Private Space Industry

The US President has ordered to cut red tapes for the private space industry in order to lead the industry ahead of China and European countries. Regulation can stabilize an industry’s development and avoid it from being too wild; however, it can slow down the speed of development and limit people’s innovation and creativity as well as the competition in the sector. By deregulating the private space industry, Trump hopes it can speed up the development and innovation in this sector. 

Many countries see the opportunities in the private space industry as they believe that the sharp reduction in the costs of launching rockets can help the “colonisation” of the space seem more achievable. People have different opinions about the future of the private space industry. Some people believe that space travel would become the new tourism industry that provide luxury and special trips for the super wealthy people. Some people believe that the private space industry is the “colonisation” industry that it helps people to move to other planets (SpaceX is a company that holds such view). Along with the idea of “colonisation”, some people say the space as a massive mine that will provide our human beings with countless natural resources. Some people do not think that the private space industry is not about migrating to other planets, they think that send more facilities to the space and provide convenience on the earth, for example, they can send more satellites to provide more accurate GPS service as well as direct driverless cars.  Everything is possible. 

However, I think that the private space industry should keep its goal simple, its major business is transportation that it sends humans as well as goods to the space. Its major goal is to reduce the costs of space transportation and the idea of how to take advantage of the low space transportation cost is the jobs of other industries as well as the new industries that are developed based on the idea of how to use the space. It is not important to know what we can do with the space; once we can have cheap ways to send humans and goods to the space, people are creative enough to figure out the best use of the space and I think this is not the issue that we need to worry about right now.