Space industry year ahead: SpaceX’s Mars rocket, tourism, and more billionaire battles

Big businesses are beginning to permeate every area of spaceflight, from the most spectacular private launches to the smallest detail. A modified version of Though SpaceX initially expected to get the all-clear by the end of 2021, according to the FAA, the environmental assessment will continue until at least February 28, 2022.The agency Plans for other SpaceX But Virgin GalacticThat designation is set to expire in 2023, and the FAA indicated that lawmakers are monitoring the situation and considering a change. The whole thing could also soon become the subject of a Government Accountability Office report. Emails obtained by CNN Business show the GAO reached out to the FAA for more information about its Blue Origin probe. Meanwhile, the allegations about Blue Origin’s workplace culture — which were echoed in a separate whistleblower essay about SpaceX — has put the commercial space industry under heightened scrutiny. A big, crowded, empty voidSimilar questions about how to regulate outer space in the age of commercialization are playing out on the international stage. With SpaceX and others putting up thousands of satellites for a new space-based businesses, and a recent satellite destruction test carried out by the Russian government — concerns about overcrowding in Earth’s orbit are mounting. There were numerous recent, high-profile events highlighting the stakes of the problem: SpaceX Starlink satellites nearly collided with the Chinese space station, the International Space Station has had to maneuver out of the path of debris on numerous occasions, and defunct rockets have fallen out of orbit uncontrolled.Groups within the United Nations have been working for decades to update international treaties governing the use of outer space. So far, they’ve been largely unsuccessful. But the effort is gaining attention once again with a November 1 resolution that created an open-ended working group that will assess “current and future threats to space operations, determine when behavior may be considered irresponsible, ‘make recommendations on possible norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors,’ and contribute to the negotiation of legally binding instruments; — including a treaty to prevent ‘an arms race in space,'” according to a recently published article written by two space policy experts.