NASA’s Plan to Impede Space Commercialization
A flourishing space economy requires freedom. NASA’s plan to direct it threatens hard-won progress
NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, has bold proposals to reform the storied institution. Central to these reforms is increased “cooperation” with private sector companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. For example, Isaacman’s NASA has re-oriented the Artemis Program to rely less on its own space launch architecture in favor of the launch systems and landers in development by SpaceX and Blue. The vision is a NASA that functions as a major customer, rather than producer, of commercially mature space technology.
Among Isaacman’s goals for NASA is to “partner with industry . . . to figure out how to extract more value from space than we put in — and critically attempt to solve the orbital economy.” NASA would accomplish this by, for example, a “bulk buy” of guaranteed contracts to support commercial space stations.1 The euphemism of “partnership” obscures the reality of public-private “partnerships:” an industry that “partners” with government is one that is subsidized, therefore, controlled by the coercive power of the state.2
What Isaacman fails to understand is that his proposed means — “partner with industry” — is in contradiction to his stated end: “extract more value from space than we put in.” His premise — widely shared by those in a position to shape space policy3 — is that commercialization either requires or will be accelerated by government subsidies and direction. The truth is the opposite: to the extent that NASA or other government agencies assert control over the space industry, they are an impediment to the commercialization of space.
The Regressive Effects of “Partnering” with Government
NASA has always prioritized human space flight. But, despite a thriving private space industry, human space flight has not become commercially viable. Insofar as NASA has encouraged private companies to spend their talents on human space flight, it has retarded commercial progress.
To see why this is so, take a step back to the early 2000s when the current private-sector space race kicked off. At the time, the widespread presumption was that space would become profitable through tourism. The original “Billionaire Space Race” was not just between Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) but also included Richard Branson and his company Virgin Galactic. Branson’s company was founded to provide suborbital flights to space tourists. Its twenty-two-year history has been marked by failures and setbacks, culminating in a 2023 bankruptcy. (It is still in operation though it paused attempts at commercial flights in 2024).
Virgin Galactic received some support from NASA, but that support was insignificant in comparison to what its competitors received. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX received significant support from NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. For example, COTS provided funding for SpaceX to further develop its partially reusable Falcon 9 orbital rocket. (This funding came at a time when Musk would have had to further risk his own wealth or raise more private investment to keep SpaceX afloat.) The COTS contract also funded the development of SpaceX’s human spacecraft Dragon, which was conceived for the sole purpose of earning the contract. Without NASA’s initial support and continuing support as a customer, Dragon would not exist.4
However, despite public enthusiasm and NASA support for manned spaceflight, after twenty years Blue Origin can send popstars to space and wealthy philanthropists like Isaacman can conduct manned science experiments, but no one can turn a profit from human space flight. The failure of Virgin Galactic, and the inability of Blue Origin and SpaceX to profitably monetize manned spaceflight, is definitive evidence that human spaceflight was not and is not currently an “extract more value than we put in” venture.
In contrast, by the mid-2020s unmanned spaceflight has become incredibly profitable, just not in a way anyone outside of SpaceX dared to pursue: the first profitable use of low-cost space launch is selling internet subscriptions.
In the early days of the company, Elon Musk and SpaceX thought deeply about how to make cheap access to space profitable and began building the Starlink program, which is now earning them $15 billion-per-year in revenue and growing.5 At present, SpaceX is really a telecommunications company, vertically integrated to provide its own launch services! Falcon 9 made it possible for them to deploy Starlink, a constellation of approximately 10,000 satellites. Starlink does not require government subsidies to turn SpaceX a profit. This fact has signaled to SpaceX that the best use of its profits is to re-invest into launch technology and the expansion of orbital computer infrastructure.
Now, it is true that COTS funding contributed to the development of Falcon 9, the workhorse of the Starlink constellation. But to obtain the COTS contract, SpaceX had to build Falcon 9 so that it would be safe enough to transport human beings. As exciting as human space flight is, to the extent that Falcon 9’s design was altered to enable human cargo, it was not optimized to transport Starlink satellites.6 Furthermore, every dollar spent on Dragon and every engineer devoting time to human spaceflight was one not available to Starlink.
In other words, COTS incentivized SpaceX to devote resources to human space flight in addition to their efforts toward space-based internet. A more systematic and heavily funded COTS program would have invigorated their early competitors, pulling talent away from what became proven, value-increasing uses of space. Had NASA meddled in the market then to the degree that Isaacman now envisions, the evidence that human spaceflight is not yet valuable and that space-based computer infrastructure is, could have been drowned out by the illusion of “successful” space tourism.
