The Satellite Renaissance

It’s difficult to exaggerate Elon Musk’s role in reviving space tech. Before SpaceX successfully launched a rocket into orbit in 2008, the United States had lost both the capability and the desire to go to space. 

The cost of sending anything into orbit was astronomical. Building and launching a satellite was a feat only a nation or a massive corporation could do. Despite their usefulness, only a thousand or so of satellites were orbiting the Earth in the 2010s.

Today, that number has jumped to over 7,000 active satellites. In large part thanks to SpaceX, we find ourselves undergoing a massive transition in which entrepreneurs and tinkerers can launch machines into orbit. Satellites are playing increasingly critical roles in navigation, weather monitoring, telecommunications, national security, and more.

As the number of satellites and space-based services continues to grow, many aspects of our world will change—how we connect to the internet, use our technology devices, and even farm. This essay explores life amid this satellite renaissance and the opportunities on the horizon. 

The dawn of the Second Space Age

By the turn of the 21st century, NASA’s budget was a fraction of what it was at its inception. NASA was getting 4.5% of the US annual budget when the organization was founded, but by the early 2010s, that number had deflated to a mere 0.5%. 

As a result, US rocket engines were being recycled from Soviet-era parts, which, according to Elon Musk, were housed in old Siberian warehouses. After NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, the Baikonur spaceport, a Soviet-era launch pad based in Kazakhstan, was the only place on Earth that could launch manned missions to space. For years, the route to the International Space Station, the floating laboratory where research on microgravity and space is done some 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, was paved through Kazakhstan.

With no demand for space services, and only a few remaining domestic players capable of doing so, the cost of building a weather satellite or a communications satellite fell in the range between $200-$300 million. It typically fell on the big primes—massive organizations with government support and a history of military or space-related manufacturing—to build the satellites that ended up going into orbit. Only they had access to the resources and the knowledge to build satellites that could withstand the conditions of space.