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OPINION:
The advent of entrepreneurs building and flying reusable rockets is ushering in an era of exponentially lower costs, opening the space and high-speed flight frontiers and echoing how railroads once opened the American West. Establishing a human presence on the moon and Mars is possible for the first time since the Apollo era. The confirmation of an entrepreneur as NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, is a great first step, but it is not enough.
The culture of entrepreneurship needs to be baked into the agency’s leadership and personnel with ambitious goals. By leveraging entrepreneurial companies, NASA can autonomously land a starship on Mars and uncrewed habitats on the moon with crews to follow. Aggressive schedules should be established with uncrewed landings as early as 2028. The fast pace and lack of crews will ensure safety, limit cost and enforce the change to an entrepreneurial culture.
Thirty years ago, Apollo 12 and Skylab commander Pete Conrad led our Delta Clipper Experimental team, the first to fly reusable vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rockets. Harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit at a cost of only $60 million, the team flew within two years, proving the potential for “aircraftlike” operability, including a ground-based flight crew of two, small ground crews with minimal supporting labor, call-up times less than four-hours, one-day turnaround with an eight-hour goal and low aircraftlike flight costs. Many firsts were demonstrated, including a rotation and landing maneuver 26 years before the repetition by Starship. The authors and many others helped execute Conrad’s vision and, decades later, championed the transformative need for entrepreneur-led, ultra-low-cost access to space.
Two decades after Conrad’s DC-X flight test program, SpaceX entrepreneurs began exploiting the advantages of rocket-powered VTOL flight, reducing launch costs by 10 times in the past decade with a Starship goal of yet another 10 times. Although SpaceX is pioneering the road to reusable aircraftlike space access, other VTOL rocket entrepreneurs are close behind, including Blue Origin, with the successful launches of New Glenn, Stoke Space, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space and many others on multiple technological fronts.
The advantages of these VTOL rockets are staggering, explaining the billions of dollars in commercial investments. Today’s liquid oxygen and natural gas engines are 20 times lighter than modern turbojets at the same thrust, have 100 times fewer parts and are ecologically friendly with a path to carbon-neutral operations. When installed on reusable vehicles, propellant costs are up to 10 times lower than jet fuel, with airframe dry weights 10 times less than conventional aircraft with similar payloads. If NASA can harness the power of these entrepreneurs, these order-of-magnitude advantages portend an era of radically lower-cost access to space and the world.
The emerging Space Force goals of pervasive on-orbit maneuver and Rocket Cargo hinge on successfully transitioning to highly reusable low-cost rockets. Similarly, the Air Force needs to step up to the hypersonic speed of these global reach systems that shrink the world and bring us closer together. To accelerate the commercial and military potential, NASA should expand its commercial off-the-shelf program and forge key partnerships with the Defense Department and other supporting agencies. The entrepreneurial culture should spearhead efforts to improve the operability, safety and cost of reusable access to space and the globe; develop ever more efficient and reusable in-space transportation; explore long-term robotic and human habitation in the hostile space environment; and mature new science and technology. A moon-Mars focus does all that and more.
NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, successfully navigated a similar transition by working with early aviation entrepreneurs and a nascent Air Force to help usher in the era of modern aviation. Successful landings on the moon and Mars with supporting technology investments will inspire the next generation, encourage science, technology, engineering and math careers, grow commercial space jobs and opportunities, and enable transformative new military and commercial capabilities. Ultimately, success will transition us from a global economy to a far more prosperous economy based throughout the space frontier.
Our entrepreneurial American vision should echo the aspirations of Conrad: a future where reusable rockets open the space frontier to everyone and enable rapid and economical flight to every corner of the globe. The nation should step up to the future promised so long ago when Neil Armstrong and Conrad first landed on the moon. If NASA chooses to do so, entrepreneurs can lead the nation and world into the frontier of exploration and economic opportunity.
• Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Steve Kwast commanded the Air Education and Training Command and led the Air University “Fast Space” study. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Jess Sponable, with Chris Rosander, led the development, flight test and advocacy for the world’s first reusable vertical takeoff and landing rocket, the DC-X.
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