08/23/2025

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By Dan Robitzski

Welcome to the first edition of our new opinion roundup. Every week, we publish articles written by the SpaceNews community that advance bold ideas, issue calls to action or otherwise share wisdom and advice for the future of the space industry. This weekly newsletter will offer some of the highlights.

SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these pieces are solely those of the authors.

Old Space meets New Space: a decade later and beyond

Ten years ago, Phantom Space Corporation CEO Jim Cantrell wrote a pivotal opinion article about the emergence of what came to be called the "new space" industry and how its growing cadre of startups would challenge the status quo in space. So we reached out to get his thoughts on the past (and next) ten years of space. As he wrote in his new article...

Reflecting on the past decade, the transformation is staggering. In 2015, I exaggerated that the industry was run by just 324 "human barnacles", a tight circle of insiders recycling ideas and contracts. Now, the workforce has exploded, with space sector employment growing faster than the United States private sector average, as highlighted in the Space Foundation's 2025 Q1 report. Investments poured in at record levels: $9.1 billion globally in 2024, shifting toward later-stage companies, and continuing robustly into 2025 with over $1.6 billion in Q1 alone, driven by satellite networks and in-space manufacturing. Old space hasn't faded; it's adapted.

You can read the full article here.

A call for serious NASA leadership, and protected lunar mining

Also this week, space consultant and project manager Walk Faulconer issued a call for permanent, serious and focused leadership at NASA, lest the United States cede lunar exploration, leadership and land rights to China. He offered specific recommendations for that leadership team, urging them to ignore distractions like unnecessary pet projects and "bureaucratic knots that strangle momentum."

As he put it, "The Apollo program succeeded not because it was easy, but because it was urgent. Sputnik and the Cold War's geopolitical stakes lit a fire under NASA and the White House alike. Today's stakes are no less real: The nation that establishes a sustained human presence on the moon will shape the rules, set the standards and command the prestige of being the vanguard in deep space exploration."

You can read the full article here.

Then there's this piece by Chris Tolton, CEO and co-founder of Orbital Mining Corporation, where he argues that any company that invests the time, money and technology in harvesting resources from the moon or any other celestial body would be woefully underprotected by the international treaties governing space today. To offer a new framework for establishing land rights, he pulls from how such claims are handled on Earth, accommodating for the extra hazards of space such as dust mitigation.

Artwork depicting lunar mining operations for Helium-3 involving harvesters, a solar power plant, rovers and return launchers. Credit: Interlune

Full disclosures for space tourists

Do space tourists — whether they cruise through microgravity on suborbital flights or pay their way to the International Space Station — fully understand the risks of their journey? And put more succinctly, are the FAA and the launch providers properly warning them? Dana Ann Lucas, a lawyer who focuses on emerging technologies, corporate and AI law, wrote an opinion piece to argue no — not even close. Lucas argues that current risk disclosures focus too narrowly on "known" risks and the immediacy of the flight itself rather than long-term health complications, and that there are inconsistent disclosures and disclaimers across the space tourism industry.

As Lucas wrote, "The choice is clear: The FAA must strengthen informed consent requirements now through thoughtful reforms, or else the industry will wait for preventable tragedies to force more restrictive obligations. The FAA must define material risks, expand disclosure timelines beyond immediate flight phases and require explicit acknowledgment of the industry's experimental nature.

You can see the full opinion article here.

FROM SPACENEWS

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