly leads to economic development. At times, 

it has relied wholly upon private entrepreneurs. One of the most creative approaches to this process has 

been the use of the government or quasi-government development commissions to develop resources as 

a public good. There are many instances of this approach to public-private partnership. For example, in 

the General Mining Act of 1872, the U.S. government set up an uncontrolled but highly entrepreneurial 

structure that emphasized the principle that discovery conferred ownership. It left a legacy of riches and 

ruin that few wanted to repeat. More recently, commissions have been formed to create a more controlled 

development of the resource. Examples include the Isthmian Canal Commission (1904); the Bonneville 

Power Administration (1937); and the subject of this discussion, the Tennessee Valley Authority (1933). 

This entity was decentralized, not a conventional government agency. Congress provided at least the initial 

appropriation, but it was intended to become self-sustaining while delivering a public service. Corporate 

entities associated with it were empowered both to borrow and spend and to market goods and services. 

205 McCarthy, “TVA and the Tennessee Valley,” p. 122.

206 Bob Patton, “History of the Rural Electrification Industry,” Management Quarterly 37, no. 4 (winter 1997): 2–7; Lowell J. Endahl, 

“Electrification of Rural America,” in Gary Goreham, ed., Encyclopedia of Rural America: The Land and People, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: 

ABC-Clio, 1997), pp. 223–227.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

TVA served an important economic and social purpose and in the process served as the catalyst for the 

wholesale transformation of the region.

In the context of lunar development, might an organization similar to TVA be capable of commercially 

developing the Moon? Questions abound:

• 

• 

• 

Should it begin with the establishment of a lunar development commission/corporation?

Would a commission/corporation start by building and managing lunar infrastructure for NASA?

Would this be followed by an effort to spur economic development?

Making Accessible Scenic and Cultural Conservation Zones

A transformative and romantic perspective on nature transformed western civilization in the 19th century, and this has special application to the final case study on the preservation—but also accessibility—of 

American wilderness zones.207 Efforts to preserve natural wonders are worth little unless people can visit and 

enjoy them. This prompted Americans to sponsor, through government action, a system of parks that would 

preserve for the future scenic wonder, make it available for broad visitation, and promote it as a means to 

individual health and recreation for the betterment of overall society. At the same time, the national and 

state governments and the lands they controlled took the prevention of private ownership of this land as a 

fundamental mission and as a means to ensure the land’s preservation from ruthless exploitation. At the 

same time, the government sought to use private-industry services on government-held land so as to 

manage and maintain the integrity of the wilderness aesthetic while also fostering public access and some 

commercial opportunities. Initially, the American presidency (especially Presidents Ulysses Grant and 

Theodore Roosevelt) and Congress played key roles in the establishment of Yosemite and Yellowstone 

national parks. At the beginning of the 20th century, the federal government took action to establish 

the National Park Service (NPS) within the Department of the Interior, and it took responsibility both 

to preserve and to make accessible these parks.208

A significant case to be discussed is what is now known as Yosemite National Park, established as a stateowned and -operated entity by California in 1864, when Congress ceded the land to the state through 

a park bill that easily passed. The first Americans into the region realized that this was a place of exceptional beauty and sublime character. James Mason Hutchings, a “forty-niner” who entered the Yosemite 

Valley in 1851, realized that it held opportunity as a tourist destination. As one commentator put it:

Hutchings immediately grasped the tourist potential in this landscape and set out to promote it as proof that America could compete with Europe for the traveler seeking scenic 

beauty. During the 1850’s, the wealthy tourist who sought sublime scenery and mountain 

vistas headed for Switzerland, believing in the Romantic view that historical significance 

207 One example of this transformation may be found in the manner in which Europeans responded to climate. See Vladimir Jankovi, Confronting 

the Climate: British Airs and the Making of Environmental Medicine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

208 This has been well analyzed in Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, rev. ed. 1982), 

especially pp. 120–141, 175–191, 205–207, 332–336.
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Case Studies

or evidence of a centuries-old civilization enhanced the beauty of a landscape. Yosemite 

lacked that kind of historical appeal, but the sharp rises of the mountains and the waterfall 

believed to be the highest in the world suggested that this landscape had more natural 

beauty to offer than the resort at the famed Swiss valley, the Lauterbrunnen. Hutchings 

began surveying the area for the construction of a hotel on the order of ones in Eastern 

resorts such as Niagara or the White Mountains in New Hampshire with the belief that 

if Americans were willing to pay for the falls at Niagara or the rolling mountains of New 

Hampshire, they would be eager to see American scenery on the order of Switzerland with 

a waterfall as high as nine Niagaras.209

Immediately, considerable private investment flowed into the valley. Several rail systems constructed 

spurs that brought tourists to visit the scenic wonder. This included not only the First Transcontinental 

Railroad (Sacramento to Stockton), but also a spur of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Yosemite 

Valley Railroad, both constructed to cash in on tourism to Yosemite.

Several companies supporting a growing tourism industry had established hotels, stores, and guide services by the turn of the 20th century. One of the first to do so was John Degnan, who, along with his 

wife, operated a bakery near the present-day Yosemite Lodge from the 1880s on. Near the same time, 

the Desmond Park Service Company, later renamed the Yosemite National Park Company (YNPC) in 

1920, established numerous hotels, places to eat, and other services in the Mariposa Grove. The YNPC 

faced competition from the Curry Company, an outfit that offered rustic, low-cost lodging and dining 

at a camp called Camp Curry. The Curry Company eventually merged with YNPC to form the Yosemite 

Park & Curry Company. This came as part of the NPS’s effort to limit concessionaires in national parks 

in the 1930s.210

In essence, these private-sector companies invested their own dollars to cash in on the rising tourism 

industry at Yosemite made possible by the maintenance of a pristine environment protected by the 

government. They served to make accessible to the public these scenic parks. The government allowed 

(and kept regulations to a minimum) these concessions, which started with a few proprietors who 

operated rustic lodges in the valley. As tourism grew and these facilities were strained, governmental 

managers had to step in to improve and increase the accommodations. They usually worked with the 

local proprietors to accomplish this task, sometimes providing seed money and low-interest loans to 

enhance the primitive hotels and campgrounds available. After World War II, they also had to manage 

rising expectations of visitors who sought more luxurious accommodations. Throughout this process, 

209 “Discovery and Invention in the Yosemite,” xroads, available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/RAILROAD/yosemite.html, accessed 

24 November 2013.

210 Linda Wedel Green, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources; A History of the Discovery, Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite 

National Park, California (Washington, DC: National Park Service, September 1987), pp. 133–152; Hans Huth, “Yosemite: The Story of an 

Idea,” Sierra Club Bulletin 33 (March 1948): 63–76; Stanford E. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 1855–1985 (Salt Lake City: University 

of Utah Press, 1991); Joshua Johns, “All Aboard: the Role of the Railroads in Protecting, Promoting, and Selling Yellowstone and Yosemite 

National Parks,” M.A. Thesis, University of Virginia, 1996; Alfred Runte, Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks (Los 

Angeles, CA: Roberts Rinehart, 1998).
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

NPS officials faced the challenge of preserving the scenic wonders while high tourist demand and rising 

expectations pressured the organizational structure that had been established early on. The balancing of 

Yosemite’s protection with its development was more of an experiment than a well-thought-out strategy; 

nonetheless, the manner in which the housing and restaurant businesses have been incorporated into 

the park represents a set of divergent interests held in creative tension through a system of give and take 

as well as political pressure.211

Many individuals in government played significant roles in commercializing the parks, but it was the 

NPS that influenced them most. Between 1916 and 1933, NPS directors had a significant influence over 

the decisions in the parks. A succession of NPS directors held a corporatist attitude toward developing 

the park system so as to increase awareness and make the parks accessible to visitors.

Several scholars have characterized this collaborationist approach to public-private actions as the associative state. While bumps and bruises were inflicted on all sides during the 19th century as the industrial 

revolution reached its zenith, in the early 20th century a new associationalist approach to government 

involvement in business began to be played out. This approach legitimated the unification of industry and government to advance toward a too-often ill-defined but nonetheless positive goal, and the 

high priest of the philosophy was Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in the 1920s. Because of 

the longtime relations between government and private industry, the parks offered a model for the 

associative state.212

Epitomizing this development, several National Park Service directors assisted in promoting the private 

activities at their preserves. Former businessman and Sierra Club member Steve Mather served as NPS 

director in the 1920s, establishing high standards among employees and administrators while promoting the parks. His successor, Horace Albright, continued Mather’s efforts and began many of the NPS’s 

historic preservation programs. The NPS leadership maintained its policies into the Depression and 

the ensuing New Deal era.213

Mather and Albright, as well as their successor, Arno Cammerer, promoted the parks through feature 

stories in publications such as National Geographic, the Saturday Evening Post, Literary Digest, and the 

New York Times. Historian Donald C. Swain argued that prior to 1933, the NPS courted political 

support in order to expand, arguing that “the purpose of the Park Service promotional campaigns was 

211 Peter Blodgett, “Visiting ‘The Realm of Wonder’: Yosemite and the Business of Tourism, 1855–1916,” California History 69, no. 2 (summer 

1990): 118–133; Jonathan Spaulding, “Yosemite and Ansel Adams: Art, Commerce, and Western Tourism,” Pacific Historical Review 65, 

no. 4 (November 1996): 615–639; Anne Hyde, “From Stagecoach to Packard Twin Six: Yosemite and the Changing Face of Tourism, 1880–

1930,” California History 69, no. 2 (summer 1990): 154–169; Alfred Runte, “Promoting Wonderland: Western Railroads and the Evolution of 

National Park Advertising,” Journal of the West 31, no. 1 (January 1992): 43–48.

212 On Hoover and the “associative” state, see Louis Galambos, “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History,” Business 

History Review 44 (autumn 1970): 279–290; Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative 

State,’ 1921–1928,” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 116–140; Louis Galambos, “Technology, Political Economy, and 

Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organization Synthesis,” Business History Review 57 (winter 1983): 471–493.

