Course Overview

Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it is in the midst of a revolution. In this course, we will learn about this revolution and the companies, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom, Planet, and more that are driving in. We will be joined by leaders in the industry, including prominent HBS alumni, eager to help you join them in building a new space age with the private sector as its engine. We will learn about the history of civilian space agencies like NASA and of the military in space, and we will debate their role in the future. We will study the economics underlying the sector, where public-private linkages are deep and essential. And we will ask ourselves, and our guests, what animates our interest in space and justifies devoting time, effort, and resources to it.

The course consists of fourteen 80-minute sessions organized around Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier, a book authored by Prof. Weinzierl and his former research associate (and this course’s inaugural teaching fellow) Brendan Rosseau. Each session will be devoted to a chapter of the book, and most will include guests who are leaders in today’s space industry. Supplementing the book are optional reading assignments.

Career Focus

“In the future, every business will be a space business.” A past guest of this course coined this phrase to capture an important truth: space is so intertwined in our everyday technologies, and our capabilities in space are expanding so rapidly, that every industry, every function, and every geography will depend on and utilize space to drive value. No matter your path after HBS, spending time learning about what’s happening in space will make you a smarter and more innovative leader.

If you’re already planning (and even coming from) a career in space, you know that HBS has staked out a leading position in the sector among our peer business schools. This course is the home base of the HBS space network, with hundreds of members from startup founders to senior executives at the largest NASA contractors and everyone in between. We want your expertise in our discussions, and we’re sure you’ll come away with a more holistic (and informed) perspective on all aspects of the sector.

Educational Objectives

• Develop an informed view on the history of and recent dramatic changes in how the space sector functions, including the evolving relationship between public and private actors.
• Consider and evaluate different forecasts for the further development of the space sector, including space-for-earth and space-for-space activities in LEO, cislunar, Mars, and other areas of operation.
• Identify feasible ways of regulating and governing decentralized space activities, including the establishment of property rights, through existing or new institutions.
• Understand one’s own vision for space and be able to explain why it is worth pursuing.

Course Outline

Part One: Establish the Market
Class session 1: The Inflection Point: Crisis into Opportunity

Summary: A new era in how humans interact with space began with a crisis in the US space enterprise in the 2000s. To understand today’s transformation, we must first understand its roots.

Class session 2: Blue Origin: Step by Step

Summary: Sometimes it’s extreme situations that reveal underlying economic forces most clearly, and Blue Origin’s story is an example. Its choices, and their consequences, are uniquely well suited to help us more clearly understand the crucial years of the 2000s and 2010s, when the landscape of the space industry was being reshaped.

Class session 3: SpaceX: Launching the Market

Summary: SpaceX is likely to be seen as one of the most important companies in history. That’s a bold claim, but it’s based on the simply remarkable impact that this implausible startup has had—and promises to have—on the space sector and increasingly the world.

Class session 4: Planet: Supply and Demand

Summary: Planet is an example of how lower costs make new business models in space possible. And it’s more than that, because Planet itself is in the business of lowering costs. It therefore faces the same challenge that it’s helping to solve for launch: What are lower costs good for?

Class session 5: Stations: Destinations in Space

Summary: The most ambitious visions for the space economy foresee an expansive array of off-planet activities—such as research and development (R&D), manufacturing, tourism, mining, and energy production—that go beyond data in their use of the unique environment. These applications tend to be more speculative but, if they can be realized, could potentially transform the kinds and scale of value we derive from space and even our relationship to it, namely by making it a place where we can live and work. At the vanguard of developing these applications is a concept that has inspired space visionaries for generations: the space station.

Class session 6: Capital: Booms and Busts, Stags and Hares

Summary: Alongside the commercial space revolution of the past two decades, there’s been a parallel transformation in space financing.

Class session 7: Artemis: The New Model Goes to the Moon

Summary: No understanding of today’s space sector is complete without a solid theory of what role NASA will play. And the best place to start building that theory is with NASA’s current flagship program: Artemis.

Class session 8: Special session with space entrepreneurs

Summary: Panel to be announced

Part Two: Refine the Market
Class session 9: Astroscale: The Tragedy of the Orbital Commons

Summary: By now, most everyone who has heard about the commercial space revolution has also heard about the threat of space debris. This awareness reflects the worry that, as we pursue the promise of developing a new frontier, we will repeat mistakes made over the past several centuries of terrestrial economic development, especially those having to do with the natural environment.

Class session 10: Market Power: Preserving Competition and Innovation

Summary: As we look to refine the growing space market, how do we trade off the potential benefits of concentration for these familiar benefits of competition? This question of trade-offs is not just theoretical, because there’s a growing sense that SpaceX is building a monopoly—or, in some respects, already has one.

Class session 11: Public funding and regulation panel

Summary: Panel to be announced

Part Three: Temper the Market
Class session 12: Planetary Resources: Property Rights in Space

Summary: The founders of Planetary Resources wanted to give humanity access to the entire solar system’s resources and energy, not just our planet’s. The technical and economic challenges of asteroid mining were daunting, but there was another major challenge that threatened to scuttle PRI’s asteroid mining dreams: Was it legal?

Class session 13: National Security: The Military-Celestial Complex

Summary: National security priorities have always been important to how countries use Earth orbit and beyond, and space has been a domain of great power competition from the Cold War to today. Understanding the inseparability of space and national security is essential to forming a theory of commercial space’s past, present, and future.

Class session 14: Your vision for space

Summary: We will discuss submitted theories and visions as a class.

Grading

Grades are 50% engagement in class and 50% a final project.
For the project, students will complete, either alone or in groups of no more than three, a written evaluation of a space company or space agency program. Students may work in teams of 1 to 3 students, but all students in a team will receive the same grade, and the expectations for the depth and breadth of the project increase with the number of authors. The preferred length of the project is 1,000 words.

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