HBR at 100

— 2021 —

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Commercial Space Age Is Here

by Matt Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang

There’s no shortage of hype surrounding the commercial space industry. But while tech leaders promise us moon bases and settlements on Mars, the space economy has thus far remained distinctly local—at least in a cosmic sense. In 2020, however, we crossed an important threshold: For the first time in human history, humans accessed space via a vehicle built and owned not by any government but by a private corporation with its sights set on affordable space settlement. It was the first significant step toward building an economy both in space and for space. The implications—for business, policy, and society at large—are hard to overstate.

In 2019, ...