213 Donald C. Swain, “The National Park Service and the New Deal, 1933–1940,” Pacific Historical Review 41, no. 3 (August 1972): 312–332.
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Case Studies

largely economic. The objective was to benefit local economies near the parks, assist the concessioners 

in the parks...and indirectly stimulate the national economy.”214 In the 1930s, the NPS set up a Tourist 

Bureau based in New York City to foster interest via travel agencies and interest groups. The Tourist Bureau 

symbolized the efforts of the government to encourage interest in the parks; however, it was a short-lived 

operation that dissolved when Congress authorized the U.S. Travel Bureau in 1940.215

Also, through the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps presented a unique opportunity for the Park 

Service. It allowed the agency to hire young men to work in the parks, open new parks, and promote the 

existing parks. However, the heavy promotional efforts fomented a negative response from some parkgoers. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, feeling pressure from wilderness preservationists, began to 

move away from accessibility in favor of preservation. He disliked the overly crowded national parks and 

sought to build fewer roads in them due to the disturbance of automobiles. This sentiment influenced the 

selection of Cammerer’s successor in 1940, Newton Drury, a strong conservationist. Drury’s directorship 

ended the “Mather tradition” of greater access and services and emphasized greater synchronization with 

the efforts of the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and the National Parks Association.216

In the latter third of the 20th century, however, pressures on the system forced first a return to the earlier associative state of public-private partnership and then ever-greater reliance on private investment 

to operate amenities in the national parks. John L. Crompton, a social science researcher in parks and 

recreation, suggests four related macro issues that have sparked this transition. First, reductions in the 

public funding levels traditionally available for the National Park Service have compelled greater reliance on private investment and a corresponding openness to business interests in the parks. The erosion of the public investment comes from several sources, according to Crompton: “Pragmatists seek a 

more effective government and see privatization as a means to that end. Commercial interests seek to 

obtain more business by taking over some of the agency’s financing, production, or operating roles. For 

ideologues, privatization is a political agenda aimed at ensuring that government plays a smaller role 

compared to private institutions.”217

Second, left-of-center populists also often view privatization as a positive, for it gives external forces 

“greater power to satisfy their common needs, while diminishing that of larger public bureaucracies.” 

Third, Crompton emphasizes the place of inefficiencies present in any monopoly, either public or private, 

in motivating a transition to more private delivery of services in the national parks. “In many communities, however, a park or recreation agency is a monopoly supplier of many services. Privatization is 

seen as a means of inducing competition into public agency monopoly situations.”218 Finally, often park 

managers recognize that they do not have the expertise in-house to provide many key services needed 

214 Ibid.

215 Ibid.

216 Ibid.

217 John L. Crompton, “Forces Underlying the Emergence of Privatization in Parks and Recreation,” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration

16, no. 2 (1998): 88–101, quote from p. 88.

218 Ibid., p. 88.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

by users of the park. Rangers, for example, are not restaurateurs, and it makes sense to contract out that 

function at virtually every park.

The result of this development has been that the National Park Service has long enjoyed a publicprivate partnership in the delivery of services to visitors going back to the 19th century. This cooperative approach reached a high-water mark in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century through the 

associative state model of action. During the New Deal, as the federal government took control of more 

aspects of the nation’s resources, this relationship languished, but it returned to the norm in the latter 

part of the 20th century. Into the 21st century, however, the balancing of public desire to preserve scenic 

wonders versus enhancing commercial activities remains a task not without difficulties.

An example of this may be found in the white-water rafting experience of the Grand Canyon. In 1972, 

16,432 people rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, with a variety of companies 

providing this service to all comers. In the process, the human impact on the site proved disastrous to 

the wilderness setting, an obvious conclusion when more than 500 rafters were leaving the Lee’s Ferry 

launch site for a trip down the river every day of the season. The Park Service sought to regulate this 

situation by freezing visitation at 1972 levels and prohibiting large numbers of motor vessels, controlling the amount and types of equipment and supplies, and apportioning daily launches. This has proven 

a controversial regulatory experience, and there have been numerous forays and rebuttals by various 

groups to manage this unique resource, with no end to the controversy in sight.219

As historian Roderick Nash has concluded for this case (and it is applicable elsewhere as well): “The root 

of the problem, of course, was that the public had become too large for the wilderness.”220 In addition, 

the public had different expectations, and companies sought to provide experiences commensurate with 

those expectations. For those who wanted to see the sights but were more interested in beer and beach 

volleyball than in an encounter with the wilderness, motorboats on the Colorado River were optimal. 

For purists who wanted to experience the wilderness setting untouched by human incursion, those 

other users were anathema. Motor vessels and drunken parties destroyed the wilderness experience for 

those seeking that experience. In both cases, companies were filling a need, so it was not simply a fight 

between preservationists and developers, although that was also a part of the debates on many occasions. 

Perhaps the fundamental nature of democratic institutions is that controversies proliferate and are never 

fully resolved, and if so, this sort of give and take is a good lesson in the structure of democratic society.

In terms of applicability to the space frontier, the experience of the National Park Service is most germane 

in terms of space tourism efforts. When Congress created the U.S. National Park Service in 1916 to conserve natural and historical resources “by such means as will leave them unimpaired,” a key component 

was to assist the public in reaching those scenic wonders. Accordingly, park managers, recognizing the 

need for public support to encourage future preservation, allowed private entrepreneurs to commercialize 

219 W. E. Garrett, “Grand Canyon: Are We Loving It to Death?” National Geographic 154 (1978): 16–51; Robert Dolan, Alan Howard, and Arthur 

Gallenson, “Man’s Impact on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon,” American Scientist 62 (1974): 392–401; “Troubled Waters,” 

Newsweek 81 (1973): 62.

220 Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 337.
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Case Studies

the parks in such a manner as to encourage public visitation. They encouraged railroad companies and 

other concessionaires to build hotels and related facilities in the national parks. Those concessionaires 

then paid fees that the National Park Service used to build additional roads and trails. Americans rode 

and drove to the national parks, vastly expanding tourism and creating the family vacation tradition.

Government officials, as well as policy, could likewise encourage private-sector development in space 

tourism, both in low-Earth orbit and on the Moon. The following possibilities exist:

• 

• 

• 

• 

Public officials could expand the use of government facilities by private entrepreneurs as a means 

of encouraging public use and visitation.

Private firms could pay fees that government agencies could then use to expand and develop 

facilities.

Government could create a favorable regulatory climate for space tourism.

Private citizens could then experience space through both remote access and direct participation.

Beyond these very specific possibilities, NASA could also award lease contracts for habitation/support 

services of facilities in orbit and on the Moon. Baseline development and operational costs could then 

be funded by NASA lease. As an additional revenue stream, companies could then add tourism for 

marginal costs. Such an environment could create a public-private space ecology with efficiencies of 

operations achieved through economies of scale.
88

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Conclusion

For human spaceflight to expand into the future, there must be a compelling reason to undertake it. From 

the defining event of Sputnik in 1957, I would contend that there have been five major themes—and 

only these five—that have been effective in justifying a large-scale, publicly funded spaceflight agenda:

1. scientific discovery and understanding

2. national security and military applications

3. economic competitiveness and commercial applications

4. human destiny/survival of the species

5. national prestige/geopolitics

Specific aspects of these five rationales have fluctuated over time but remain the only reasons for the 

endeavor that have any saliency whatsoever.221

The first and most common rationale for spaceflight is that an integral part of human nature is a desire 

for discovery and understanding. At one level, there exists the ideal of the pursuit of abstract scientific 

knowledge—learning more about the universe to expand the human mind—and pure science and exploration of the unknown will remain an important aspect of spaceflight well into the foreseeable future. 

This goal clearly motivates the scientific probes sent to all of the planets of the solar system. It propels 

a wide range of efforts to explore Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn projected for the 21st century. It energized 

such efforts as the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized our knowledge of the universe 

since its deployment in 1990.222

A second rationale of national defense and military space activity has also proved useful for spaceflight 

advocates. From the beginning, national leaders sought to use space to ensure U.S. security against 

nuclear holocaust. For instance, in 1952, a popular conception of the U.S.-occupied space station 

showed it as a platform from which to observe the Soviet Union and the rest of the globe in the interest 

of national security. The human spaceflight enterprise also gained energy from Cold War rivalries in the 

1950s and 1960s as international prestige, translated into American support from nonaligned nations, 

found an important place in the space policy agenda. Human spaceflight also had a strong military 

nature during the 1980s, when astronauts from the military services deployed reconnaissance satellites 

into Earth orbit from the Space Shuttle.223

221 I have wrestled with this question in Roger D. Launius, “Compelling Rationales for Spaceflight? History and the Search for Relevance,” in Steven J. 

Dick and Roger D. Launius, eds., Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2006-4702, 2006), pp. 37–70.

222 An excellent discussion of all space probes launched to date may be found in Asif A. Siddiqi, Deep Space Chronicle: Robotic Exploration 

Missions to the Planets (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2002-4524, 2002). See also Robert W. Smith, The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, 

Science, Technology, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); David H. DeVorkin and Robert W. Smith, The Hubble Space 

Telescope: Imaging the Universe (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2004).

223 See Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Damon Coletta and 

Frances T. Pilch, eds., Space and Defense Policy (London, U.K.: Routledge, 2010); James Clay Moltz, The Politics of Space Security: Strategic 

Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011, second edition).
89

Conclusion

The third rationale of economic competitiveness and commercial applications also represents a useful 

role that the public accepts for spaceflight. Space technologies, especially the complex human spaceflight 

component, demand a skilled and well-trained workforce whose talents are disseminated to the larger 

technological and economic base of the nation. The Apollo program, for example, served explicitly as an 

economic engine fueling the southern states’ economic growth. In recent years, the economic rationale 

has become stronger and even more explicit as space applications, especially communications satellites, 

become increasingly central for maintaining United States global economic competitiveness.224

The fourth imperative for spaceflight has revolved around human destiny. With Earth so well known, 

advocates argue, exploration and settlement of the Moon and Mars is the next logical step in human exploration. Humans must question and explore and discover or die, advocates for this position insist. There is 

also a terrifying aspect to this rationale: humanity will not survive if it does not become multiplanetary.225

Finally, national prestige and concern for geopolitical relations has dominated so many spaceflight decisions that it sometimes seems trite to suggest that it has been an impressive rationale over the years. Yet 

there is more to it than that, for while all recognize that prestige sparked and sustained the space race of 

the 1960s, we too often fail to recognize that it continues to motivate support for NASA’s programs. The 

United States went to the Moon for prestige purposes, but it also built the Space Shuttle and embarked 

on the Space Station for prestige purposes.226

Of these five rationales, the latter two have receded into the background as drivers for sustained public 

investment in the American space program. National security and science are important drivers—but 

not for the human space agenda because they are oriented toward robotic efforts. Commercial activities 

are the primary arena that might prove successful for energizing human spaceflight.

