Q&A: Space entrepreneur shoots for the moon
Space Adventures CEO Peter Diamandis on the future of private space travel to the moon and beyond.
50 years in space
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Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.
Growing up in the '60s, Peter Diamandis aspired, like many kids, to be an astronaut. Now, as a pioneer and champion of the private space industry, he plans to take himself to the moon one day.
Diamandis, 46, has a lot of irons in the fire to make that happen. As chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, Diamandis helped ignite a new era in personal space flight with 2004's Ansari X Prize, an incentive competition to build and fly a manned suborbital vehicle past the Earth's atmosphere. Now, he's onto the Google Lunar X Prize, an entrepreneurial race to put a robotic rover on the moon that can survey the landscape.
Peter Diamandis
And that's just the beginning. Diamandis has founded two space tourism companies. Zero Gravity Corp. takes as many as 3,000 people annually, from Las Vegas or Kennedy Space Center, on parabolic weightless flights. Its customers are the extraordinarily wealthy and the famous--renowned scientist
He's also pioneering the entertainment space market, by co-founding with Granger Whitelaw the Rocket Racing League, a modern-day version of NASCAR but with rocket-powered aircraft. Scheduled for demonstration flights next year, teams will fly a three-dimensional course with augmented reality so you can watch it on TV, the Internet or Jumbotrons. Diamandis says that kind of market has multibillion-dollar potential.
Diamandis talked with CNET News.com about the 50th anniversary of space flight, the future trillion-dollar market in space, and the government's role in space exploration.
Q: How did you get interested in the space flight industry, and what drives you in this market?
Diamandis: Well, my passion for space really came as a kid. I was born in the early '60s?became passionate by watching Apollo happen and really wanted so much to become an astronaut myself. I went and got my medical degree and a six-pack of engineering degrees really with the intent of being able to apply to the astronaut corps; and after a while realized that my real passion was the goal of trying to take people there privately. I've spent the last 10 years really as a serial entrepreneur building nonprofit and for-profit companies focused on making space accessible to individuals.
Why do you think so many wealthy people like yourself, Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos have involved themselves in this area? Is there a common denominator between all of you?
Diamandis: Yeah, it's interesting. We're now entering a time where for the first time it is possible for individuals and small groups of people to do things in space. It used to take the Soviet Union or the United States and hundreds of thousands of people and a significant percentage of the gross national product. It's now viable for a small group of 10, 20 or 30 people backed by a wealthy individual to go and do something significant in space.
The SpaceShipOne team that won the Ansari X Prize led by Burt Rutan and backed by Paul Allen, it was really a group of 20 exceptional engineers with today's computational skills and fluid dynamics that can run on a laptop. It used to take an entire room-sized computer. There have been a number of individuals, folks like Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and John Carmack, who had made a large amount of money by pioneering a new industry, whether it be the Internet, software or personal computers. And they said, "Well, if I can really cause a breakthrough in this industry, perhaps I can do something in space."
Why are they doing something in space? Because that's what inspired them; that's what inspired me as a youth. So, you had this early inspiration and, unfortunately, the government never delivered on it. And in the last 40 years, we've never fulfilled the promise that we had seen in Apollo. So, now people are saying, "I'm going to give up on the government; I'm going to do it myself."
That makes me wonder if you think NASA is still relevant today?
Diamandis: I think NASA remains very relevant. I think that there needs to be a real partnership between the government and private industry in the same way there are in other industries. I mean, no private company in my mind is going to go out and explore far distant planets or go and send scientific missions to Mars, and that's what the government should be doing. It should be doing things that there are not commercial markets to do. Sending humans to orbit, sending people on zero-gravity flights, building commercial stations in orbit--these are things that private companies can do and probably do better.
We have a long history in the United States of the government pioneering, and private industry taking things over, and the government moving to the next step. You've seen this in the aviation industry, you've seen it in the computer industry, you've seen it in the Internet industry, and we should see it in the future in the space industry.
Next page: Seeing what the private sector can do
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
Where specifically do you think NASA should be focused?
