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Space Tourism Industry Emergence: Description and Data

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Space Tourism Industry Emergence: Description and Data Space Tourism Industry Emergence: Description and Data Ken Davidian1–3 Keywords: innovation research, industry emergence, space tourism, suborbital spaceflight, infrastructure elements 1FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Washington, DC, USA. 2Editor-in-Chief, New Space Journal, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., New Rochelle, NY, USA. INTRODUCTION 3Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, his report describes the emergence of the space VA, USA. tourism industry (or human suborbital spaceflight population [HSSFP]),* within models of the inno- T vation process and required industry resources. ABSTRACT The HSSFP is rooted in high-speed, rocket-powered, mili- This report has 2 goals. The first is to narrate the origins of the tary aviation research, and its emergence was stimulated space tourism industry using 2 models of industry evolution. The by the Ansari X PRIZE competition. This research identified first model, representing the complex and turbulent nature of HSSFP emergence events using a data collection method- the innovation process, sequences observed events into a nar- ology described in the Minnesota Innovation Research rative of industry emergence. The second model, listing the in- Program.1–3 dustry resources required for successful emergence, referred to The space tourism industry can be described as a techno- as industry infrastructure elements (IIEs), helps identify the logical niche proto-market,4 in the intermediate stages of relevant industry events from a larger number of component the innovation process, before the appearance of a dominant incidents. This research collected more than 8,400 pieces of design. To describe the space tourism emergence story, this secondary and archival data from traditional and news aggre- report employs the ‘‘fireworks’’ innovation process model.5 gator websites, distilled them into *400 significant events, This model reflects the complexity and uncontrollability of and categorized them within the 3 main components of IIEs: the innovation process in 3 periods and 12 phases (Fig. 1). Institutional Arrangements, Resource Endowments, and Pro- The first Initiation period includes phases of Extended Ge- prietary Functions. Primary data, collected via 40 interviews of station, Shock Trigger, and Submission of Initial Plans industry members, complemented the secondary data. Organiz- (entry of new firms). Next, the Developmental period is the ing the events within these models results in a rich description most complex, including phases of Proliferation (of the of the space tourism industry emergence phenomenon. The second goal of this report is to contribute to industry emer- gence research conducted by others. The data collection meth- odology in this research followed that of the Minnesota Innovation Research Project, which allows for the collectivi- *The phrase ‘‘space tourism industry’’ is commonly used by practitioners. More accurately, ‘‘space tourism’’ is an industry segment of the ‘‘launch vehicle’’ in- zation, and sharing, of data sets among multiple innovation dustry. Because the terms ‘‘industry’’ and ‘‘industry segment’’ could be interpreted researchers, based on a common definition of the innovation as including commercial actors only, academic researchers employ the respective process. Therefore, in support of the goal of collectivist data terms of ‘‘community’’ and ‘‘population,’’ encompassing both commercial and collection, the Supplementary Appendix of this report contains noncommercial actors. Therefore, from the academic perspective of organizational the full data set of space tourism industry emergence events evolution, the ‘‘launch vehicle industry’’ is categorized as a ‘‘community’’ and the (including citations), for use by like-minded industry emergence ‘‘space tourism industry’’ is more accurately labeled the ‘‘human suborbital space researchers. flight population.’’ ª Ken Davidian 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are cited. DOI: 10.1089/space.2019.0040 MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. VOL. 8 NO. 2 2020 NEW SPACE 87 DAVIDIAN Global (with XP).