Diverting resources from Starlink to human spaceflight delayed the deployment of the constellation, thereby delaying its profitability, thereby delaying the signals its success sent to the industry, and therefore delaying the commercialization of the space industry.
From the perspective of profitable, self-sustaining technological progress in space, SpaceX’s accomplishments in human spaceflight were missteps, made possible only by NASA’s intervention in the industry.
As I argued in “Freedom to Launch,” space is only valuable if it is profitable in a market in which all participate freely — including investors and customers. Since NASA is funded through the coercive tax system, a space industry predominantly dependent on government contracts is not profitable in the commercial sense of being independently self-sustaining.
Isaacman rightfully wants the industry to “extract more value from space than we put in.” But this does not simply mean that a company’s ledger shows numbers written in black larger than those written in red. The mark of a self-sustaining industry is that its revenues come from voluntary customers. When its profits are earned, rather than expropriated, a company proves its services valuable to investors and customers. Such proof is by its nature unavailable to an involuntarily funded industry. This is what it means to commercialize space.
How could a former tech entrepreneur like Isaacman fail to see the difference between an industry made profitable through voluntary exchange and his envisioned industry dominated by the coercive powers of the state?
Defense Tech’s Misleading Example
Isaacman’s embrace of the private sector is part of the broader trend among technology-forward government institutions. The leader here is the Department of Defense, which abandoned the model of purchasing weapons from a few privileged suppliers to one of fostering a defense tech startup culture. The result has been a flourishing of defense startups; companies like Anduril and Palantir are now household names, and their work is keeping American military technology far ahead of our adversaries’.7
In support of his view of NASA’s role in the space economy, Isaacman cites the military development and then commercial adoption of jet aircrafts as a model.8 Isaacman’s NASA would develop and subsidize technologies not yet commercially viable, such as nuclear electric propulsion, until the commercial sector can take over.
Isaacman is taking the wrong lesson from the defense industry’s pro-market reforms. His model confuses the features of a thriving, private defense industry with those of a thriving commercial industry.
The defense industry is essentially different from commercial industries. It is necessary to America’s security, but its size and profitability are not the result of “extracting more value . . . than we put in.”
Imagine a world in which far fewer countries were potentially hostile to America. Do we think that, in such a world, the defense industry would need to be as large as it is today? The size of the defense industry is not a function of how much productive value it creates but of how great is the threat from hostile countries. Ideally, the size of the industry would be small because the threats we face would be minimal.
In contrast are the many, non-defense industries that have the U.S. government as a customer. The government needs laptops. But the existence of Apple and Dell do not depend on selling to Uncle Sam.
By taking the success of the private defense industry as inspiration and model, Isaacman is continuing the space community’s decades-long conflation between the defensive functions of government and of private, voluntary commercial activity. That longstanding confusion left the industry unfree until the early part of the 20th century. Now its administrator’s plan to increase NASA’s control over the orbital economy threatens to hobble the newly freed industry’s nascent attempts to become commercial.
In the abstract, it is obvious that cheap, easy access to space is valuable. Space holds unlimited resources, unlimited real estate, and countless potential scientific discoveries. Who wouldn’t want to see Earth rise during a lunar vacation? But it is far from obvious in the concrete how those values can be profitably realized, given the current state of the industry’s technological and business knowledge. To bring the harder to capture values within our grasp, entrepreneurs must first discover easier, high-value uses of space technology.
One company’s commercial success sends a signal to the whole industry. We are seeing this in real-time as the industry learns from SpaceX’s lucrative Starlink products. Early missions for Blue Origin’s New Glenn are expected to launch satellites for Amazon’s Leo, a competitor to Starlink. Blue has recently announced plans for its own satellite constellation, TerraWave, another space-based high-speed internet service.9
The success of Starlink is also a signal as to what new products might be profitable. It’s increasingly looking like the best use of Earth’s orbital space, right now in 2026, is not space stations or tourism, but computer infrastructure. Unlimited space and direct sunlight make space a great place to put energy-hungry data centers, powered by massive solar arrays. At least, that’s what SpaceX thinks.10 Alphabet is exploring space-based computing infrastructure through Google Research’s Project Suncatcher, a proposal for solar-powered satellite constellations equipped with TPUs to scale machine-learning compute in space.11 Blue Origin has announced its intention to pursue space-based data centers.12 The market signals are clear.
Isaacman’s plan to promote commercial space stations would be a long-term subsidy of an unproven path to profitability. If a commercial station would fail without government contracts to “solve” its business model, it is not a profitable use of space technology. The effect would be the direction of taxpayer wealth and engineering talent toward ventures Isaacman favors and away from proven paths to value.