There is really no other way, it seems to me, as this sermon on the mount makes clear. The national debt of 

the United States in 2013 stood at $17.07 trillion. Americans add to this every year, and the national debt 

is rising at an unsustainable rate. This is in no small measure because the two largest expenditures for the 

United States on an annual basis—national defense and entitlements (including Social Security, Medicare 

and Medicaid, and other payments to specific constituencies)—account for more than half of all annual 

expenditures in the federal budget. The income received by the U.S. government in fiscal year 2013 was 

224 Roger D. Launius, “Lessons from Terrestrial Exploration for Earth Orbit,” Space News 24, no. 41 (21 October 2013): 19, 21. See also Roger 

Handberg, International Space Commerce: Building from Scratch (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006); Lawrence A. Cooper, 

“Encouraging Space Exploration Through a New Application of Space Property Rights,” Space Policy 19 (May 2003): 111–118; Alan Wasser and 

Douglas Jobes, “Space Settlements, Property Rights, and International Law: Could a Lunar Settlement Claim the Lunar Real Estate It Needs To 

Survive?” Journal of Air Law and Commerce 73 (winter 2008): 37–78.

225 Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), pp. 231–232; John W. Young, “The Big Picture: Ways To Mitigate or Prevent Very 

Bad Planet Earth Events,” Space Times: Magazine of the American Astronautical Society 42 (November–December 2003): 22–23. See also 

“Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS) Enterprise,” 30 October 1997, available online at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/nsp/

heds.htm, accessed 8 March 2012.

226 See Roger D. Launius, “Imprisoned in a Tesseract: NASA’s Human Spaceflight Effort and the Prestige Trap,” Astropolitics: The International 

Journal of Space Politics & Policy 10, no. 2 (May–August 2012): 152–175.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

$2.77 trillion, approximately $230.8 billion each month. Expenditures in fiscal year 2013, however, were 

approximately $3.45 trillion per year, some $287.5 billion each month. During that fiscal year, spending 

exceeded income by $680.3 billion; this was good news because it was the smallest gap in income/expenditures since fiscal year 2008, and it almost halved the $1.09 trillion shortfall seen in fiscal year 2012.227

While those FY 2013 figures represented an important step forward, the longstanding shortfall of income 

versus expenditures in the United States has been a serious issue for some time and may approach crisis 

proportions in the next decade or so. Something has to give, and hard choices will have to be made. The 

space program has long consistently ranked near the top of those activities of the federal government 

deserving to be cut. In the 1960s, during the height of the Apollo program, most Americans preferred 

spending those same dollars for a range of activities—mitigation of air and water pollution, job training 

for unskilled workers, a war on poverty, etc.—rather than NASA.228

Ironically, at the time of the excitement of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, a Harris Poll in 1969 reported that 

56 percent of Americans believed that the costs of the Apollo program were too great and that 64 percent 

believed that $4 billion a year for NASA was too much.229 The National Science Foundation contracted 

with the Opinion Research Corporation for public opinion studies in 1972, 1974, and 1976, and each 

found that the space program was at the bottom of 13 items desired by Americans in terms of science 

and technology investment. The same is true of a 2007 Harris poll in which this question was asked: “If 

spending had to be cut on federal programs, which two federal program(s) do you think the cuts should 

come from?” Tops on the list was the space program, which garnered 51 percent advocating its reduction, 

followed by welfare (28 percent), defense spending (28 percent), and farm subsidies (24 percent).230

In such an environment, any expansive space program in the 21st century will require a practical, costeffective, commercial basis. Leveraging a declining public investment for this agenda with public-private 

partnerships on a more equitable basis is the most obvious methodology for achieving an expansive 

future in space. While one can question an emerging neoliberal perspective that argues that government 

support of scientific research is counterproductive to wealth-generating technology and that private 

enterprise can supply most if not all of the funds required for both pure and applied research, there is 

still no doubt that less funding will be available for this endeavor in the future than in the past.231

227 “Budget Deficit in the U.S. Narrows to 5-Year Low on Record Revenue,” Bloomberg News, 30 October 2013, available online at http://www.

bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/budget-deficit-in-u-s-narrows-to-5-year-low-on-record-revenue.html, accessed 14 December 2013; 

Alex Zhavornkov, The Ageless Generation: How Advances in Biomedicine Will Transform the Global Economy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 

2013), pp. 145–147.

228 Stephanie A. Roy, Elaine C. Gresham, and Carissa Bryce Christensen, “The Complex Fabric of Public Opinion on Space,” Acta Astronautica 47 

(2000): 665–675.

229 Louis Harris, The Harris Survey Yearbook of Public Opinion, 1970 (New York: Louis Harris and Assoc., 1971), pp. 83–84. See also Timothy B. 

Kyger, “President Nixon, Public Opinion, and Post-Apollo Planning,” Senior Thesis, University of San Francisco, 1985, pp. 53–56.

230 “Closing the Budget Deficit: U.S. Adults Strongly Resist Raising Any Taxes Except ‘Sin Taxes’ or Cutting Major Programs,” Harris Poll #30, 10 April 2007.

231 See Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research (New York: Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
91

Conclusion

There are many possibilities for pursuing public-private partnerships for space exploration. The National 

Council for Public/Private Partnerships offered a list of seven best practices for any effort to pursue 

these relationships:

1. PUBLIC SECTOR CHAMPION: Recognized public figures should serve as the spokespersons 

and advocates for the project and the use of a PPP. Well-informed champions can play a critical 

role in minimizing misperceptions about the value to the public of an effectively developed PPP.

2. STATUTORY ENVIRONMENT: There should be a statutory foundation for the implementation of each partnership. Transparency and a competitive proposal process should be delineated in this statute. However, unsolicited proposals can be a positive catalyst for initiating 

creative, innovative approaches to addressing specific public sector needs.

3. PUBLIC SECTOR’S ORGANIZED STRUCTURE: The public sector should have a dedicated team for PPP projects or programs. This unit should be involved from conceptualization 

to negotiation, through final monitoring of the execution of the partnership. This unit should 

develop Requests For Proposals (RFPs) that include performance goals, not design specifications. Consideration of proposals should be based on best value, not lowest prices. Thorough, 

inclusive Value for Money (VfM) calculations provide a powerful tool for evaluating overall 

economic value.

4. DETAILED CONTRACT (BUSINESS PLAN): A PPP is a contractual relationship between 

the public and private sectors for the execution of a project or service. This contract should 

include a detailed description of the responsibilities, risks and benefits of both the public and 

private partners. Such an agreement will increase the probability of success of the partnership. Realizing that all contingencies cannot be foreseen, a good contract will include a clearly 

defined method of dispute resolution.

5. CLEARLY DEFINED REVENUE STREAM: While the private partner may provide a 

portion or all of the funding for capital improvements, there must be an identifiable revenue 

stream sufficient to retire this investment and provide an acceptable rate of return over the 

term of the partnership. The income stream can be generated by a variety and combination 

of sources (fees, tolls, availability payments, shadow tolls, tax increment financing, commercial use of underutilized assets or a wide range of additional options), but must be reasonably 

assured for the length of the partnership’s investment period.

6. STAKEHOLDER SUPPORT: More people will be affected by a partnership than just the 

public officials and the private sector partner. Affected employees, the portions of the public 

receiving the service, the press, appropriate labor unions and relevant interest groups will all 

have opinions, and may have misconceptions about a partnership and its value to all the public. It is important to communicate openly and candidly with these stakeholders to minimize 

potential resistance to establishing a partnership.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

7. PICK YOUR PARTNER CAREFULLY: The “best value” (not always lowest price) in a 

partnership is critical in maintaining the long-term relationship that is central to a successful 

partnership. A candidate’s experience in the specific area of partnerships being considered is an 

important factor in identifying the right partner. Equally, the financial capacity of the private 

partner should be considered in the final selection process.232

With this as the case, are there lessons from the past six case studies that might be applied to future 

public-private partnerships in space? In the context of these historic examples of public-private partnerships, the most applicable to space activities are in transportation, and I will concentrate me comments 

on this arena: railroads and aviation and their relationship to space transportation. Public-private partnerships in the development of American transportation systems have been varied, often complex, and, 

over time, remarkably boutique. Transportation partnerships have gradually evolved, taken a divergent 

set of paths, and ranged from fully public to fully private and virtually everything in between. Only 

one conclusion may be reached concerning the development of these railroads—whether the initial 

transportation mode began as a private or a public initiative—all successful railroads have incorporated 

a mixed model of funding and operations.

Initial railway development began as a private enterprise, but the costs of investment were too great to 

be sustained. This led to the entrance of the government—sometimes local, often state, and, in the latter 

19th century, federal—to underwrite the cost of investment in a variety of inventive ways ranging from 

direct ownership to land grants, regulatory reforms, tariff splits, bond sales, and the like. Regardless of 

the public investment, private enterprise tended to dominate the public-private partnership. By the latter 

19th century, rail systems had grown so critical to American economic expansion, national security, and 

migration that the federal government intervened to assert greater regulatory power over this partnership, regulating services and costs, standardizing systems, and enforcing safety. Most important, it never 

asserted ownership—in contrast to other models in other nations—except in times of war.

The development of the airline industry followed a different path, but one also related to the lesson 

learned in the railroad era. The industry initially began as a largely governmental function, but over the 

course of the 20th century, it was privatized more and more, with the government serving as regulator 

and facilitator—regulator in terms of safety and process, and facilitator in terms of advocating for the 

cause of flight. Indeed, the federal government, more than any other entity, made possible the formation 

of the public-private partnerships that eventually have come to dominate the air transport industry. At 

the same time, in the latter third of the 20th century, the industry became increasingly free of regulation, allowing it to pursue business decisions enhancing its income.

In terms of the space transportation industry, there is a similar opportunity to learn from the air transportation industry. The dominance of the U.S. government, in the form of NASA, is receding into the 

background as the 21st century progresses. A major step in that process was the 2011 retirement of the 

Space Shuttle, a $3 billion–a–year program whose cancellation forced NASA to seek other solutions to 

232 “7 Keys to Success,” National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, available online at http://www.ncppp.org/ppp-basics/7-keys/, accessed 

24 November 2013.
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Conclusion

space transportation. This is an overwhelmingly positive development, for funding from that program 

has been invested in kick-starting commercial space access efforts. In a public-private partnership to 

develop new low-Earth orbit capabilities, four major firms are using government and their own entrepreneurial dollars to solve this problem. The success of at least some of these firms seems assured. The 

government role, beyond some investment, is primarily focused on oversight and regulation. A major 

challenge will be to negotiate the relationship between safety and aggressive operations.

The government has succeeded thus far in sponsoring a moderate path forward for space commercialization. No other nation has been able to chart this course. The passing and signing of The Commercial 

Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, H.R. 3752, for example, enabled the FAA to license and 

regulate commercial human spaceflight while providing liability protection for companies. This legislation will be critical to the success of commercial space transport. In addition, NASA’s financial rewards, 

prizes, and other incentives, as well as technical assistance to emerging private companies, are just as 

central to the way forward.

