Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extraterrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: Space pirates, remembering Sally Ride, and new Luedership in human spaceflight.
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Yes, there are space pirates. They live in Saudi Arabia.
During the “golden age” of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, most pirates were emanations of state power—privateers, in other words, commissioned by governments to wreak lucrative havoc on enemy shipping and colonies.
The same appears to be true today, though modern pirates prey on data streaming through the space lanes, not galleons sailing with the trade winds.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia was feuding with Qatar over the small country’s independent foreign policies and relationship with Iran. The Saudis blockaded the tiny state and imposed a variety of sanctions on it. One of them was tolerating the presence of a broadcaster that stole video transmissions from Qatar’s flagship satellite sports network, beIN sports, along with US and European television broadcasts.
The pirate station, called beoutQ (get it?) intercepted transmissions of the 2018 World Cup and Grand Slam tennis matches and made them available online. Then it stepped up, redistributing the feeds on the Arabsat satellite TV network, headquartered in Riyadh. Despite legal efforts from FIFA, the international soccer governing body, and the International Tennis Association, not to mention beIN, the Saudi government didn’t take action to prevent theft of the multi-million dollar sporting broadcast rights.
That left the Qataris to turn to the World Trade Organization, which ruled this week that the Saudi government did not take sufficient action to prevent the theft of intellectual property in its territory. But like much international law, on earth and in space, the ruling’s effect remains nebulous, and the Saudis plan to appeal. In one sense, it’s just more evidence that the oil power can flout any norms, whether murdering foreign journalists or imprisoning its own citizens during a coup.
For beoutQ, a bigger obstacle than the law is likely to be the Saudi government’s desire to buy Newcastle United, a soccer team that plays in the lucrative English Premier League, for a bid reported to be $377 million. The league, considered the world’s most important club football competition, filed its own challenge against beoutQ and is heavily dependent on global broadcast revenue—exactly the business model the Saudis undermined.
The decision also highlights the risks faced by space companies like Lockheed Martin, which recently signed a deal to build out a satellite communications ground system for the Saudis. Lockheed is not known for worrying about human rights, but one of its clients effectively stealing from other satellite operators might be a problem, especially for a multi-national firm that depends on having its intellectual property protected abroad.
Satellite communications remains the most sophisticated and lucrative business in orbit, but as this ongoing episode shows, it’s still dependent on creaky international institutions and power politics. It’s a preview of untidiness to come as more activity, human and electronic, becomes reliant on technology in space.
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Imagery Interlude
Today marks the 36th anniversary of the first American woman and the first LGBT person to fly into space, Sally Ride. She remains the youngest American astronaut, just 32 years old when she arrived in orbit.
A physicist by training, Ride played a major role in NASA’s strategy after her two shuttle flights. She served on the investigative commissions that examined the Challenger and Columbia disasters, which shaped the US space agency’s plans for years to come. Ride passed away in 2012 after a battle with cancer, but her legacy remains vital. Here’s wishing a happy pride month to all Space Biz readers.
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In space, we’re used to dealing with large, round numbers. It’s a good point of reference for guessing how much vaccine development typically costs—what do you think?
- $125 million
- $500 million
- $1 billion
- $2 billion
The answer is about $500 million on average, says Stanley Plotkin, a physician whose research contributed to the development of vaccines for rubella, rabies, and polio. That’s more than it cost SpaceX to develop the Falcon 9 and cargo Dragon spacecraft.
And just like with space, under normal circumstances, market incentives are rarely strong enough to encourage taking on those costs. So public funding must come to the rescue: As of June, the US government has invested more than $2 billion in various companies’ vaccine trials. Read more in our field guide on science’s great pandemic pivot.
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SPACE DEBRIS
Commercial Kathy. Space watchers emphasize that when we put people into orbit, those missions are crewed, not manned. Now the same is true of the top job at NASA’s human exploration operations directorate—after Doug Loverro resigned over apparent procurement irregularities, the space agency’s leadership chose the first woman in the critical role, Kathy Lueders. She spent much of the last decade running the commercial crew program that successfully delivered astronauts to the International Space Station last month, and also worked on the precursor program that developed uncrewed cargo vehicles.
Begin at the beginning. Black people are underrepresented in the aerospace industry, and the problem starts early. But “the line of ‘they’re not interested’ is just a tired excuse,” as one reader told me this week. So what’s to be done? Miriam Kramer looked into how the academic disciplines of astronomy and physics, often gateways to aerospace careers, are addressing the issue. One resource is a report(pdf) from the American Institute of Physics, which offers a comprehensive strategy for bringing more Black people into the field.
Double Dragon. SpaceX received approval from NASA to use previously-flown rockets and spacecraft when flying astronauts to the International Space Station, starting in 2021. It’s a vote of confidence in SpaceX’s engineering and its track record of re-using boosters and cargo Dragon spacecraft—two of its boosters have flown a record five times, and the last cargo Dragon to visit the ISS was making its third return trip. The savings from re-use will be a boost to SpaceX’s development efforts, and perhaps allow the company to offer lower prices for potential private users of its human spacecraft.
Potty Training. There’s no more compelling topic in human spaceflight than how astronauts use the bathroom, or at least it can seem that way at press conferences. Later this year, NASA plans on installing a new toilet on the ISS. The Universal Waste Management System isn’t just an upgrade—it’s also designed to prepare NASA plumbers to build waste disposal systems for missions into deep space. After all, there aren’t many rest stops between here and Mars.
Your pal,
Tim
This was issue 53 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send your favorite stories about Kathy Lueders, visions of space piracy, tips, and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.