the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 4, 2024
We translated the following article from one that appeared in Lutte de Classe, #243, published by comrades of the French Trotskyist organization, Lutte Ouvrière, November 2024.
Faults in a Boeing-built capsule will force two astronauts on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station to remain there for eight months, pending the arrival of a SpaceX craft capable of returning them to Earth. While Boeing is embroiled in a series of scandals that have shown how the company was boosting profits at the expense of aircraft safety, SpaceX, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, is enjoying one technical success after another, and has become a force to be reckoned with in the space sector. It is also targeting a new market: that of wealthy customers willing to pay to spend a few days in space.
SpaceX, founded in 2002, is now the world’s leading satellite launcher, and this industrial success is staged on a grand scale to celebrate the figure of the conquering capitalist. More broadly, the arrival of new players in a field that previously seemed reserved for the States is presented as a new era, that of “New Space,” supposedly marked by the dynamism and superiority of private enterprise. Elon Musk competes with other billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos (and his company Blue Origin) or Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic) to announce a cosmic future for mankind, where people will spend weekends in orbit, and colonies will be founded on the Moon or even Mars.
This space frenzy, at a time when, even in the richest countries, working people can no longer afford healthcare, housing or even proper food, is nothing short of revolting. But beyond the social and climatic aberration of space tourism for a handful of rich people, and the hackneyed propaganda of the defenders of capitalism, is this “New Space” saga a sign that industry functions more efficiently when it is dominated by the laws of the market? This ignores the decisive role played by governments in the rise and maintenance of the “private” space industry.
The space industry is a product of war. Rockets capable of striking an enemy from great distances were first developed in Nazi Germany. And it was these rockets, the V2s, that provided the basis for American and Russian missile programs after 1945. The American army exfiltrated Wernher von Braun from Germany—he was the Nazi engineer who directed their design and manufacture by forced labor in the Dora concentration camp. Far from being criminally charged for this, he was brought in to develop the American nuclear missile program. The Red Army, on the other hand, had been the first to arrive on the scene of V2 production, and had recovered rockets, from which the USSR developed its missile program in response to the American atomic threat. By adapting one of these intercontinental ballistic missiles, the R-7 Semiorka rocket, the USSR succeeded, in 1957, under the direction of engineer Sergei Korolev, to put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit. This was followed, four years later, by the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. The Russian Soyuz family of space launchers is derived from this missile.
The spectacular successes of the Soviet state showed the world what could be achieved by the planned economy of a country far poorer than the United States. In response, American leaders created NASA, relying on von Braun among others. After Gagarin’s flight, Kennedy launched the Apollo program. As it had done with the war, the American state took charge of operations, with a vast program that culminated in sending men to the Moon in July 1969.
It did so as an extension of the bourgeois state, i.e. by acting in the short- and long-term interests of the industry’s major shareholders, such as Boeing. In the Apollo program, NASA, as a public administration, played a fundamental industrial role. It implemented the conception of launchers and space systems: private industry operated as a subcontractor, ensuring their development under the state’s close control. It was this centralized, highly directed intervention, and not market forces, that enabled the development in just a few years of a space industry capable of catching up with the USSR, and then sending men to the Moon. Hundreds of thousands of workers were employed, following a plan coordinated by a single management.
This effort, supported by billions of dollars of public money, was a considerable resource for private industry. The war effort of 1942–1945, followed by the Cold War, had led to the creation of the “military-industrial complex,” a network of large capitalist companies linked by a thousand ties to the upper echelons of the U.S. military. These were the companies that built the Saturn V rocket, which carried astronauts to the Moon, and the Delta and Atlas rockets, barely modified ballistic missiles which, until the arrival of SpaceX, provided the bulk of American civilian and military satellite launches. The U.S. Department of Defense reorganized the sector in the 1990s, leading to the emergence of five industrial giants, the Big Five (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics), which share 200 billion dollars in public orders every year. They have been the main beneficiaries of the space budget.