Of course, if entrepreneurs can (voluntarily) raise money from investors to experiment with the commercial viability of space stations, they should do so. The technology developed for orbital compute will undoubtably contribute to the viability of human space travel. But for the future of the space economy, it is essential that these experiments are the result of the free judgment of all parties, including their funders. This is how industry will discover what human presence in space iscommercially viable.
Government’s Role in the Space Economy
There is a respect in which Isaacman is right, though not in the way he intends. There is a “problem” with the space economy that only government can solve. As I argue in “Space Pioneers Need a New Homestead Plan,” until very recently, America’s policy with respect to space property has been dismal. The commercialization of space is only possible if the property rights to resources and real estate are clearly defined and forcefully protected.
The enforcement of individual rights, including property rights, is the only legitimate function of government. To achieve this end, the U.S. government must act domestically to pass laws recognizing property rights in space (easily reversed executive orders are inadequate).13 Internationally, America must use its position as the dominant space power to negotiate treaties that secure the property rights of American space investments (non-binding agreements are inadequate).14 Finally, it must acquire or develop the technology to enforce those rights, should the time come when its physical presence in space is required (this includes, but is not limited to, military functions).
Only when the U.S. government commits itself to enforcing property rights and abandons its efforts to force industry will we be able to capture the full potential of space travel.
Isaacman’s “Project Athena Strategic Plan” was never officially released to the public but was leaked to the press and is now easily available online. Keith Cowing, “‘Project Athena’ by Jared Isaacman,” NASA Watch, December 6, 2025, https://nasawatch.com/ask-the-administrator/project-athena-by-jared-isaacman/.
The euphemism was first identified as such by Ayn Rand, in her 1965 lecture “The Fascist New Frontier.”
Kelly, Mark, “My Fix for NASA.” New York Times, August 6, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/mark-kelly-nasa-trump.html.
Dragon has flown several, privately funded science missions, most notably those funded by Jared Isaacman. (Billings, Lee. “SpaceX Hits New Milestone with Fram2, the First-Ever Crewed Polar Mission.” Scientific American, April 1, 2025. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-fram2-mission-sends-four-private-astronauts-into-polar-orbit/).
This is an estimation of SpaceX’s 2025 Starlink revenue. A common approximation of SpaceX’s 2025 profits is $8 billion, most of which is attributed to Starlink. (Joey Roulette and Milana Vinn, “Exclusive: SpaceX Generated About $8 Billion in Profit Last Year Ahead of IPO, Sources Say,” Reuters, January 30, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/spacex-generated-about-8-billion-profit-last-year-ahead-ipo-sources-say-2026-01-30/). To put this sum in perspective, NASA’s 2026 budget is around $25 billion.
In 2025, there were 165 Falcon missions, only four of which were manned. (Mike Wall, “SpaceX Shatters Its Rocket Launch Record Yet Again — 165 Orbital Flights in 2025,” Space, December 31, 2025, https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/spacex-shatters-its-rocket-launch-record-yet-again-167-orbital-flights-in-2025).
Shah, Raj M., and Christopher Kirchhoff, Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War (New York: Scribner, 2024). In addition to his work as a tech entrepreneur, Isaacman is founder of Draken International, an aerospace defense contractor.
Douthat, Ross, interview with Jared Isaacman, “The New Space Race,” Interesting Times with Ross Douthat, New York Times, podcast audio, February 26, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/opinion/ross-douthat-jared-isaacman.html.
Blue Origin, “Blue Origin Introduces TeraWave, a 6 Tbps Space-Based Network for Global Connectivity,” Blue Origin, January 21, 2026, https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-origin-introduces-terawave-space-based-network-for-global-connectivity.
“xAI Joins SpaceX to Accelerate Humanity’s Future,” SpaceX Updates, February 2, 2026, https://www.spacex.com/updates.
Beals, Travis. “Exploring a Space-Based, Scalable AI Infrastructure System Design,” Google Research, November 4, 2025, https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/.
Maidenberg, Micah, “Blue Origin Formally Enters Race to Develop Data Centers in Space,” Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/tech/blue-origin-formally-enters-race-to-develop-data-centers-in-space-d7fefa00.
Trump, Donald J., “Executive Order 13914 of April 6, 2020: Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” Federal Register 85, no. 70 (April 10, 2020): 20381–82, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/10/2020-07800/encouraging-international-support-for-the-recovery-and-use-of-space-resources.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, et al., The Artemis Accords: Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes, October 13, 2020, sec. 1, 3.
Image credit: Kevin Carter / Getty Images
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