The Commercial Imperative

Outer space was once the exclusive domain of governments. But today, commercial companies are increasingly driving space technology development and operation.

Up until the early 1990s, roughly 93% of all satellites in orbit were government-launched. Many were explicitly military assets; every launch was a massive societal undertaking. Around this time, NASA spent about $15 billion yearly, good for 0.2% of US GDP. But over the years, budget numbers shrank, government progress slowed — and commercial industry picked up the mantle.

Private, commercial companies will drive future space exploration and innovation. This is all but a truism nowadays, as less than 13% of the payloads launched in 2024 were government assets. But before this year, this fact was not officially recognized in Pentagon acquisitions rules, rules that often drove program managers to custom-design government systems, rather than looking to the growing and highly-capable commercial markets for existing technology they can leverage to accomplish their missions.

This is why we are encouraged to see the NDAA language establishing a commercial-first mandate for government solutions. It will work to drive innovation, speed, and capability. How am I so certain? Because I have already seen this scenario play out once before.

As a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation from 2008 to 2012, I led the commercial space industry’s efforts to establish NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to replace the aging Space Shuttle. At the time, many argued for building another government-run Space Shuttle replacement, but President Barack Obama made the fateful decision to instead look to private industry. It was an unpopular decision, but it was the right one. It resulted in Americans flying to the International Space Station on American rockets from American soil, and helped American companies, most notably SpaceX, dominate the global launch market. A singular policy choice changed the industry, and cemented American leadership in space.

The US Military now faces the same choice. Space Force has already begun shaking things up, shifting from a handful of massive, decades-in-the-making satellites toward constellations of smaller, more resilient systems. These programs are up and established — perhaps most notably the Protected Tactical SATCOM program to deploy large numbers of small communications satellites in GEO — but these efforts can only succeed if acquisition officers truly put commercial options first and avoid slipping back into their old habits of writing government-unique requirements that slow development cycles, drive risk into technical designs, and increase costs.

Why make the shift to “commercial first” now? Because speed is now a national imperative. The old way of custom-built systems to government requirements will add years to delivery timelines compared to leveraging technology that the commercial industry already has. Worse, they risk sidelining technologies that are already proven in orbit and have existing commercial customers in favor of custom one-offs with only one customer: the government. Commercial systems have been hardened in the best possible crucible: unforgiving free market competition.

There’s also the issue of leverage. By buying commercial systems the US Government gets to benefit from existing production lines and billions of dollars of private investment. And every time the government buys a commercial system, it doesn’t just solve a single problem for a single program, it helps scale an industry that serves allies, international partners, and private users. That creates spillover effects that a bespoke government system simply never will. Commercial-first procurement is not only cheaper and faster, it multiplies American influence and reach.

The reality is this: the commercial space sector is no longer the realm of experiment, it is now the backbone of all modern space activity. The NDAA’s commercial-first mandate reflects that, and it’s encouraging to see Congress and the Pentagon lean in to being a better partner to industry partners. We look forward to supporting that mission, and bringing technology that is working on orbit today to bear for our national defense.