The evolving interaction between “public” and “private” in the space secto

The global landscape for space activities is currently witnessing dramatic changes in its structure, with the historical, government-centered status quo progressively being challenged by a new sectorial dynamic. Largely steered by the undertakings of U.S. companies such as Space X, Planet and Blue Origins, a commercially driven approach to space has progressively taken root, with private actors playing a more prominent role and pursuing the eventual goal of running space business independently from governments. This new dynamic, generally referred to as New Space, encompasses a wide range of diverse, yet interrelated trends, including new entrants; innovative industrial approaches; disruptive market solutions; substantial private investment; new industry verticals and space markets targeting the provision of new space applications (Aliberti et al, 2020). However, public actors are still a major protagonist of global space activities. A careful examination of global commercial and innovation dynamics in the space sector would indeed reveal the need to “bring the state back in” within space policy and economic analyses and also re-assess its role in enabling the emergence of a dynamic private space industry. Public policies implemented in recent years in both advanced and emerging spacefaring nations have, in fact, proved instrumental in the emergence of NewSpace. Even in the U.S., home of the most vibrant space industry worldwide, without the U.S. government as either an anchor tenant or a major customer, very little of the blossoming private activity that we now see would exist. As aptly pointed out by Mazzucato (2015), the current mythmaking about Silicon Valley’s wildcatting entrepreneurs often forgets that many of the seeds were planted by public sector agencies through a series of institutional, financial and legislative tools. An invaluable role has been in particular played by such public institutions as NASA or DARPA, which have been key in backing the success of companies like SpaceX. Even today, it can be expected that the future of the New Space dynamic, although commercially driven, will be highly dependent on the success of public support strategies (Vernile, 2018). Against this background, this paper aims to shed light on the complex and evolving relationship between the public and private actors in the space sector. It first provides a mapping of the unfolding set of technical, political and economic trends that are contributing, together, to an increasingly more prominent role for private actors in the space sector. It subsequently assesses the actual role the public actors have played in enabling this structural transformation and eventually examines how this transformation is, in turn, contributing to redefine the very role of public stakeholder in the space domain. Overall, this work demonstrates that the relationship between public stakeholders and the private sector has changed and will continue to change in the future. It will also show why space agencies and other public organisations will retain a major role in managing the public-private “spacescape” of the coming decades, especially in the strategic (defining and implementing space policy), regulatory (supporting the development of regulations) and representation (nationally and internationally) dimensions.