I was struck by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as spacefarers shuttled from Earth to an orbiting space 

station aboard a commercial space plane and private firms carried out many other functions in low-Earth 

orbit, including the Hilton hotel on the station. That always seemed to me the appropriate structure 

for operations in orbit.233

I was equally struck by the truism that the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella funded Christopher 

Columbus’s voyages of discovery as a national program for the good of their emerging European power. 

It is also impossible to get past the point that most other voyages of discovery were sponsored largely by 

a sovereign. In every case, I hasten to note, these European monarchs sought tangible results—usually 

wealth, often geopolitical advantage, and sometimes less-specific positive outcomes—that accrued to 

the nation through the exploration paradigm.

The two models were very different, one a government program and the other a private-sector effort. 

Both models are closer to each other than might be expected because of the public-private partnerships that made them possible. What has happened, however, is that certain parts of space are now well 

incorporated in the normal realm of human operations, just as European explorers incorporated the 

Western Hemisphere into their normal realm of activities. In an irony of the first magnitude for those 

who insist that humans are not truly engaged in space exploration because they have been confined to 

low-Earth orbit since the end of Apollo more than 40 years ago, the Space Shuttle turned orbital space 

into a place that was no longer a frontier. The first astronauts and cosmonauts, of course, truly were 

explorers in the traditional sense of the term because they pushed back the frontiers of knowledge about 

this unusually strange, harsh, and hostile environment. They learned how to operate there and to do 

useful things in the region.

I will give those with the “right stuff” of the 1960s high marks for pioneering operations in space. But I 

will give the astronauts and cosmonauts of a later era—those flying on the Space Shuttle, Mir, and the 

233 This section is based on Roger D. Launius, “Lessons from Terrestrial Exploration for Earth Orbit,” Space News 24, no. 41 (21 October 2013): 19, 21.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

International Space Station—equally high marks for turning orbital operations into routine, useful activities. There is no longer any mystery about what we will experience in this region, and we understand well 

how to use it effectively and economically for a range of activities. This was what happened in terrestrial 

exploration as well: government-funded pathfinders preceded those engaged in a range of commercial 

and other private activities in the new region.

That brings me back to 2001: A Space Odyssey. What has been the norm in human history is that as 

explorers have turned unknown regions into known ones, exploration has given way to frontiering. We 

are in the frontiering stage of low-Earth orbit, and there are all manner of possibilities for exploiting it 

for commercial purposes. The range of possibilities is breathtaking: commercial microgravity research 

on all manner of products, applications both well known and still in the process of becoming, and even 

tourism. The efforts of Virgin Galactic to create a suborbital space tourism capability is well known 

and will almost certainly find realization in the near term, but the partnering of Bigelow Aerospace and 

SpaceX for orbital tourism also has potential. Who knows what might flow from commercial beachheads in Earth orbit?

Most assuredly, we will see more entrepreneurial activity in Earth orbit in the next few years. New and 

unexploited regions have always attracted entrepreneurs—some succeed and others do not—and orbital 

space does not look particularly different from previous terrestrial frontiers in that regard.

Flash forward to 2050 and imagine astronauts boarding a commercial space launcher delivering crews 

to a space station or a lunar base. This may become reality for space exploration if commercial activities 

in space advance. Of course, this new direction proposes a major shift in the way NASA accomplishes 

human spaceflight. In this context, NASA could return to its roots as a research-and-development 

organization pursuing transformational technologies while private firms operate space systems. Turning 

low-Earth orbit over to commercial entities empowers NASA to focus on deep space exploration, perhaps eventually visiting Mars.234

To make this a reality, NASA must undergo significant shifts in programs and practices. For many 

years, NASA ran things as it saw fit. While it relied on contractors for assistance, no one doubted who 

was in charge. This has to change; NASA must now develop more equal partnerships to accomplish 

its space exploration mandate. This shift will be difficult, but it is critical for a robust future. The time 

has arrived for NASA to shift from building and operating space launch systems to purchasing these 

services from commercial firms.

Further, utilizing America’s emerging space transportation companies will ignite ingenuity and innovation. It will result in multiple commercial firms offering space launch services, offering redundancy 

in space access. Competition will help reduce the cost while enhancing capability. This new approach 

could extend the lifespan of the International Space Station as the greatest engineering asset the world 

has ever jointly developed. Now poised to accomplish much during the next 10 years in the arenas of 

234 This section is based on Roger D. Launius and G. Michael Green, “New Vision for NASA,” Florida Today, 14 February 2010.
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Conclusion

biomedical science, Earth science, and materials research, the ISS also offers a unique capability to learn 

how humans function during long-duration space missions.

At the same time, this new path need not abandon human exploration; it could provide the United 

States with a sustainable and executable space exploration plan indefinitely. It furthers human activities 

on the ISS and opens translunar space sooner than other approaches—on American rockets built by 

commercial providers.
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Selective Annotated Bibliography

Key Historical Studies

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–

1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. This is the classic story of the building of the railroads.

Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Viking 

Penguin, 1999. This is another good account of the building of the transcontinental railroad.

Beebe, Lucius. The Central Pacific & the Southern Pacific Railroads: Centennial Edition. Los Angeles, CA: 

Howell-North, 1969. A specialty work.

Belanger, Dian Olson. Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of 

Antarctica’s Age of Science. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2006. Belanger provides a very fine 

institutional history of the National Science Foundation’s efforts to create and sustain the American 

foothold in Antarctica.

Brooks, John. Telephone: The First Hundred Years. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. A standard work.

Bruce, Robert V. Bell: Alexander Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University 

Press, 1990. This is possibly the best biography of the inventor of the telephone.

Cooper, Bruce C. Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865–1881.

Philadelphia: Polyglot Press, 2005. This work is a study of how the railroad opened the American West.

Cooper, Bruce Clement, editor. The Classic Western American Railroad Routes. New York: Chartwell 

Books/Worth Press, 2010. Cooper provides a discussion of the routes of the trains.

Creese, Walter L. TVA’s Public Planning: The Vision, the Reality. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 

1990. This work stresses the utopian goals of the program.

Goodrich, Carter. Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890. Westport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1960. The author has written an indispensable account of government’s role in 

fostering transportation.

Gudmundsen, Sveinn Vidar. Flying Too Close to the Sun: The Success and Failure of the New-Entrant 

Airlines. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1999. This work is an important study of recent markets in air transportation.

Hubbard, Preston J. Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920–1932. Nashville, TN: 

Vanderbilt University Press, 1961. This work is a critical assessment of the manner in which the 

program was inaugurated.
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Selective Annotated Bibliography

Larson, John Lauritz. Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government 

in the Early United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Larson’s work is a 

good study of early efforts to foster economic development.

—. The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good. New York: 

Cambridge University Press, 2009. Here, the author captures the American ambivalence about the 

emergence of modern capitalism.

Launius, Roger D., James Rodger Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin, editors. Globalizing Polar Science: 

The International Polar Years and the International Geophysical Year. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 

2010. This is a collection of key articles on the importance of international scientific efforts at the poles.

Lively, Robert A. “The American System: A Review Article.” Business History Review 29 (March 1955): 

81–96. This work is a recommended starting point.

Neuse, Steven M. “TVA at Age Fifty: Reflections and Retrospect.” Public Administration Review 43 

(Nov.–Dec. 1983): 491–499. Neuse’s work is a useful short overview.

Pyne, Stephen E. The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Pyne touches on 

the elements of Antarctica and emphasizes it as a realm of history, a place of dominant landscapes, 

an inspiration for literature and art, and a scientific treasure trove. He argues that for all of its geology and geography, geomagnetism and weather, biology and boredom, Antarctica remains at sum a 

diminished location in which water has been transformed into mineral. There are no cultural studies 

beyond those on the explorers themselves.

Runte, Alfred. National Parks: The American Experience. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 

3rd ed. This useful short history provides an overview the National Park Service and its parks.

Shapiro, Edward. “The Southern Agrarians and the Tennessee Valley Authority.” American Quarterly 

22 (winter 1970): 791–806. This work outlines how southern conservatives supported TVA as a 

counterpoint to northern big business’s incursion into the region.

Van der Linden, F. Robert. Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation 

Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. This is an important study of government 

fostering of the airlines.

Wirth, Conrad L. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980. Wirth 

provides a scholarly history of the nation’s parks.

Wu, Tim, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 

Wu has written an excellent overview.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Key Civil Space History Studies

Atkinson, Joseph D., Jr., and Jay M. Shafritz. The Real Stuff: A History of the NASA Astronaut Requirements 

Program. New York: Praeger, 1985. This overview of the selection of the first 10 groups of NASA astronauts through 1984 places heavy emphasis on the criteria and the procedures used in selecting astronauts.

Atwill, William D. Fire and Power: The American Space Program As Postmodern Narrative. Athens: University 

of Georgia Press, 1994. A unique contribution, this study comments on the development of space 

exploration as a “big science” program that masked the weaknesses of a “bankrupt” American society.

Bainbridge, William Sims. The Spaceflight Revolution: A Sociological Study. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 

1976. This impressive study of the rise of space exploration out of its national security component posits 

an essential conspiracy of spaceflight enthusiasts to persuade public officials that human exploration of 

the planets was the logical outgrowth of the military effort.

Beattie, Donald A. Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program. Baltimore, MD: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. This is a fine account of lunar science during the Apollo years, 

written by a participant.

Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and 

Operations. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4204, 1978. This is an excellent history of the design and 

construction of the lunar launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center.

Bilstein, Roger E. The American Aerospace Industry: From Workshop to Global Enterprise. New York: Twayne 

Publishers, 1996. Reprinted as The Enterprise of Flight: The American Aviation and Aerospace Industry. 

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001, Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight 

Series. This outstanding overview of the history of this critical industry gives due attention to the spaceflight aspects of its development.

—. Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

1984, paperback reprint 1994. A superb synthesis of the origins and development of aerospace activities 

in America, this is the book to start with in any investigation of air and space activities.

—. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915–1990. Washington, DC: NASA 

SP-4406, 1989. This is a very fine nonscholarly general history of the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

—. Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles. Washington, DC: NASA 

SP-4206, 1980, rep. ed. 1997. This thorough and well-written book gives a detailed but highly readable 

account of the enormously complex process whereby NASA developed the launch vehicles used in the 

Apollo program ultimately to send 12 humans to the Moon.
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Selective Annotated Bibliography

Bradbury, Ray, Arthur C. Clarke, Bruce C. Murray, and Carl Sagan. Mars and the Mind of Man. New York: 

Harper and Row, 1973. A superb analysis by a stellar collection of authors, this book discusses the place 

of the planet Mars in the mythology and science of humanity from the ancients to the late 20th century.