Diamandis: NASA should be in focusing on breakthroughs in propulsion systems. They should be taking very high risks, funding things that are likely to fail because that's what government should be doing, pushing the envelope.
NASA should be focusing on: Is there life on Mars? Is there life on Europa? Understanding the Jovian and Saturn systems. They should be focusing on building infrastructure the same way that we had the railroads, but I also think that NASA should be purchasing, wherever possible, fixed-price content, information and technology from companies.
So the best way to go to the moon is for NASA to say, "We will pay a contract for the first company to go and set up a habitat on the moon,"--very much the same way that we're doing our Google Lunar X Prize. NASA can, in fact, offer our fixed-price contracts. It just doesn't work, unfortunately, with the political system where, the Congressmen from Alabama or the Congressmen from Maryland wants to see employment in their state.
What do you think was the catalyst for the emergence of the private space sector?
Diamandis: The catalyst has been frustration on one side. I know from myself it's been impatience on waiting for NASA to do it. The other thing is that unfortunately over the last 40 years, space has become very unavailable. It's only a hundred astronauts in the U.S. that have a chance to go. So for God's sakes, if you're not one of those lucky, well-trained, highly selected astronauts, what are your options for being involved? So it's become so exclusive that private industry has bolted up saying, "Well, heck, we'll just do it ourselves," and I know that's been a lot of my motivation.
The other thing is I think people are beginning to realize that there is a huge potential market in space. Not necessarily just people--that's the first market--but the notion that everything we hold of value on Earth, the metals and minerals and energy and real estate. The multibillion, trillion-dollar markets that we fight wars over are in infinite quantities in space.
People are amazed when I say an average half-kilometer asteroid--of which there are probably tens of thousands--the average asteroid of that size is worth something in the order of $20 trillion to $30 trillion in nickel and iron and platinum metal--huge, vast quantities. In fact, many of the nickel mines and platinum mines on Earth that we mine today are old asteroid impact sites that are just now where we're going to mine. So I think in the same way that America bought Alaska from the Russians in the 1850s; it was called Seward's Folly and we didn't value it back then. But as we started to recognize that it had vast resources of gold and timber and fishing and oil, it became a very economically viable place. We built the roads, the railroads, the airlines to get there. The same thing will happen with space.
What are the major markets you see in space now?
Diamandis: There are two major markets available today, and that's where I focus my energy. One is tourism and the other is entertainment. In the future it will be resources. It will be the ability to go out there and get energy and metals, minerals and real estate. That will be the trillion-dollar markets for the future.
Space Adventures has so far flown, for a hefty price, four private citizens to the International Space Station. And the prices, I know, are only going up. Do you have any concern that much of the public will dismiss this endeavor as more conspicuous consumption by rich people?
Diamandis: If the public does dismiss it, they are a little bit naive, because the fact that they can buy a personal computer for a thousand bucks, or hop on a Southwest flight for $200, is the result of the exact same thing happening tens of years ago. So when aviation first started, it was expensive and only the wealthy could do it, and when the first computers were available they were expensive and only wealthy people could purchase them. So, if you don't support this, you are discounting the availability to your children and their children to have low-cost space flight. So, it begins first with wealthy individuals who are pioneers, who put up their money and support the birth of the industry, and then as you get more and more people flying, the cost will come down and reliability will go up.
What was it like at the X Prize Foundation after the success of the Ansari X Prize? Was that a turning point for you? And can you talk about some of the other prizes you're excited about?
Diamandis: I'm happy to. The Ansari X Prize was won in October of 2004, and it was a pivotal moment. It proved once again that this concept of incentive prizes works, and we went from there to bringing additional folks on the board like Larry Page and Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, and we built the foundation into a world-class prize organization where we're launching a range of prizes in space, energy, life sciences and global entrepreneurship. We launched the Archon X Prize for Genomics: the first team to sequence a hundred human genomes in 10 days wins $1,000,000. We have just launched the Google Lunar X Prize: $30 million of prize money for private teams to land on the moon and rove 500 meters and send back digital video and e-mails and photos, and really start a new generation of private space exploration on the moon.
Which prize will be the next to come to fruition?
