Latest news with #MatthewWeinzierl
Economic Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Star trek, anyone?
With Shubhanshu Shukla and three others splashing down near San Diego aboard SpaceX's Dragon capsule, another trip to ISS has wrapped up. But, if anything, this only sharpens the itch many feel to get off Earth - this time not as astronauts but as tourists. If you want to know more about space tourism, tune into Out of Office's episode on the subject, Space Tourism with Matthew Weinzierl. In this episode, hosts Ryan Davis and Kiernan Schmitt talk to the Harvard professor whose research dives deep into the emerging space economy. The conversation spans suborbital joyrides with Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin's repeat civilian missions, and SpaceX's bold orbital forays - all signalling that space tourism is no longer just a billionaire's fantasy. Weinzierl offers a grounded take: space, he says, is not just an awe-inspiring frontier - it's also a place. A place where countries, businesses and ordinary people might one day live, work and create value. As he reminds listeners, the space economy is still an economy, shaped by supply, demand and market dynamics. The episode is a thoughtful primer on how this high-flying sector is taking shape, and what it could mean for businesses and society alike.
Wall Street Journal
26-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
‘Space to Grow' Review: A Golden Age in the Stars
On Oct. 10, 2012, an uncrewed SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying half a ton of cargo docked with the International Space Station (ISS). The mission marked the dawn of a new era in spaceflight and portended the twilight of the previous one. For the five decades following the 1957 launch of Sputnik I, spaceflight had been almost entirely centralized under huge state enterprises such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or Russia's Roscosmos and its Soviet-era predecessors. While several private companies built rockets to launch communication satellites and other cargo, it was difficult for them to compete with publicly funded space agencies. The price of putting payload in orbit remained stubbornly high. Following the Columbia space-shuttle disaster in 2003, NASA was forced to change tack. As Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau explain in 'Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier,' the agency needed to phase out the shuttle but had no backup vehicle. Traditionally, NASA hired aerospace contractors to build space vehicles that the agency itself owned and flew. Desperate for a leaner alternative to that cumbersome approach, the agency conceived a program to outsource ISS deliveries to private launch companies. That seemingly small innovation had a huge impact. NASA proposed hiring commercially operated spacecraft much the way a rock band might charter a tour bus. The agency promised fixed-price contracts to private companies that could prove their ability to fly the agency's precious cargo—and eventually astronauts—on their own rockets. In 2006 NASA chose SpaceX, still an untested startup at the time, to be part of this commercial experiment. 'America was betting on the private sector,' the authors write.