Bromberg, Joan Lisa. NASA and the Space Industry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

1999, New Series in NASA History. This is an outstanding history of the interrelationships between 

NASA and its contractors.

Brooks, Courtney G., James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Jr. Chariots for Apollo: A History of 

Manned Lunar Spacecraft. Washington: NASA SP-4205, 1979. Based on exhaustive documentary and 

secondary research as well as 341 interviews, this well-written volume covers the design, development, 

testing, evaluation, and operational use of the Apollo spacecraft through July 1969.

Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of 

Space. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. An important discussion of early efforts to develop 

civil space policy in the aftermath of the Sputnik crisis of 1957, it contains much information relative 

to the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and how it was affected by the launching 

of the Sputnik scientific satellite.

Burrough, Bryan. Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard the Mir. New York: Ballinger Pub. Co., 1998. 

Written by the coauthor of the best-selling Barbarians at the Gate, this book provides a journalistic 

analysis of the American-Russian cooperation in space in the mid-1990s aboard the Mir space station. It is culled from one-on-one interviews and transcripts of recorded conversations between the 

astronauts and cosmonauts on Mir and Russian Mission Control. Burrough delves deeply into the 

personal and professional lives of the 11 people who lived aboard Mir from 1995 to 1998.

Burrows, William E. Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security. New York: Random House, 1987. 

This book provides a well-written and thoughtful discussion of the origin and evolution of the United 

States’s satellite reconnaissance program from the 1950s to the late 1980s.

—. Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond. New York: Random House, 1990. Burrows 

delivers a very well-written and insightful discussion of the robotic probes sent to the planets and what 

scientists learned from their encounters.

—. The Infinite Journey: Eyewitness Accounts of NASA and the Age of Space. New York: Discovery Books, 

2000. This large-format history of spaceflight includes important discussions of the endeavor 

by participants.

—. This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age. New York: Random House, 1998. Burrows again 

strikes the right chord in this strong overview of the history of the Space Age from Sputnik to 1998.
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Butrica, Andrew J., editor. Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4217, 1997. This book comprises a useful collection of papers originally offered at a conference about the subject includes essays on international developments.

Byerly, Radford, Jr., editor. Space Policy Alternatives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. This is an exceptional collection of articles on broad questions in space exploration ranging from the militarization of 

spaceflight to the place of NASA in the larger schema.

—, editor. Space Policy Reconsidered. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. This is another fine collection 

of articles on broad questions in space exploration ranging from the militarization of spaceflight to the 

place of NASA in the larger schema.

Byrnes, Mark E. Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA. New York, Praeger, 1994. Byrnes provides reasoned analysis of the approach taken by the U.S. space agency toward developing its own public image.

Caiden, Martin, and Jay Barbree, with Susan Wright. Destination Mars: In Art, Myth, and Science. New 

York: Penguin Studio, 1997. This work is a beautifully illustrated overview of the lure of the Red 

Planet throughout humanity’s history.

Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Viking, 1994. 

One of the best books on Apollo, this work emphasizes the exploration of the Moon by the astronauts 

between 1968 and 1972.

Chaisson, Eric J. The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle 

over the Hubble Space Telescope. New York: Harper-Collins, 1994. Chaisson’s work is a provocative 

but not always reliable discussion of the inner workings and conflicts between scientists, engineers, 

technological managers, the keepers of space science’s image, and public policy advocates concerning 

the Hubble Space Telescope.

Chang, Iris. Thread of the Silkworm. New York: Basic Books, 1996. This is the biography of H. S. Tsien, 

the brilliant Chinese rocketeer who studied at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the 

1930s and was deported to the People’s Republic China in 1950 as a part of the McCarthy purges. 

Once there, after being jailed for a time, Tsien became the architect of the Chinese ballistic missile 

program, developing the Silkworm and other rockets for the military.

Coles, Peter, and Francesco Lucchin. Cosmology: The Origin and Evolution of Cosmic Structure. New York: 

John Wiley, 1995. This book uses knowledge gained from the space exploration program.

Compton, W. David, and Charles D. Benson. Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-4208, 1983. This book is the official NASA history of Skylab, an orbital 

workshop placed in orbit in the early 1970s.
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—. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4214, 1989. This clearly written account traces the Moon landings from the circumlunar 

mission of Apollo 8 in December 1968 until the final landing of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Cortright, Edgar M., editor. Apollo Expeditions to the Moon. Washington, DC: NASA SP-350, 1975. 

This large-format volume, with numerous illustrations in both color and black-and-white, contains 

essays by numerous NASA luminaries.

Darling, David. Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology. New York: Basic Books, 2001. A 

study of life in the universe is provided in this work.

Dawson, Virginia P. Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American Propulsion Technology. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-4306, 1991. Dawson has written a fine institutional history of the Lewis 

Research Center from its creation in 1941 to the early 1990s.

Day, Dwayne A., John M. Logsdon, and Brian Latell, editors. Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona 

Spy Satellite. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. This work provides a historical 

overview of the first satellite reconnaissance effort in the United States. Developed in the 1950s and 

finally successful in launching into orbit in 1960, Corona was operational until 1973.

Dethloff, Henry C. “Suddenly Tomorrow Came...”: A History of the Johnson Space Center. Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4307, 1993. This is the official history of the Manned Spacecraft Center, renamed the 

Johnson Space Center in 1973, in Houston, Texas, the home of the astronauts and Mission Control.

DeVorkin, David H. Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences After 

World War II. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992. An excellent analysis of military experiments with 

rocketry in the immediate postwar era; scientists were able to place experiments on these vehicles, so 

the flights achieved more than one purpose.

Dick, Steven J. Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant. 

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982. A former NASA Chief Historian provides 

an outstanding discussion of the evolution of humanity’s belief in the possibility of life beyond Earth.

—. The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science. 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. This is the superb continuation of the author’s earlier 

studies on plurality of worlds.

Dickson, Paul. Sputnik: The Shock of the Century. New York: Walker and Co., 2001. A fine study of this 

complex subject is provided.

Divine, Robert A. The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite. New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1993. This book contains insights into the space program as promoted by the Eisenhower 

White House.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Dorsey, Gary. Silicon Sky: How One Small Start-Up Went over the Top To Beat the Big Boys into Satellite 

Heaven. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1999. This book discusses the development of Orbital Sciences 

Corporation, builder of low-cost satellites and launch vehicles, and gives readers an insider’s look at one 

portion of the life of this aerospace startup. Dorsey focuses on one chapter of Orbital’s history, after 

the company had established itself with the first flights of the Pegasus launcher and was starting work 

on Orbcomm, a series of low-Earth orbit communications satellites. He then carries the story to 1995. 

It is a compelling celebration that may provide lessons to the next generation of aerospace startups.

Doyle, Stephen E., editor. History of Liquid Rocket Engine Development in the United States, 1955–1980. 

San Diego, CA: Univelt, 1992, AAS History Series. The editor has provided an excellent collection of 

papers on the development of liquid rocket technology.

Dunar, Andrew J., and Stephen P. Waring. Power To Explore: A History of the Marshall Space Flight Center. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-4313, 1999. A fine institutional history of the rocket development center 

once led by Wernher von Braun.

Emme, Eugene M. A History of Space Flight. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965. This short 

history of space exploration with emphasis on the U.S. human effort was written by the NASA historian 

in the 1960s.

—, editor. The History of Rocket Technology: Essays on Research, Development, and Utility. Detroit, MI: 

Wayne State University Press, 1964. This is nearly the only work of detail that surveys the sweep of 

rocket technology development in the United States. Although outdated because of events since publication, the work is unique because it brings together engineers, scientists, and historians to discuss 

rocketry’s development.

Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Linda Neuman Ezell. On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958–1978. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-4212, 1984. This detailed study of NASA’s efforts to send space probes to 

Mars culminates with the soft landing of the two Viking spacecraft in the mid-1970s.

—. The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4209, 1978. 

This is an outstanding, detailed study of the effort by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 

mid-1970s to conduct a joint human spaceflight.

Fischer, Daniel. Mission Jupiter: The Spectacular Journey of the Galileo Spacecraft. New York: Copernicus 

Books, 2001. Fischer provides a history of the Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter.

Fitzgerald, Frances. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War. New York: 

Simon & Schuster, 2000. The author provides an important history of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Fleming, James Rodger. Historical Perspectives on Climate Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 

1998. Fleming writes a solid effort to understand the history of Earth science.
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French, Bevan M., and Stephen P. Maran, editors. A Meeting with the Universe: Science Discoveries from 

the Space Program. Washington, DC: NASA Educational Publication-177, 1981. This is a very fine 

discussion of the scientific results of NASA’s efforts to explore the planets of the solar system and the 

wider universe.

Friedman, Norman. Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare. Annapolis, 

MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000. Friedman provides an interesting study of historical analogy.

Fries, Sylvia D. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4104, 1992. This book 

is a sociocultural analysis of a selection of engineers at NASA who worked on Project Apollo. It analyzes 

the manner in which different personalities, perspectives, backgrounds, and priorities came together to 

inform the direction of NASA during the 1960s.

Gall, Sarah L., and Joseph T. Pramberger. NASA Spinoffs: 30-Year Commemorative Edition. Washington, 

DC: NASA, 1992. This work is a better-than-average recitation of the technologies originally developed 

to support space exploration and their transfer to Earth-based commercial uses.

Gavaghan, Helen. Something New Under the Sun: Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age. New York: 

Copernicus Books, 1998. This is the first book focusing on the history and development of satellite 

technology. Highlighting three major areas of development—navigational satellites, communications, 

and weather observation and forecasting—this book tells the remarkable inside story of how obscure 

men and women, often laboring under strict secrecy, made satellite technology possible.

Glennan, T. Keith. The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan. Edited by J. D. Hunley. Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4105, 1993. This diary of NASA’s first administrator contains a detailed account of the 

rise and development of the Agency between 1958 and the end of 1960.

Goddard, Esther C., editor, and G. Edward Pendray, associate editor. The Papers of Robert H. Goddard. 

3 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1970. This is an excellent collection of primary source 

materials that describe the life and work of the premier American rocketry experimenter of the first half 

of the 20th century.

Goldsmith, Donald. The Hunt for Life on Mars. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1997. This work is a solid 

discussion of the study of Mars, especially the search for possible life there, from Percival Lowell’s 

work in the late 19th century to present-day efforts.

Goldstein, Stanley H. Reaching for the Stars: The Story of Astronaut Training and the Lunar Landing. New 

York: Praeger, 1987. This is a detailed account of the development and management of the astronaut 

training program for Project Apollo.