Diamandis: The competitions for the automotive X Prize will occur in 2009 and 2010, so those are likely to be the next major breakthroughs. Then the Google Lunar X Prize--I believe that we will see that one by 2012.
Next page: Why humans need frontiers
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
We're at the 50th anniversary of space flight. How do you think of this time in the history of exploration in space?
Diamandis: I believe that it's during our lifetimes, not our children's or their children's, that the human race is going to irreversibly move off the planet. At this moment in time, the next few decades will be something remembered for millennia to come, when the human race moved off planet Earth to other planets, but also to human-made, eventual colonies. So it's a very magical time. It's the equivalent, if you would, of the fish moving on to land or of the early hominids moving out of the plains of Africa to the rest of the earth.
The last 50 years are really in two portions. The first 20 years of space were magical. Between the times of Sputnik in 1957 through the (last) landing on the moon in 1972 it was an incredible period of explosive growth of doing what was almost thought impossible. The engine that powered those first 15 years--the engine that powered that (was politics and fear), the race between the Soviet Union and the United States--and once that finished, really everything stopped.
I think that the next 50 years need to be powered by a different engine; and what I propose is really a capitalist engine. It's what drives tremendous progress on everything else we do, whether it's the computer, the Internet, aviation. The notion that we build industries that make money and add value to human life, that drives us forward. As long as it's based on strictly science or strictly political whim, it's going to be a very slow progress.
You think that's key to inspiring kids and reversing a depletion of young talent in science and math?
Diamandis: I do. I think that we need to have frontiers. I think we need to have exciting visions of the future that are not introverted. A good friend of mine runs Second Life, and Philip Rosedale and I talk about the fact that in one sense he is creating a frontier people can delve into, and at the same time that I'm working on creating a frontier where people can go. One is virtual, and one is physical. Both are important, but today if you are excited about space, you don't have the option of going there through the governments. Your chances of becoming an NBA superstar are far greater than becoming an astronaut.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle blocking the development of the private space flight industry?
Diamandis: The biggest obstacle right now is capital and the demonstration of the business models. The capital is starting to flow again from wealthy individuals who have made their money in traditional markets, who have a long-term vision of the allure of space, but we haven't yet seen really what I call a Netscape event.
A company in the space arena goes public and provides return to its early investors, and everybody says, "How do I do that again?" That was the massive flow of capital that occurred in the '90s into the Internet business. Once that's done you'll see capital start to flow, and people will need to take risks, and that is going to happen over the next decade or so.
What do you envision will be the Netscape event? I mean, which companies?
Diamandis: I do believe that I know some of the companies that could be very successful and go public. I think that the real value, as I mentioned earlier, is going to be in obtaining resources from space. The growth of humanity on Earth, the issues that we're dealing with in terms of availability of resources, cannot continue when we're only confining our resources to planet Earth. We have to look outside of our current biosphere and look beyond Earth orbit. Once we do that, we can become really a very vibrant and rapid-growth species. But it reaches a point at which, if you say we're only going to stay within the Earth's biosphere, then you have to stop your growth and reverse it. It's like a bacteria in a petri dish; you're going to run out of resources, and everybody is going to perish at the end.
I just attended a space conference at Caltech, and they talked a lot about the high cost of getting into space. Can you talk about how to solve that problem, and how these teams that are competing in the Google X Prize are going to get on to the moon?
Diamandis: The problem of low-cost space flight is not really that complex. The solution is to fly more. Today, the total number of commercial launches to orbit worldwide is something like 12 to 15 launches in a good year. Total worldwide, the number of commercial vendors offering launches is like 12. You're talking about a single customer per launch company and it's not a commercial marketplace. There are no economies there. We really need to reach a time when there are hundreds or thousands of launches per year. Once we're able to build that kind of a real marketplace, then there's money being made, companies invest in breakthroughs and research to improve their product. There's only one marketplace in my mind that makes sense there and that's human space flight. It's the only large enough market in the near term. Eventually it will be accessing space for resources.
How would you characterize the landscape of the private space sector right now?
Diamandis: Hopeful. There are a few furry mammals evolving amongst all the dinosaurs.
