In the early years of space exploration all launch vehicles and
satellites were the property of national governments. From
the 1960s onward, however, private corporations and institutions began developing strategies to exploit outer space commerciallyÑmost notably in the field of communications
satellites, where private corporations developed their own satellites and financed launches from government facilities.During the 1980s, launch services became a focal point of commercialization. After the Challenger disaster of 1986 the U.S. Space Shuttle was withdrawn from commercial use, leaving the market open. The Ariane rocket developed by the European consortium Arianespace received a considerable portion of this market, although it remained substantially subsidized by the French government. By the late 1980s many large American aerospace
companies were placing greater emphasis on selling private commercial launches. With varying success, so were small companies. In fact, the first commercially licensed U.S. launch took place on Mar. 29, 1989, when one small company, Space Services Inc. of Texas, sent aloft an instrument package on one of its sounding rockets.In the early 1990s both China and Japan, having experienced technical difficulties in their rocket programs, were not players in the launch services market. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the United States and Russia resolved some technology transfer issues, and the Russians were granted limited access to the market. Smaller-scale ventures have also been attempting to commercialize space. Thus Spot-IMAGE, a French company, has had some success selling remote sensing data to governments, resource prospecting firms, research institutions, and news organizations. At the same time, however, other promising areas of commercializationÑmost notably the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, large crystals, and special metal alloysÑhad not been successful in competing against ground-based technologies.Most attention in space commercialization is still focused on communications and launch services. The market for satellites providing cellular phone communication services is considered especially robust and is expected to grow throughout the 1990s. Similarly, the revolutionary DC-X rocket promises to enhance launch capabilities while dramatically bringing down launch costs. Another experimental but promising area may be in developing vacuum-growth technologies, with the vacuum of space being used to manufacture exotic products such as thin-film materials (see thin-film technology) for superior computer microchips.