Once it won the symbolic battle for the Moon against the Soviet enemy, the American bourgeoisie lost interest in the conquest of space. NASA’s scientists and engineers, victims of budget cuts, had to pack up their Moon projects. The Big Five, however, had no intention of giving up the profitable contracts that NASA provided. By blackmailing them for jobs, relying on elected representatives in Congress in the regions where their industries were based and on the prestige of astronauts, their pressure led to often aberrant choices in the NASA programs that succeeded Apollo. The Space Shuttle program was decided in large part to provide them with orders. This space transportation system was innovative, but expensive and vulnerable, since it relied on a vehicle piloted by astronauts to send satellites. Two disasters, the explosion of the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the loss of Columbia in 2003, brought the program to a halt. Many other programs financed by billions of dollars of public money never saw the light of day.
The greed of this monopolistic sector—accustomed to drawing unchecked on contracts hidden behind “defense secrecy”—led to the complete sclerosis of the American space sector. At the turn of the 21st century, it was an aberrant situation even from the point of view of the capitalists themselves. The main role of the space program had become to serve the Big Five with a huge annual income. Europe’s Ariane rocket was taking market share, and, in a supreme humiliation, in the 2010s the U.S. had to resort to Russian Soyuzes to send American astronauts to the International Space Station. This situation prompted the U.S. government to introduce in stages new players into the space game.
Following the Columbia accident, the U.S. government launched a program to finance the development of private launchers to refuel the International Space Station, eventually replacing the Shuttle. The transport of astronauts remained the preserve of NASA and its traditional subcontractors for some time, but persistent delays and systematic cost overruns prompted the Obama administration in 2010 to open up this sector to competition too. Bids were invited from companies capable of assuming responsibility for the entire development of launch vehicles, in the hope of reducing the cost of access to space and developing an American industry capable of competing with Europe, or even with India or Japan. In the final analysis, then, the decisions taken by the American government are the driving force behind New Space.
For military reasons, the state does not want to leave the launching of rockets entirely in the hands of private interests. However, the 2010s saw emerge in space what had led to the emergence of the digital giants in Silicon Valley 30 years earlier. The U.S. government, and particularly its military sector, provided all the heavy investment, the development of semiconductors, and the protected market that enabled costs to be lowered sufficiently to leave huge profits for the private sector from the sale of personal computers, their software, then the Internet and smart phones. The active help of the American government allowed SpaceX and others to develop their rockets by recruiting thousands of experienced engineers trained at NASA or with their Big Five competitors. It gave them orders paid for at full price, provided launch sites and NASA expertise, and removed legal barriers that could have been a hindrance.
These space technicians have mastered the complex technique of landing a rocket’s first stage undamaged so that it can be reused. By combining it with the mass production of rockets and the application of the latest technologies, and by adding constant pressure on the 13,000 workers at its sites, as well as on its subcontractors, SpaceX has succeeded in reducing the cost of launches. Elon Musk imposes a personal dictatorship on the company, and has so far succeeded in preventing the establishment of any trade unions. In this way, he has been able to outpace his competitors, even if it means taking certain risks. SpaceX now launches an average of one rocket every three days, almost half of all launches worldwide. Its core business is launching thousands of small satellites into low-Earth orbit to provide satellite-based Internet access, marketed under the name Starlink. This new market was developed at the price of congestion in these orbits, and the risk of a series of uncontrollable collisions that could eventually render the orbits unusable, or even make access to space more perilous for centuries to come. But business generates profits, and polluting collective space with no regard for the rest of humanity, the better to sell us ineffective and costly clean-up techniques later on—a logic we know well on Earth—is also at work in the sky.
This is what enables SpaceX to provide spacecraft that are probably more reliable and cheaper than those from Boeing. But in the final analysis, Elon Musk’s achievement is not much more than doing what the Soviets were already doing routinely 50 years ago, sending satellites around the Earth without the need for private ownership of the means of production or megalomaniac billionaires. This situation reveals the parasitism of big business, which is well entrenched in the heart of the American state, and which for 50 years has provided Boeing with inexhaustible military and space markets (representing a good third of Boeing’s sales), letting the company gradually replace its most qualified engineers and workers with cost-cutting managers. But competition from SpaceX won’t make capitalism any better, since the aim in both cases remains to accumulate capital. Whether Boeing shareholders or Elon Musk decides, the problem remains the same. Industries that concern the whole of humanity—essential for satisfying its needs to communicate and observe the Earth as part of a coordinated plan on a planetary scale—are left to the anarchic law of profit.