50 years in space
Q&A: Space entrepreneur shoots for the moon
Editors' note: This is part of a series examining 50 years of space exploration.
Growing up in the '60s, Peter Diamandis aspired, like many kids, to be an astronaut. Now, as a pioneer and champion of the private space industry, he plans to take himself to the moon one day.
Diamandis, 46, has a lot of irons in the fire to make that happen. As chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, Diamandis helped ignite a new era in personal space flight with 2004's Ansari X Prize, an incentive competition to build and fly a manned suborbital vehicle past the Earth's atmosphere. Now, he's onto the Google Lunar X Prize, an entrepreneurial race to put a robotic rover on the moon that can survey the landscape.
Peter Diamandis
And that's just the beginning. Diamandis has founded two space tourism companies. Zero Gravity Corp. takes as many as 3,000 people annually, from Las Vegas or Kennedy Space Center, on parabolic weightless flights. Its customers are the extraordinarily wealthy and the famous--renowned scientist
He's also pioneering the entertainment space market, by co-founding with Granger Whitelaw the Rocket Racing League, a modern-day version of NASCAR but with rocket-powered aircraft. Scheduled for demonstration flights next year, teams will fly a three-dimensional course with augmented reality so you can watch it on TV, the Internet or Jumbotrons. Diamandis says that kind of market has multibillion-dollar potential.
Diamandis talked with CNET News.com about the 50th anniversary of space flight, the future trillion-dollar market in space, and the government's role in space exploration.
Q: How did you get interested in the space flight industry, and what drives you in this market?
Diamandis: Well, my passion for space really came as a kid. I was born in the early '60s?became passionate by watching Apollo happen and really wanted so much to become an astronaut myself. I went and got my medical degree and a six-pack of engineering degrees really with the intent of being able to apply to the astronaut corps; and after a while realized that my real passion was the goal of trying to take people there privately. I've spent the last 10 years really as a serial entrepreneur building nonprofit and for-profit companies focused on making space accessible to individuals.
Why do you think so many wealthy people like yourself, Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos have involved themselves in this area? Is there a common denominator between all of you?
Diamandis: Yeah, it's interesting. We're now entering a time where for the first time it is possible for individuals and small groups of people to do things in space. It used to take the Soviet Union or the United States and hundreds of thousands of people and a significant percentage of the gross national product. It's now viable for a small group of 10, 20 or 30 people backed by a wealthy individual to go and do something significant in space.
The SpaceShipOne team that won the Ansari X Prize led by Burt Rutan and backed by Paul Allen, it was really a group of 20 exceptional engineers with today's computational skills and fluid dynamics that can run on a laptop. It used to take an entire room-sized computer. There have been a number of individuals, folks like Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and John Carmack, who had made a large amount of money by pioneering a new industry, whether it be the Internet, software or personal computers. And they said, "Well, if I can really cause a breakthrough in this industry, perhaps I can do something in space."
Why are they doing something in space? Because that's what inspired them; that's what inspired me as a youth. So, you had this early inspiration and, unfortunately, the government never delivered on it. And in the last 40 years, we've never fulfilled the promise that we had seen in Apollo. So, now people are saying, "I'm going to give up on the government; I'm going to do it myself."
That makes me wonder if you think NASA is still relevant today?
Diamandis: I think NASA remains very relevant. I think that there needs to be a real partnership between the government and private industry in the same way there are in other industries. I mean, no private company in my mind is going to go out and explore far distant planets or go and send scientific missions to Mars, and that's what the government should be doing. It should be doing things that there are not commercial markets to do. Sending humans to orbit, sending people on zero-gravity flights, building commercial stations in orbit--these are things that private companies can do and probably do better.
We have a long history in the United States of the government pioneering, and private industry taking things over, and the government moving to the next step. You've seen this in the aviation industry, you've seen it in the computer industry, you've seen it in the Internet industry, and we should see it in the future in the space industry.
Next page: Seeing what the private sector can do
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
Where specifically do you think NASA should be focused?
Diamandis: NASA should be in focusing on breakthroughs in propulsion systems. They should be taking very high risks, funding things that are likely to fail because that's what government should be doing, pushing the envelope.
