The past 20 years of space policy in the United States have been characterized by privatization of NASA’s functions. As entrepreneurs cast their eyes on space travel, the executive branch was more than willing to comply by privatizing large swaths of the beloved space agency, allowing companies to get rich off of government contracts. George W. Bush's renewed "vision" for space exploration occurred right at the moment in history when commercial space travel became more attainable. Indeed, until 2004, private space travel in the U.S. was illegal. This was followed by NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which led NASA to invest in multiple American companies to develop transport capabilities to and from low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station. Indeed, it was this change in space policy that led to NASA's multimillion-dollar investments, via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, in companies like Blue Origin, Boeing and SpaceX.
Critic Naomi Klein coined the term “Shock Doctrine” to refer to the manner in which a doctrine of privatization creeps into the public sector in the wake of big psychological “shocks” to the nation, such as natural disasters or terrorism. In her eponymous book on the topic, Klein uses the example of post-Katrina New Orleans, and the way that the schooling system was privatized in the wake of the disaster, as a premier example of the Shock Doctrine in action. Bizarrely, the same thing happened, more or less, to NASA in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Politicians used the disaster to encourage phasing out the space shuttle program, thus outsourcing NASA’s primary function to private industry.
This paved the way for the existence of new companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, in addition participation by well-established aerospace companies like Boeing, all of which compete for NASA contracts. For all the company’s rhetoric and promises of Mars and Moon colonization, SpaceX gets much of its funding from NASA contracts — ironic, given CEO Elon Musk’s libertarian politics. A NASA spokesperson confirmed to Salon that those contracts have a fixed maximum value, yet the companies get their payments when they achieve milestones.
One of the side effects of privatizing NASA’s basic ability to send rockets to space is that government dollars go to investments in private companies, which then use the federal R&D money to invest in things that eventually create private profits. In other words, the U.S. government subsidizes the private profits of companies like SpaceX, in particular their space tourism projects. An overlooked SpaceX press release from last February documented this in glaring detail. From that press release, which announced SpaceX’s intent to send private citizens around the Moon:
We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the Moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a Moon mission. [...]
Most importantly, we would like to thank NASA, without whom this would not be possible. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which provided most of the funding for Dragon 2 development, is a key enabler for this mission. In addition, this will make use of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which was developed with internal SpaceX funding.
Essentially, what SpaceX is saying is that NASA helped fund the development of Dragon 2, a “next-generation" space capsule. NASA paid SpaceX to help develop that space capsule to send humans to and from the Space Station; but SpaceX is committed to using the design to send "private citizens" into space, too. Note that government money went into developing that module. And SpaceX, which has long been trying to be a space tourism company, seems poised to use the technology developed with government money to send rich people into space.
The egregiousness here is subtle, particularly since our government has a history of giving contracts to private companies, and letting said private companies use the fruits of those contracts to profit separately with no ancillary benefit to taxpayers. (For more on this, read about the iPhone, which was developed with huge amounts of government-funded research — though taxpayers make no royalties off its sale, of course.) What seems more damning is the revelation that private tourists get to enjoy a luxury like a space vacation courtesy of taxpayers' help.
Arguably, some of the government-funded, private-profiteering projects — like iPhones, or the internet itself — have a public utility to everyone. In other words, despite Apple profiting tremendously off of tech that was developed at taxpayer expense, we all benefit collectively from something like smartphones. Yet the same cannot be said for a few rich people going off to space.
SpaceX hasn’t actually delivered on their promise to send private tourists to space — and they might never do so, as they’re a famously hype-heavy company — but if they do, one wonders if those space-tourist billionaires will look down on America from their capsule and thank the taxpayers for helping pay for their vacation.
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