Gorn, Michael H. The Universal Man: Theodore von Kármán’s Life in Aeronautics. Washington, DC: 

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Gorn has written a fine biography of the originator and first head 

of the organization that eventually became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Gray, Mike. Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon. New York: W.W. Norton and 

Co., 1992. This is a lively journalistic account of the career of Harrison Storms, president of the 

Aerospace Division of North American Aviation, which built the Apollo capsule.

Greeley, Ronald, and Raymond Batson. The NASA Atlas of the Solar System. New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 1996. This landmark book is on space science as understood at the end of the 20th century.

Green, Constance M., and Milton Lomask. Vanguard: A History. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4202, 1970; 

rep. ed. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971. Green provides an excellent account of the development 

and operation of what was supposed to be the United States’ first orbital satellite in the 1950s.

Griffith, Alison. The National Aeronautics and Space Act: A Study of the Development of Public Policy.

Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1962. This is a detailed study of the process of writing this 

major legislation in 1958.

Grinspoon, David Harry. Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet. 

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Helix Books, 1997. Grinspoon writes an account of the 

Magellan radar mapping mission to Venus in 1989–90.

Hacker, Barton C., and James M. Grimwood. On Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-4203, 1977. This work is the official history of the Gemini project conducted by NASA in the mid-1960s.

Hall, R. Cargill. Lunar Impact: A History of Project Ranger. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4210, 1977. The 

official history of the Ranger program to send robotic probes to the Moon in the late 1950s and 1960s.

—, and Jacob Neufeld, editors. The U.S. Air Force in Space: 1945 to the 21st Century. Washington, DC: 

USAF History and Museums Program, 1998. This collection of essays explores the range of activities 

in space undertaken by the Air Force.

Hallion, Richard P. On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 1946–1981. Washington, DC: NASA 

SP-4303, 1984. This institutional history of Dryden Flight Research Center (now known as Armstrong 

Flight Research Center) discusses the NASA facility in the Mojave Desert where hypersonic vehicles 

such as the X-15 were flown.

—, and Tom D. Crouch, editors. Apollo: Ten Years Since Tranquility Base. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 1979. This is a collection of 16 essays developed for the National Air and Space Museum 

to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the first landing on the Moon.

Handberg, Roger. Seeking New World Vistas: The Militarization of Space. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 

2000. An interesting analysis of military space policy.
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—, and Joan Johnson-Freese. The Prestige Trap: A Comparative Study of the U.S., European, and Japanese 

Space Programs. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1994. An interesting study of the various 

programs and their development over the years.

Hanle, Paul A., and Del Chamberlain, editors. Space Science Comes of Age: Perspectives in the History of the 

Space Sciences. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. A superior collection of essays 

on all aspects of the space sciences.

Harford, James J. Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive To Beat America to the Moon. New 

York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. The first English-language biography of the Soviet “chief designer” 

who directed the projects that were so successful in the late 1950s and early 1960s in energizing the 

Cold War rivalry for space supremacy.

Harland, David M. Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Praxis, 1999. 

This work focuses on the exploration and science mission carried out by Apollo astronauts while on 

the lunar surface.

—. Jupiter Odyssey: The Story of NASA’s Galileo Mission. Chichester, U.K.: Springer-Praxis, 2000, SpringerPraxis Books in Astronomy and Space Sciences. This is the first book to offer a history of the Galileo 

space probe sent to Jupiter.

—. The Space Shuttle: Roles, Missions and Accomplishments. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Praxis, 1998. This 

book is the most sophisticated of any Shuttle history to appear to date.

Harvey, Dodd L., and Linda C. Ciccoritti. U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in Space. Miami, FL: Center for 

Advanced International Studies at the University of Miami, 1974, Monographs in International 

Affairs. This is a detailed exploration of the competition/cooperation in space exploration by the two 

superpowers of the Cold War era through the détente that led to the joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Hayes, Peter L., James M. Smith, Alan R. Van Tassel, and Guy M. Walsh, editors. Spacepower for a New 

Millennium: Space and U.S. National Security. New York: McGraw Hill for the United States Air 

Force Institute for National Security Studies, 2000. This is a space policy analysis.

Hechler, Ken. Toward the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Science and Technology, 1959–1979. 

Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representatives, 1980. This work contains the best account to date 

of congressional wrangling over space exploration and demonstrates the bipartisan nature of both its 

support and its opposition.

Henbest, Nigel, and Heather Couper. The Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 

1994. This interesting basic handbook examines the present scientific understanding of the Milky 

Way Galaxy.
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Heppenheimer, T. A. Countdown: The History of Space Exploration. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. 

This general-audience history is somewhat quirky but well written and entertaining.

Herring, Mack R. Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4310, 1997. Herring presents the official history of the rocket-testing center built for 

Project Apollo.

Hickam, Homer H., Jr. Rocket Boys: A Memoir. New York: Delacorte Press, 1998. In the fall of 1957, 

the launch of Sputnik electrified the United States. That was true even in the small, isolated town of 

Coalwood, West Virginia, where outside events were rarely favored as topics of discussion over local gossip. It also grabbed the intention of Homer Hickam, Jr., younger son of the local coal mine supervisor, 

who announced out of the blue his intention to build a rocket. Homer’s efforts to build rockets, and 

the effect on his community, are the subject of this memoir.

Hudson, Heather E. Communications Satellites: Their Development and Impact. New York: Free Press, 1990. 

No space technology has held more importance for modern America than the communications satellite, 

and this book attempts to discuss this application and how it has changed our lives.

Hufbauer, Karl. Exploring the Sun: Solar Science Since Galileo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1991. This prize-winning history of the development of solar science since the 15th century places 

emphasis on the 20th-century contribution made possible because of the advent of the Space Age.

Hujsak, Edward. The Future of U.S. Rocketry. La Jolla, CA: Mina-Helwig Company, 1994. More a history 

than anything else, this book describes the development of various types of launch vehicles.

Jenkins, Dennis R. Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System, the First 100 

Missions. Cape Canaveral, FL: Dennis R. Jenkins, 2001, 4th ed. Perhaps the best technical history, this 

book presents an overview of the Space Shuttle and its development and use.

Johnson, Dana J., Scott Pace, and C. Bryan Gabbard. Space: Emerging Options for National Power. Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, 1998. With the Cold War over and with growing commercial use of space by 

the United States and other countries, the military’s role in space needs to be reevaluated. The authors 

outline the shifts in expected military operations in a post–Cold War world and provide three options 

for future military use of space. A “minimalist” option would have the military rely on partnerships 

with other government agencies and commercial resources to serve the military. An “enhanced” option 

would expand the military’s use of space in a variety of areas and integrate them into the existing military branches. The third option would establish an “aerospace force” separate from the other military 

branches that would work jointly with other branches but also be able to exercise power separately. The 

book does not provide a recommendation for any of the three options, choosing instead to characterize 

the strengths and weaknesses of each.
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Johnson-Freese, Joan. Changing Patterns of International Cooperation in Space. Malabar, FL: Orbit Books, 

1990. Johnson-Freese presents an interesting exploration of the movement from competition to cooperation in space exploration.

—, and Roger Handberg. Space: The Dormant Frontier, Changing the Paradigm for the 21st Century. 

Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. This political science study of the evolution of space policy since Sputnik 

offers suggestions for future efforts.

Kauffman, James L. Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media, and Funding for Project Apollo, 1961–1963. 

Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994. This straightforward but helpful history examines the 

public image–building efforts of NASA and the relation of that image to public policy.

Kay, W. D. Can Democracies Fly in Space? The Challenge of Revitalizing the U.S. Space Program. Westport, 

CT: Praeger, 1995. The answer to the question, of course, is that they can and do, but the analysis here 

suggests that the political requirement to build broad constituencies and to water down proposals to 

ensure success, as well as to make claims that are beyond reach, ensure that the effort is inefficient and 

incremental and always shifting rather than focused and accepting of returns that will accrue beyond 

the next election.

Koerner, David, and Simon LeVay. Here There Be Dragons: The Scientific Quest for Extraterrestrial Life. New 

York: Oxford University Press, 2000. A good overview.

Koppes, Clayton R. JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. An institutional history of one of NASA’s major centers of 

space science activities.

Kosloski, Lillian D. U.S. Space Gear: Outfitting the Astronaut. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution 

Press, 1993. Kosloski’s work is the only serious history of spacesuits available.

Kraemer, Robert S. Beyond the Moon: A Golden Age of Planetary Exploration, 1971–1978. Washington, 

DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. This fine discussion was written by a participant.

Krug, Linda T. Presidential Perspectives on Space Exploration: Guiding Metaphors from Eisenhower to Bush. 

New York: Praeger, 1991. This interesting analysis of spaceflight speeches by the presidents emphasizes 

their use of romantic analogy and metaphor in their rhetoric about space exploration.

Lambakis, Steven James. On the Edge of Earth: The Future of American Space Power. Lexington: University 

Press of Kentucky, 2001. Lambakis discusses military space policy.

Lambright, W. Henry. Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1995. This is an excellent biography of the NASA Administrator between 1961 and 1968, the 

critical period in which Project Apollo was under way.
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Launius, Roger D. Frontiers of Space Exploration. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998, Critical Events 

in the Twentieth Century Series. This book presents a collection of essays along with key documents 

and biographies of actors in the space exploration effort.

—, and Howard E. McCurdy. Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities, 1950–2050. San 

Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2001. This large-format book sweeps from the past to the future 

of spaceflight.

—, editors. Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. 

This collection of essays covers Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, with 

additional discussions of international cooperation and the role of the presidency in shaping space policy.

Launius, Roger D. With Bertram Ulrich. NASA & the Exploration of Space. New York: Stewart, Tabori, 

and Chang, 1998. This basic history of NASA is illustrated with works from the NASA art program.

—. NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Melbourne, FL: Krieger Pub. Co., 1994. A short 

book in the Anvil Series, this history of U.S. civilian space efforts consists half of narrative and half 

of documents.

—, editor. Organizing for the Use of Space: Historical Perspectives on a Persistent Issue. San Diego, CA: Univelt, 

Inc., 1995, AAS History Series, Vol. 18. This collection of essays related to the organizational elements 

of conducting operations in space is organized chronologically and focuses on both civil and military 

aspects of the U.S. effort.

—, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith, editors. Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet 

Satellite. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. This book comprises 

a collection of essays.

Lemonick, Michael D. Other Worlds: The Search for Life in the Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 

1998. This is a strong analysis of whether or not there is life on other planets in the universe and efforts 

under way to find it.