NASA should be focusing on: Is there life on Mars? Is there life on Europa? Understanding the Jovian and Saturn systems. They should be focusing on building infrastructure the same way that we had the railroads, but I also think that NASA should be purchasing, wherever possible, fixed-price content, information and technology from companies.
So the best way to go to the moon is for NASA to say, "We will pay a contract for the first company to go and set up a habitat on the moon,"--very much the same way that we're doing our Google Lunar X Prize. NASA can, in fact, offer our fixed-price contracts. It just doesn't work, unfortunately, with the political system where, the Congressmen from Alabama or the Congressmen from Maryland wants to see employment in their state.
What do you think was the catalyst for the emergence of the private space sector?
Diamandis: The catalyst has been frustration on one side. I know from myself it's been impatience on waiting for NASA to do it. The other thing is that unfortunately over the last 40 years, space has become very unavailable. It's only a hundred astronauts in the U.S. that have a chance to go. So for God's sakes, if you're not one of those lucky, well-trained, highly selected astronauts, what are your options for being involved? So it's become so exclusive that private industry has bolted up saying, "Well, heck, we'll just do it ourselves," and I know that's been a lot of my motivation.
The other thing is I think people are beginning to realize that there is a huge potential market in space. Not necessarily just people--that's the first market--but the notion that everything we hold of value on Earth, the metals and minerals and energy and real estate. The multibillion, trillion-dollar markets that we fight wars over are in infinite quantities in space.
People are amazed when I say an average half-kilometer asteroid--of which there are probably tens of thousands--the average asteroid of that size is worth something in the order of $20 trillion to $30 trillion in nickel and iron and platinum metal--huge, vast quantities. In fact, many of the nickel mines and platinum mines on Earth that we mine today are old asteroid impact sites that are just now where we're going to mine. So I think in the same way that America bought Alaska from the Russians in the 1850s; it was called Seward's Folly and we didn't value it back then. But as we started to recognize that it had vast resources of gold and timber and fishing and oil, it became a very economically viable place. We built the roads, the railroads, the airlines to get there. The same thing will happen with space.
What are the major markets you see in space now?
Diamandis: There are two major markets available today, and that's where I focus my energy. One is tourism and the other is entertainment. In the future it will be resources. It will be the ability to go out there and get energy and metals, minerals and real estate. That will be the trillion-dollar markets for the future.
Space Adventures has so far flown, for a hefty price, four private citizens to the International Space Station. And the prices, I know, are only going up. Do you have any concern that much of the public will dismiss this endeavor as more conspicuous consumption by rich people?
Diamandis: If the public does dismiss it, they are a little bit naive, because the fact that they can buy a personal computer for a thousand bucks, or hop on a Southwest flight for $200, is the result of the exact same thing happening tens of years ago. So when aviation first started, it was expensive and only the wealthy could do it, and when the first computers were available they were expensive and only wealthy people could purchase them. So, if you don't support this, you are discounting the availability to your children and their children to have low-cost space flight. So, it begins first with wealthy individuals who are pioneers, who put up their money and support the birth of the industry, and then as you get more and more people flying, the cost will come down and reliability will go up.
What was it like at the X Prize Foundation after the success of the Ansari X Prize? Was that a turning point for you? And can you talk about some of the other prizes you're excited about?
Diamandis: I'm happy to. The Ansari X Prize was won in October of 2004, and it was a pivotal moment. It proved once again that this concept of incentive prizes works, and we went from there to bringing additional folks on the board like Larry Page and Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, and we built the foundation into a world-class prize organization where we're launching a range of prizes in space, energy, life sciences and global entrepreneurship. We launched the Archon X Prize for Genomics: the first team to sequence a hundred human genomes in 10 days wins $1,000,000. We have just launched the Google Lunar X Prize: $30 million of prize money for private teams to land on the moon and rove 500 meters and send back digital video and e-mails and photos, and really start a new generation of private space exploration on the moon.
Which prize will be the next to come to fruition?