The resources Musk mobilized to develop this industry did not come from his personal fortune. State orders primed the pump, then the industry was fed by speculative capital looking for profitable investments. SpaceX is not listed on the stock exchange, and is not obliged to publish its results. It is not possible to determine whether it is actually making a profit, but the rise in the company’s share price is sufficient to attract capital, whatever the project’s chances of success in the long term. Speculation therefore plays an important role in the SpaceX business model, and in New Space in general.
This helps us understand the constant preoccupation of Musk and the sector’s other billionaires with attracting media attention. Thanks to his frenetic activity, his takeover of Twitter in 2022, and his open links with Trump and the far right, Musk has a head start over his competitors Bezos or Branson. Elon Musk proclaims his goal of establishing colonies on Mars, populated by millions of people, to save humanity. It doesn’t matter to him that all the specialists today list enormous difficulties to be overcome, given current technologies, to send even a few astronauts to set foot on that planet. What’s vital is to keep speculators convinced that investing in New Space is the best deal of the moment.
Sending astronauts to the Moon, or even Mars, will really depend on the choices made by the American and Chinese state apparatuses. Elon Musk, multi-billionaire though he may be, can’t finance permanent habitats on the Moon or even to send a few astronauts to Mars with his own money. And he couldn’t raise the immense capital required without a guaranteed long-term return. This could happen only if the project is fueled by a colossal injection of public money.
Will it happen? On the American side, since the end of the Apollo program, there has been no shortage of projects to return to the Moon, but for a long time without any political will other than to give new contracts to the Big Five. These companies were not interested in the international rocket market—the military and space market protected by the American state monopoly was more attractive to them. So, in 2011, as compensation for NASA’s decision to outsource missions to the New Space billionaires, they were awarded the construction of the Space Launch System (SLS), a giant rocket capable of eventually returning American astronauts to the Moon. This project has been plagued by delays and budget overruns, but what’s changing the game today is competition from the Chinese state, which is developing an ambitious space program, including plans to take astronauts to the Moon before the end of the decade. This threat led Trump in 2019 to announce an acceleration of the lunar program, without however deciding on a program comparable to Apollo, supported by the coherence of a centralized administration imposing its decisions for a common objective. To accommodate the interests of the various competing players, NASA came up with Artemis, a gas factory: the SLS rocket will send astronauts only to lunar orbit, taking them to a base built by SpaceX, which in turn will take care of the lunar landing and the astronauts’ return to the base. It is to ensure this mission that NASA is financing SpaceX’s development of the huge Starship rockets, whose spectacular explosions at the Boca Chica base in Texas have been a regular feature of the news for the past five years. These rockets will probably work in the end, but for the time being, this system for landing a few astronauts is still not perfected. So we’re a long way from colonizing Mars, and the 100 billion dollars of public money spent on the Artemis program will at best allow us to send a few Americans to the Moon again and bring them back.
Many other choices would have been possible for spending this money more usefully, even in the space sector. Since the 1970s, robotic probes have enabled us to gain a better understanding of the various planets in the solar system, and space telescopes have opened up new windows on the universe and enabled us to make real advances in our knowledge of astronomy. But the budgets for such types of missions—which enable real scientific advances—are still very limited, especially if we deduct what evaporates in military-industrial overbilling.
Capitalism being what it is, the return of the race to the Moon and the growth of the New Space business are bringing in their wake a wave of speculation around the development of a cosmic mining industry. The talk is of the quantities of precious metals, rare earths and other valuable minerals that could be extracted from the Moon or asteroids. No one knows when this type of project will be profitable, given the enormous costs involved in developing this type of industry, but since the role of capitalist states is to support the capitalists, it seemed urgent to remove an obstacle in their way, bypassing international treaties that prohibit the appropriation of any territory in space by anyone, state or private individual.
Lawyers in several countries worked on the issue, inventing legal loopholes to get around them. Thus, in 2015, U.S. President Obama signed the Space Act, which provides that “an American citizen engaged in the commercial exploitation of a space resource has the right to possess, transport, use, and sell the resource obtained.” A few months later, Luxembourg became the first European country to pass similar legislation. It may seem inconsequential, given the speculative nature of the whole thing, but this is how little Luxembourg became an “emerging space power,” with an economic model enabling profits to be made straight away, without of course launching a single rocket, and when the total quantity of rock brought back by space missions is today less than 400 kg for the Moon and around a hundred grams for asteroids!