Leverington, David. New Cosmic Horizons: Space Astronomy from the V-2 to the Hubble Space Telescope. New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Leverington’s book is an outstanding history of this subject.

Levine, Alan J. The Missile and Space Race. New York: Praeger, 1994. A somewhat quirky work, this study 

presents some interesting perspectives on the development of the rivalry between the United States and 

the Soviet Union in space exploration.

Levine, Arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4102, 1982. A narrative account of NASA from its origins through 1969, this book analyzes key administrative decisions, 

contracting, personnel, the budgetary process, headquarters organization, relations with the Department 

of Defense, and long-range planning.
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Lewis, John S. Worlds Without End: The Exploration of Planets Known and Unknown. Reading, MA: 

Perseus Books, 1998. This book is a history of the search for planets beyond this solar system.

—, and Ruth A. Lewis. Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 

1987. An account of the possibilities for commercial enterprises in space.

Ley, Willy. Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space. New York: Viking Press, 1968. This is the fourth and final 

edition of 21 printings of the work first published as Rockets. It emphasizes the possibilities of spaceflight 

as a reality rather than science fiction. Ley came to the United States in 1935, and this book became 

one of the most significant textbooks available in the mid-20th century on the possibilities of space 

travel. Once again, the book emphasizes the importance of a trip to the Moon as humanity’s first step 

off Earth and into the universe.

Light, Michael. Full Moon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. In this book, Michael Light has woven 

129 of these stunningly clear images into a single composite voyage, a narrative of breathtaking 

immediacy and authenticity.

Link, Mae Mills. Space Medicine in Project Mercury. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4003, 1965. The first 

program to launch an American into space was enormously important from the perspective of biomedicine. Could humans survive the rigors of launch on rockets and the harshness of the vacuum of space? 

This book surveys the questions asked by scientists prior to the project’s first launch and what answers 

the experiments with the first astronauts yielded in terms of information on this subject.

Logsdon, John M. The Decision To Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest. Cambridge, 

MA: MIT Press, 1970. This classic study analyzes the political process in the United States leading to 

the decision to go to the Moon in 1961.

—, general editor. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space 

Program. 6 vols. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407, 1995–2008. An essential reference work, these 

volumes contain more than 650 key documents about space policy and its development throughout 

the 20th century.

Mack, Pamela E. Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of Landsat. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 

1990. Mack’s book is the only substantive study of the origins and development of the first Earth 

resources–monitoring satellite program, launched in the 1970s.

Mailer, Norman. Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 

1970; New York: New American Library, 1971. Written by one of the foremost contemporary 

American writers, this book shines as an exploration of how the 1960s’ countercultural mindset meets 

its antithesis, a NASA steeped in middle-class values and reverence for the American flag and culture.
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Mather, John, and John Boslough. The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey 

Back to the Dawn of the Universe. New York: Basic Books, 1996. A solid account of NASA’s Cosmic 

Background Explorer written by the project’s chief scientist.

McCurdy, Howard E. Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program. Baltimore, 

MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, New Series in NASA History. This book studies the 

history of NASA’s efforts to reform itself in the 1990s.

—. Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program. Baltimore, MD: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. This work discusses the evolution of the NASA organizational 

culture from the creation of the Agency to the 1990s using extensive interviews with key personnel 

and documentary sources.

—. Space and the American Imagination. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. This 

book is a significant analysis of the relationship between popular culture and public policy.

—. The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice. Baltimore, MD: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1990. This work is a fine study of the political process that led to the 

presidential decision in 1984 to develop an orbital space station.

McDonald, Robert A. Corona Between the Sun and the Earth: The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space. 

Bethesda, MD: ASPRS Publications, 1997. McDonald presents a historical overview of the first 

satellite reconnaissance effort in the United States. Developed in the 1950s and finally successful in 

launching into orbit in 1960, Corona was operational until 1973.

McDougall, Walter A. ...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: 

Basic Books, 1985; rep. ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. This Pulitzer 

Prize–winning book analyzes the space race to the Moon in the 1960s. The author argues that Apollo 

prompted the space program to stress engineering over science, competition over cooperation, civilian 

over military management, and international prestige over practical applications.

McLucas, John L. Space Commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. This book is a useful 

short analysis of the rise and evolution of business opportunities in space, among them communications 

satellite technology.

Michaud, Michael A.G. Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-Space Movement, 1972–1984. 

New York: Praeger, 1986. Michaud presents a cogent history and commentary of the pro-space efforts 

made by voluntary organizations that arose near the end of the Apollo program, identifying key groups, 

tracing their origins and goals, and describing how they had a subtle but critical influence on the space 

policy of the nation during the formative years of Shuttle development.
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Morrison, David. Exploring Planetary Worlds. New York: Scientific American Books, 1993. Using data 

provided from the space probes sent to the planets, this work is another fine discussion of the planets 

and other bodies of the solar system.

Muenger, Elizabeth A. Searching the Horizon: A History of Ames Research Center, 1940–1976. Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4304, 1985. Muenger presents an institutional history of the NASA Center charged 

with researching aerospace medicine as well as other problems of spaceflight.

Murray, Bruce C. Journey into Space: The First Three Decades of Space Exploration. New York: W.W. Norton 

and Co., 1989. This book, written by a former Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is an excellent 

discussion of the planetary science program.

Murray, Charles A., and Catherine Bly Cox. Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 

1989; rep. ed. Burkittsville, MD: South Mountain Books, 2004. This is perhaps the best general 

account of the lunar program, this history uses interviews and documents to reconstruct the stories 

of the people who participated in Apollo.

NASA Historical Data Book. 4 vols. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4012, 1976–1994. Presented here is an 

exhaustive compendium of basic information on NASA resources, programs, and projects during the 

period between 1958 and 1978.

Nash, Philip. The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963. Chapel 

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. This book is a fine, detailed study of one case in which 

ballistic missile technology entered the sphere of international relations in the Cold War.

Naugle, John E. First Among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4215, 1991. This work is an outstanding discussion of the origin and evolution of NASA’s 

space science experiment decision-making process.

Neal, Valerie, Cathleen S. Lewis, and Frank H. Winter. Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide. New York: 

Macmillan, 1995. This book provides, with numerous illustrations, a basic history of space exploration 

by the United States.

—, editor. Where Next, Columbus? The Future of Space Exploration. New York: Oxford University Press, 

1994. Neal provides an excellent collection of essays linking the voyage of discovery by Columbus with 

human exploration of space.

Needell, Allan A., editor. The First 25 Years in Space: A Symposium. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 1983. This book is a collection of papers from a conference on space exploration 

held in commemoration of the 1957 launching of Sputnik.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Neufeld, Jacob. Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960. Washington, DC: Center 

for Air Force History, 1990. This work is an official history of the Air Force’s efforts to develop ballistic missiles, many of which also later served as launch vehicles for space probes and human flight.

Neufeld, Michael J. The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. 

New York: The Free Press, 1995. Neufeld presents the finest study yet of the German effort in World 

War II to develop the V-2 ballistic missile.

—. Wernher von Braun. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. This book is the indispensable biography of 

the father of the German V-2, the Jupiter ballistic missile, and the Saturn V Moon rocket.

Newell, Homer E. Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4211, 

1980. The Agency’s first chief scientist provides a thoughtful and revealing memoir of space science 

in NASA during the 1950s and 1960s.

Nicks, Orin W. The Far Travelers: The Exploring Machines. Washington, DC: NASA SP-480, 1985. This 

work is a somewhat idiosyncratic discussion of the development of space probes at NASA for the 

conduct of space science from the beginning of the Space Age through the early 1980s.

—, editor. This Island Earth. Washington, DC: NASA SP-250, 1970. Something of a classic in the history 

of government printing, this exciting book collects ruminations on Earth as a fragile lifeboat hanging 

in the harshness of space. It reflects and perhaps contributes to the rise of the modern environmental 

movement in the United States that was given additional steam by the images of Earth taken from 

beyond the planet and provided for the first time by the space program.

Ordway, Frederick I., III. Visions of Spaceflight: Images from the Ordway Collection. New York: Four Walls 

Eight Windows, 2001. Ordway presents a cultural history.

—, and Randy Lieberman, editors. Blueprint for Space: From Science Fiction to Science Fact. Washington, 

DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. This book is a fine collection of essays, accompanied by spectacular artwork and photographs, dealing with the popular culture of spaceflight in the 20th century.

—, and Mitchell R. Sharpe. The Rocket Team. New York: Crowell, 1979. This is an important, popularly 

oriented, and somewhat apologetic discussion of the activities of the group of German engineers 

under the leadership of Wernher von Braun who developed the V-2 in World War II, came to the 

United States in 1945, and worked at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to develop 

the Saturn V launch vehicle used in Project Apollo.

Peebles, Curtis. The Corona Project: America’s First Spy Satellites. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 

1997. This work is a historical overview of the first satellite reconnaissance effort in the United 

States. Developed in the 1950s and finally successful in launching into orbit in 1960, Corona was 

operational until 1973.
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—. Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution 

Press, 1994. This is the best historical study to appear on the debate over the possibility of continuing 

visitation by extraterrestrials. Contains extensive documentation and quotations from official records.

Pellegrino, Charles R., and Joshua Stoff. Chariots for Apollo: The Making of the Lunar Module. New York: 

Atheneum, 1985. This book is a popular but not-always-accurate discussion of the development of 

the Lunar Module by the Grumman Aerospace Corporation.

Penley, Constance. NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America. New York: Verso, 1997. This 

work is a truly provocative postmodern analysis of spaceflight and its meaning in the development 

of modern America.

Pisano, Dominick A., and Cathleen S. Lewis, editors. Air and Space History: An Annotated Bibliography. New 

York: Garland Publishing Co., Inc., 1988. This exhaustive reference is the place to start when searching 

for bibliographical information about any aspect of aerospace history.

Pitts, John A. The Human Factor: Biomedicine in the Manned Space Program to 1980. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-4213, 1985. This account traces the history of space medicine from its early days before the 

founding of NASA through the decade following the Apollo program.

Portree, David S. F. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–2000. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-2001-4521, 2001. Portree provides an important analysis of a 50-year effort to send humans 

to the Red Planet.

Redfield, Peter. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. Berkeley: University of 

California, 2000. Redfield has created a terrific discussion of the development of the European spaceport.

Reeves, Robert. The Superpower Space Race: An Explosive Rivalry Through the Solar System. New York: 

Plenum Press, 1994. Somewhat mistitled—suggesting the broadest possible context of discussion for 

U.S./USSR rivalry in space exploration—this book is a well-done journalistic account of the robotic 

race to the various planets by scientists of both nations.

