JAKARTA - The future of space innovation will be controlled by private companies. This is what former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine predicted to CNBC Tuesday, July 20. This fact is based on Jeff Bezos' success as the founder of the second space company to go into space.
"This commercial entrepreneur is making a huge step that will transform humanity and move more of us into space," Bridenstine said. "The future will emerge human space stations, commercially owned and operated."
Bridenstine, who led the US space agency during the Trump administration, also said the microgravity environment in space, where people or objects appear weightless, is a "very valuable resource". Such conditions can be used to make medicines, make immunizations, advanced manufacturing, and innovations such as making a man-made retina for the eyeball.
"There are all kinds of abilities that you can do in microgravity that you can't do in Earth's gravity wells," Bridenstine said. “This has huge market implications, and we are only now starting to understand what it is.”
Bridenstine's remarks came as Blue Origin launched its first manned space flight Tuesday morning, with its founder, Bezos, on board. Nine days ago, Richard Branson was the billionaire founder of the first space company to fly into suborbital space. He did it on the spaceship of his company Virgin Galactic.
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Elon Musk, the founder of the third commercial space company, SpaceX, has never been to space. Musk is also the CEO of electric car maker Tesla.
This mission is led by “entrepreneurs who invest their own money. "They don't get billions of dollars from the federal government to help grow their product here," said Bridenstine, who is now a senior adviser to private equity firm Acorn Growth Cos.
"Everyone's goal is to lower costs and increase access and really do it through innovation," he added.
Bezos, who also started Amazon, is one of seven billionaires, including Branson and Musk, who ushered in a new era of space travel driven primarily by passionate investors rather than superpower governments.
According to a report by New York-based firm Space Capital, private investment in space companies totaled $4.5 billion in the second quarter of 2021. This is the strongest quarter on record for space infrastructure investment despite only two companies. Space SPAC which was closed at that time. frame.
Bridenstine credits Bezos for funding Blue Origin's New Glenn — an orbital rocket set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2022 — and the company's BE-4 engine, which will power the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, in a bid to end America's dependence on Russia for space launches.
"The next big step in space exploration is going back to the moon," said Bridenstine, on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He said that the Blue Moon spaceship from Blue Origin will eventually bring people to the surface of the moon.
“The space is really big. We just scratched the surface,” Bridenstine said.
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