However, this New Space hype gives a distorted view of the main issues driving the space sector today. It’s a vital strategic sector, of which the civilian aspects are only the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. military space budget is hidden by defense secrecy and fed by a series of agencies less well known than NASA. It is estimated at 40 billion dollars a year, compared with 30 billion for the civilian space budget. This figure is of the same order of magnitude as the combined civilian and military space budgets of the rest of the world.
The development of a private space industry is a strategic asset for the American generals. It remains under state control. Private rockets are classified as weapons, the Pentagon provides large satellite launch contracts to SpaceX in particular, and if need be, the U.S. aeronautics administration can decide to ground any private rocket. The war in Ukraine shows just how important the space sector has become for world domination, for battlefield observation, military communications, GPS guidance of drones and missiles. Like airspace, it needs to be controlled. From this point of view, the technologies developed by SpaceX and the digital giants, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, are indispensable to the U.S. military, and in recent years have been increasingly integrated into the military-industrial complex. The billionaires in these sectors depend on the Pentagon and work closely with it. Their “libertarian” rhetoric against government intervention is just for show, and feeds an anti-communism reminiscent of the Cold War.
For example, Elon Musk has sold Ukraine the supply of satellite Internet via Starlink, which plays an important role in organizing the Ukrainian military, providing direct access to a network that Russian attacks cannot cut off. But it also prevented aggressive actions by the Ukrainian army on certain Russian installations, by cutting off access to Starlink in the areas concerned. The press saw this as a sign of the power acquired by the billionaire in areas hitherto reserved for states, but it seems unlikely that Musk could have done this without the Pentagon’s agreement or order. In a sense, both Starlink and SpaceX are arms of the American state, which can, when it wants to, hide behind their private nature. Of course, Musk’s interests are not necessarily identical with those of the American state, since he has ties with Russia, and with China, where he sells many of his Tesla cars. But in this, he is no different from other American capitalists, who have a vital need to continue producing and selling in China, despite American imperialism’s growing desire to attack China.
The current march to war is fueling conflicts over space, whose domination, like that of the oceans for centuries, is becoming a vital issue for the great powers. For the time being, international treaties prohibiting the use of offensive weapons on space systems are being respected, according to the experts. Their usefulness today is comparable to other means, such as jamming or cyberattack. But the war for control of space is being prepared, as evidenced by Trump’s creation of a Space Force within the U.S. military in 2019. American imperialism is posing as the gendarme of the universe, doing it to “enforce freedom of navigation” and ensure access to space for all, as they did in the case of the oceans. This justification could be used for any intervention, including the appropriation of coveted portions of land near the lunar South Pole, in the name of the need to protect security of investment. As for France and Europe, they are following in the footsteps of their American mentor and competitor. Groups such as Airbus and Ariane Group are trying to maintain their place in the space sector, while others such as Thales and Safran benefit as subcontractors for American space programs.
All the contradictions of capitalism are to be found in the space sector, where the most modern technologies are used for war, and precious resources are shockingly wasted on civilian or military objectives in which the world’s population has no say.
Humanity’s needs are immense. And the many ecological crises we face are taking on proportions capable of threatening our very existence. Today, we could use the data collected by satellites to organize a planetary management of the Earth’s resources, and collectively make the most rational choices to feed today’s humanity, to ensure it a dignified life, while preserving the future. But to achieve this, we need to put an end to the aberration that allows a few billionaires to organize the implementation of the most advanced technologies and the collective work of hundreds of thousands of workers, scientists, engineers, laborers and technicians according to their own interests and the fluctuations of the market and financial speculation.
As for more distant exploration, in a society without frontiers and without exploitation, the question of sending astronauts to Mars or sailing around Saturn will certainly be the subject of much richer debate than it is today, and there will certainly be no shortage of resources for such explorations, nor of volunteers to take part. “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but you don’t spend your life in a cradle.” The phrase is attributed to Constantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian scientist and utopian who, over a century ago, laid the foundations of astronautics. So much the better if the exploration of the universe and manned space flight fascinate and motivate new generations more than the yachts of billionaires. But for humanity to have a future, the urgent question of reorganizing society on a communist basis will first have to be resolved.