Diamandis: The competitions for the automotive X Prize will occur in 2009 and 2010, so those are likely to be the next major breakthroughs. Then the Google Lunar X Prize--I believe that we will see that one by 2012.
Next page: Why humans need frontiers
50 years in space
(continued from previous page)
We're at the 50th anniversary of space flight. How do you think of this time in the history of exploration in space?
Diamandis: I believe that it's during our lifetimes, not our children's or their children's, that the human race is going to irreversibly move off the planet. At this moment in time, the next few decades will be something remembered for millennia to come, when the human race moved off planet Earth to other planets, but also to human-made, eventual colonies. So it's a very magical time. It's the equivalent, if you would, of the fish moving on to land or of the early hominids moving out of the plains of Africa to the rest of the earth.
The last 50 years are really in two portions. The first 20 years of space were magical. Between the times of Sputnik in 1957 through the (last) landing on the moon in 1972 it was an incredible period of explosive growth of doing what was almost thought impossible. The engine that powered those first 15 years--the engine that powered that (was politics and fear), the race between the Soviet Union and the United States--and once that finished, really everything stopped.
I think that the next 50 years need to be powered by a different engine; and what I propose is really a capitalist engine. It's what drives tremendous progress on everything else we do, whether it's the computer, the Internet, aviation. The notion that we build industries that make money and add value to human life, that drives us forward. As long as it's based on strictly science or strictly political whim, it's going to be a very slow progress.
You think that's key to inspiring kids and reversing a depletion of young talent in science and math?
Diamandis: I do. I think that we need to have frontiers. I think we need to have exciting visions of the future that are not introverted. A good friend of mine runs Second Life, and Philip Rosedale and I talk about the fact that in one sense he is creating a frontier people can delve into, and at the same time that I'm working on creating a frontier where people can go. One is virtual, and one is physical. Both are important, but today if you are excited about space, you don't have the option of going there through the governments. Your chances of becoming an NBA superstar are far greater than becoming an astronaut.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle blocking the development of the private space flight industry?
Diamandis: The biggest obstacle right now is capital and the demonstration of the business models. The capital is starting to flow again from wealthy individuals who have made their money in traditional markets, who have a long-term vision of the allure of space, but we haven't yet seen really what I call a Netscape event.
A company in the space arena goes public and provides return to its early investors, and everybody says, "How do I do that again?" That was the massive flow of capital that occurred in the '90s into the Internet business. Once that's done you'll see capital start to flow, and people will need to take risks, and that is going to happen over the next decade or so.
What do you envision will be the Netscape event? I mean, which companies?
Diamandis: I do believe that I know some of the companies that could be very successful and go public. I think that the real value, as I mentioned earlier, is going to be in obtaining resources from space. The growth of humanity on Earth, the issues that we're dealing with in terms of availability of resources, cannot continue when we're only confining our resources to planet Earth. We have to look outside of our current biosphere and look beyond Earth orbit. Once we do that, we can become really a very vibrant and rapid-growth species. But it reaches a point at which, if you say we're only going to stay within the Earth's biosphere, then you have to stop your growth and reverse it. It's like a bacteria in a petri dish; you're going to run out of resources, and everybody is going to perish at the end.
I just attended a space conference at Caltech, and they talked a lot about the high cost of getting into space. Can you talk about how to solve that problem, and how these teams that are competing in the Google X Prize are going to get on to the moon?
Diamandis: The problem of low-cost space flight is not really that complex. The solution is to fly more. Today, the total number of commercial launches to orbit worldwide is something like 12 to 15 launches in a good year. Total worldwide, the number of commercial vendors offering launches is like 12. You're talking about a single customer per launch company and it's not a commercial marketplace. There are no economies there. We really need to reach a time when there are hundreds or thousands of launches per year. Once we're able to build that kind of a real marketplace, then there's money being made, companies invest in breakthroughs and research to improve their product. There's only one marketplace in my mind that makes sense there and that's human space flight. It's the only large enough market in the near term. Eventually it will be accessing space for resources.
How would you characterize the landscape of the private space sector right now?
Diamandis: Hopeful. There are a few furry mammals evolving amongst all the dinosaurs.