Richelson, Jeffrey T. America’s Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program. New York: 

Harper and Row, 1990. This is the best study yet of the U.S. military reconnaissance satellite program 

from its inception in the 1950s through the end of the Cold War.

—, project director. U.S. Military Uses of Space, 1945–1991. Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1991. 

Guide and Microfilm Collection. This is an important microfiche collection of formerly classified 

materials obtained from the Department of Defense and relative to military operations in space.

Roman, Peter J. Eisenhower and the Missile Gap. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Using recently 

declassified records, Roman provides an excellent modern analysis of the “missile gap” controversy that 

arose after the Soviet launch of Sputnik.
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Rosenthal, Alfred. Venture into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight Center. Washington, DC: NASA 

SP-4301, 1968. This book is an institutional history of the NASA Center created in 1960 and charged 

with studying Earth science and aspects of planetary sciences.

Rosholt, Robert L. An Administrative History of NASA, 1958–1963. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4101, 

1966. This is a particularly valuable work for its discussion of the details of the organization, structure, 

budget, and procedures of NASA during its earliest years.

Roth, Ladislav E., and Stephen D. Page. The Face of Venus: The Magellan Radar-Mapping Mission. 

Washington, DC: NASA SP-520, 1995. This is a large-format, well-illustrated discussion of the radarmapping mission conducted by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft on its mission to Venus in 1989–90.

Sagan, Carl. Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Ballantine Books, 1974. 

Written by the premier American space scientist of the latter 20th century, this wide-ranging collection of essays explores issues of life beyond Earth in the universe and the possibilities of human 

exploration of the cosmos.

—. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980. Accompanying a stunning PBS science series on the evolution of the universe, this well-illustrated book makes scientific ideas—many coming from research 

undertaken as part of the space program—both comprehensible and exciting. Despite its age, this is still 

an outstanding starting point for any research into our universe’s origin and evolution.

—. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, 1994. This work is 

probably the most sophisticated articulation of the exploration imperative to appear since Wernher von 

Braun’s work of the 1950s and 1960s.

—, Frank D. Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman Sagan. Murmurs 

of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. New York: Random House, 1978. This book presents a discussion of conceptualization and carrying out of the effort to place a gold record on the two Voyager 

spacecraft sent outside the solar system in the 1970s. This record contained digital information on the 

planet Earth, including photographs, sounds, music, and greetings in more than 40 languages. It was 

designed to tell an extraterrestrial intelligence who encountered it something about this planet and 

the life that thrives here, and to give that life-form a general idea of where Earth was located in space.

—, and Thornton Page, editors. UFOs: A Scientific Debate. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1973. In this 

outstanding collection of essays relating to the possibility that there is life beyond Earth in the universe 

and that intelligent forms of life are visiting Earth, the papers suggest that there is no real proof of the 

existence of extraterrestrial life as yet, although many people believe it must be out there somewhere.

Shapland, David, and Michael Rycroft. Spacelab: Research in Earth Orbit. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge 

University Press, 1984. Shapland provides a useful discussion of the development and flight of the 

laboratory built by Europeans for use aboard the Space Shuttle in Earth orbit.
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Shayler, David J. Disasters and Accidents in Manned Spaceflight. Chichester, U.K.: Springer-Praxis, 

2000, Springer-Praxis Books in Astronomy and Space Sciences. Shayler provides a fine discussion 

of this subject.

Sheehan, William. The Planet Mars: A History of Observation & Discovery. Tucson: University of Arizona 

Press, 1996. An excellent survey of how humans have acquired knowledge about the Red Planet from 

antiquity to the present, the book concentrates on the work of Earth-based astronomers but also includes 

succinct narratives of the Mariner 4 mission and the Viking project of the 1970s.

Siddiqi, Asif A. Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974. Washington, DC: 

NASA SP-2000-4408, 2000. This is the new standard in knowledge about the Soviet side of the race 

to the Moon.

Sloop, John L. Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945–1959. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4404, 1978. 

The author gives a detailed discussion of the development of the cryogenic fuels used in rockets.

Smith, Robert W. The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technology, and Politics. New York: 

Cambridge University Press, 1989, rev. ed. 1994. Smith’s prize-winning history details the development of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Spires, David N. Beyond Horizons: A Half Century of Air Force Space Leadership. Peterson Air Force Base, 

CO: Air Force Space Command, 1997. Spires provides a fine overview of the subject.

Stares, Paul B. The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 

1985. This seminal book establishes themes and provides analysis that has not yet been superseded 

although it is now more than two decades old. Stares suggests that national security needs drove much 

of what the United States established as its policy toward space exploration.

Stoker, Carol A., and Carter Emmart, editors. Strategies for Mars: A Guide to Human Exploration. San 

Diego, CA: Univelt, Inc., 1996. The most up-to-date and useful of several books related to Mars 

exploration, this collection of essays provides a rationale, technology assessment, and political analysis 

of the endeavor through the lens of quite a lot of historical perspective.

Stumpf, David K. Titan II: A History of a Cold War Missile Program. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas 

Press, 2000. Stumpf has written an outstanding study of a single launch vehicle.

Swanson, Glen E., editor. “Before This Decade Is Out...”: Reflections on the Apollo Program. Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4223, 1999. Swanson’s work is an outstanding collection of oral histories by some 

of the key participants.

Swenson, Loyd S., Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander. This New Ocean: A History of 

Project Mercury. Washington, DC: NASA SP-4201, 1966. The official history of Project Apollo, this 

book is based on extensive research and interviews.
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HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Swift, David W. SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk About Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Tucson: 

University of Arizona Press, 1990. No issue has more affected space exploration than the possibility 

of making contact with life beyond Earth, and this book prints interviews with several scientists and 

engineers involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a formal program sponsored by 

several U.S. organizations.

—. Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and 

Astronautics, 1997. These oral histories from the Voyager program emphasize the Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory experience.

Tatarewicz, Joseph N. Space Technology and Planetary Astronomy. Bloomington: Indiana University 

Press, 1990. Tatarewicz discusses the interrelationships of space scientists, government patrons, and 

the politics of big science in the period between the 1950s and the 1980s.

Tucker, Wallace H., and Karen Tucker. Revealing the Universe: The Making of the Chandra X-Ray 

Observatory. New York: Harvard University Press, 2001. This work is an important history of a 

major recent NASA space science effort.

Van Dyke, Vernon. Pride and Power: The Rationale of the Space Program. Urbana: University of Illinois 

Press, 1964. This analysis of the overall rationale of the space program came to the conclusion that 

the most powerful motives behind it involved competition with the Soviet Union.

Vaughan, Diane. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. The first thorough scholarly study of the events leading 

to the fateful decision to launch Challenger in January 1986, this book uses sociological and communication theory to piece together the story of America’s worst disaster in spaceflight up to that 

point and to analyze the nature of risk in high-technology enterprises.

Von Benke, Matthew J. The Politics of Space: A History of U.S.-Soviet/Russian Competition and Cooperation 

in Space. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. This work provides an important analysis of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia since the 1950s.

Von Braun, Wernher, Frederick I. Ordway III, and Dave Dooling. History of Rocketry and Space Travel. 

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1986 ed. This is a large-format, illustrated history that emphasizes the history of U.S. space activities. It was written by one of the most significant popularizers of 

spaceflight with the assistance of professional writers.

Wallace, Harold D., Jr. Wallops Station and the Creation of the American Space Program. Washington, 

DC: NASA SP-4311, 1997. Wallace has written the official history of the small NASA facility where 

sounding rockets were launched beginning in the latter 1940s.
117

Selective Annotated Bibliography

Webb, James E. Space Age Management: The Large Scale Approach. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 

1969. Based on a series of lectures, this book by the former NASA Administrator tries to apply the 

concepts of large-scale technological management employed in Apollo to the other problems of society.

Whalen, David J. The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 2002, Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series. This significant synthesis of the early years of technology development and use was written with emphasis on the role 

of industry.

Wilford, John Noble. Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great 

Adventure in Space. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. This superior explanation of the possibilities of 

Mars exploration includes a discussion of earlier plans to send humans to the Red Planet.

Wilhelms, Don E. To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration. Tucson: University of Arizona 

Press, 1993. This work provides a detailed and contextual account of lunar geology during the 1960s 

and 1970s, as well as a less-detailed but informative account for the rest of the century.

Winter, Frank H. Prelude to the Space Age: The Rocket Societies, 1924–1940. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 1983. Winter provides a very good discussion of the private organizations of the 

early 20th century that were devoted to the fostering of space exploration as a fundamental aspect of 

human destiny.

—. Rockets into Space. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. This work by the rocket curator 

at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution is perhaps the most useful and 

up-to-date short synthesis of the development of the rocket available in English.

Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979. Wolfe gives an outstanding journalistic account of the first years of spaceflight, essentially Project Mercury, focusing on the Mercury Seven.

Zimmerman, Robert. Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998. This 

work is a fine history of the most significant mission to the Moon other than Apollo 11.

Key Historical Analog Studies

Ashley, K. D. Modeling Legal Argument: Reasoning with Cases and Hypotheticals. Cambridge, MA: MIT 

Press, 1990. The author provides an application of analogs to the development of legal arguments.

Bartha, Paul F. A. By Parallel Reasoning: The Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments. New York: 

Oxford University Press, 2010. This accessible study outlines the role of analogs in scientific reasoning.

Gentner, D., K. J. Holyoak, and B. N. Kokinov, editors. The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive 

Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press., 2001. An important collection of essays applies analog theory 

to a range of topics in science, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics.
118

HISTORICAL ANALOGS FOR THE STIMULATION OF SPACE COMMERCE

Hesse, Mary B. Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966. 

This enormously influential study shows why analogies are integral to understanding scientific practice.

Kyburg, H., and C. M. Teng. Uncertain Inference. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 

Kyburg and Teng’s work demonstrates the possibilities, as well as the pitfalls, of analog usage.

Mazlish, Bruce, editor. The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy. 

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. NASA sponsored this study, an early effort to use analogs, to see 

what connections could be drawn between fostering the railroads and fostering space exploration.

Mitchell, M. Analogy-Making as Perception. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press, 1993. This work deals with 

the centrality and the ubiquity of analogy in creative thought among scientists, artists, and writers 

and questions the broad use of analogs for understanding and knowledge generation.

Neustadt, Richard E., and Ernest R. May. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. 

New York: Free Press, 1986. To overcome the temptation to use history incorrectly, the authors put 

forward a specific process for decision-makers in crisis situations and use case studies to highlight 

successes and failures in analog usage.
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9 781626 830189

9000 0

ISBN 978-1-62683-018-9

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Washington, DC

NASA SP-2014-4554