How did the space exploration go from the states to private hands?

A private business supported with public funds

Until the emergence of Bezos and the other two magnates who are betting on this market - Elon Musk, from Tesla, with Spacex, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic -, the invoices of space trips were basically solved for state money for money.

The US space agency NASA, for example, was solved with around $ 22.6 billion of the federal budget for fiscal year 2020.Quoted by the USA Today newspaper, the director of the Division of Commercial Space Flights for NASA Human Exploration and Operations, Philip Mcalister, said that putting an astronaut of the agency in orbit costs 58 million dollars.

For now, Spacex or Blue Origin flights barely reach the limit of the Earth's atmosphere and last a few minutes, so the cost of passages for civilians who want to see the planet from a dozen kilometers high cost relativelyCheap.

According to different versions and occasions, getting into the New Shepard can leave between $ 250,000 and $ 500,000.

Spacex's income, however, is largely supported by NASA, precisely.Despite the massive volume of funds he receives from Washington, the agency is no longer the mammoth of the 70s - because, it no longer has vectors to launch ships to space - and had to begin a outsourcing process.

A report from The New Republic magazine recently pointed out that NASA reached an agreement with Musk to use Spacex rockets for around 2.6 billion dollars on six round trip trips.