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The Space Business - Andrew May ****

When I was young, space travel was very exciting because science fiction was becoming reality. First there were people in space and then the landings on the Moon. However, there was one big difference between what I read in SF and what was happening on the news. Fictional space travel was largely a matter of private enterprise, whether it was down to the work of an individual mad scientist or a large corporation. But the reality left leaving Earth in the hands of two superpower nations. Of course, there were exceptions in the fiction, but even in something like Star Trek, where the central focus was a ship owned by supranational authorities, there were still plenty of privately owned ships in space.

Now, though, reality is catching up with the fiction. Companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are bringing a whole new entrepreneurial flair to the design and build of rockets, outpacing the slow and steady approach of NASA. In The Space Business, Andrew May takes us on a tour of this new look at the way we interact with space - and discovers whether there are real commercial opportunities, or it's just an expensive hobby for science fiction loving billionaires.

Along the way, May ties neatly in with science fiction writers' visions of commercial space travel, from space hotels to asteroid mining. However, this is not a rose-tinted spectacles venture - from the very first there is an emphasis on the idea that 'space is hard' - it's easy to underestimate the difficulties both of getting out of Earth's gravitational well and surviving in that hostile environment.

The book splits the space business experience into suborbital ventures, getting satellites into orbit, space vacations, extraterrestrial industries and the billionaire space race. May makes it clear that the limiting factor on some of these activities - asteroid mining, for example - is likely to be the need for a huge upfront investment of time and money. 'The question is,' he asks, 'where are we going to find someone far-sighted enough – or naïve enough – to pick up the tab?' Enter those billionaires. 

At the time of writing there has been criticism both from the press and British royals (who ought to know better than to mention the matter of unnecessary expense) of the space ventures of tech billionaires - but that's potentially a shortsighted view. May looks at the drivers behind their different approaches, and highlights why Mars (despite its romantic appeal) is probably less realistic as a prospect for long-term human habitation than space habitats. In the end, though, he comes back to the importance of the space business for everything from navigation to monitoring the climate through that less romantic, but most significant aspect of satellite launching.

It's timely that this book has come out just when the 90-year-old William Shatner - the actor who brought Star Trek's Captain Kirk to life - has made a brief venture into space on a commercial spaceflight. There is something of the essence of Hollywood fakery about these flights that scrape the edge of space but don't really do anything. And yet there is also a feeling of opportunity in space now that hasn't existed since the days of the Apollo missions. 

This is a solid, straightforward guide to the prospects for commercial space activity from satellite launching to asteroid mining. The book makes it clear that if and when we do boldly go where no one has gone before, it is as likely to be on a commercial mission as one that is run by a government.

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Review by Brian Clegg
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