{ This analysis does not include firms who designed and operated suborbital vehicles (including sounding rockets) to trans- port scientific payloads, but not humans. One firm that built initial hardware but not included in this study, Copenhagen Suborbitals, started in 2008 with the goal of flying a single human on a suborbital trajectory in a rocket-powered vehi- cle, but their long-term public plans do not in- clude commercial operation. Finally, in October 2017, Elon Musk of SpaceX announced human suborbital transportation (flying to a different point on Earth) as a possible business spin-off from his orbital and deep space plans.6 As of Fig. 1. The innovation process model. Reprinted from Van de Ven et al.5(p. 25) December 2019, 2 of the 5 HSSFP firms were in operation, but neither had begun revenue- original concepts) Into Multiple Ideas, Setbacks and Mistakes, generating flights. Because no paying customer has flown in Shifting Goals and Criteria (of success), Changing of an HSSFP vehicle to date, the industry is in a pre-production Involved Personnel, Involvement of Top Managers and stage of emergence. Investors, (development of) Interorganizational Relation- This report begins with a brief description of data collection ships, and Infrastructure Development. Only after these 10 and analysis, followed by a recounting of the HSSFP emer- earlier phases have been executed to some extent does the gence story, grouping the relevant events into their respective process enter the final period of Implementation, encom- phases of the innovation process model. The report ends with passing phases of Innovation Adoption, and Implementation a brief conclusion section. The fully cited HSSFP event listing or Resource Cessation. is provided in the report Supplementary Appendix for use by The U.S. government (i.e., the Air Force and the National other researchers (with the presumption of appropriate attri- Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA]) conducted bution). To minimize repetition between the list of references supporting research for the HSSFP in the 1950s through in the main report and the Supplementary Appendix, state- the 1970s. Between the years 1996 and 2004, the private ments of events given in this report, that would normally be Ansari X PRIZE competition stimulated many individuals cited, are not. and companies around the world to develop, and invest in, commercially viable vehicles to safely fly ordinary humans to the ‘‘edge’’ of space and back. New firms proposed many DATA vehicle designs, some as traditional rockets, and others as This section describes the collection and analysis of winged vehicles. Some vehicle designs launch from the data. This research collected individual HSSFP incidents (the ground, some from sea, while others were designed to be units of analysis) and combined them into relevant events dropped from an aircraft, or high-altitude balloon, in flight. through a 2-stage categorization process. A chart showing The entire mission, from the time the rocket fires until the the chronological sequence of HSSFP emergence events was safe return to Earth, typically lasts less than 30 min. The X created based on a framework of required industry emergence PRIZE purse was ultimately won by Scaled Composites in resources. October 2004. This current research focuses on vehicles designed to carry people to a minimum altitude of 100 km and return to the {For the remainder of this report, all HSSFP companies will be referred to by the same location on Earth. The firms included in this study all first word of their full names (i.e., Scaled, Virgin, Blue, XCOR, and Rocketplane). reached, or surpassed, the milestone of initial fabrication of a Although the XCOR Lynx Mark I was not designed to fly to 100 km, it was a full-scale vehicle as of December 2017. These include Scaled precursor to the Lynx Mark II that was. This study includes the Lynx Mark I Composites (with their vehicle, SpaceShipOne), Virgin Ga- because of the significant role it played in HSSFP development. Also, although lactic (with SpaceShipTwo), Blue Origin (with New Shepard Rocketplane technically never began full-scale manufacturing of their XP vehicle, [NS]), XCOR Aerospace (with Lynx Mark I), and Rocketplane they are included for similar reasons. 88 NEW SPACE 2020 MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. HUMAN SUBORBITAL SPACE TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY Data Collection ‘‘motivating and coordinating people to develop and implement This research initially collected data from industry blogs, new ideas by engaging in transactions (or relationships) with others including individual incidents dated between April 1999 and and making the adaptations needed to achieve desired outcomes within changing institutional and organizational contexts.’’3(p. 9) December 2016.7 From the *28,000 incident entries gener- ated from many different types of data sources and outlets, a Incidents were grouped into event categories of type and life search using HSSFP keywords{ reduced the list to *8,400 cycle stage. Event categories included: (1) meetings, expositions, HSSFP incidents. Industry blogs provide access to data. A and conferences, (2) launches, (3) hardware testing,
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