Fund Me to the Moon: Crowdfunding and the New Space Economy

Abstract

The likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos now occupy the headlines once dominated by Apollo and Soyuz. Described as New Space versus Old Space, debate surrounds the emerging commercial space industry and the role of nontraditional actors in the evolving contemporary space exploration environment. This article enters this debate by adopting a sociological approach to investigate the role of crowdfunding in financing space exploration today. We interview crowdfunded space project creators in disparate locations, from Moscow to Silicon Valley, who attracted capital ranging from $200 to over $1 million. We attempt to uncover their experiences using this distinctly social financing mechanism and find that although crowdfunding is unlikely to solve all of today's research funding conundrums, it does appear to increase access to space in unique ways. We argue, however, that the most interesting dynamic of this phenomenon is the way in which crowdfunding contributes to an increasingly democratic exploration environment and how this might impact space science research and the power structures of the space industry. This article concludes by considering possible implications of this trend and derives practical suggestions for both policymakers and individuals who may be considering the use of crowdfunding to finance space science research and exploration projects.

Technology Project Summaries as a Predictor of Crowdfunding Success

“…Borst et al ( 2018) argued that, for example, the online nature of crowdfunding may amplify a "bystander effect", which suggests that potential funders may withhold funding because they assume that others will provide funding. While research to understand and predict crowdfunding success has accelerated in recent years (for example, Majumdar & Bose, 2018;Song et al, 2019;Felipe et al, 2022), it has often focused on highly specific industrial domains, such as green energy (Hörisch, 2015;Kubo et al, 2021), restaurants (Lelo de Larrea et al, 2019), medical solutions (Ba et al, 2021), video games (Song et al, 2019), or space exploration (Pomeroy et al, 2019). Alternatively, research has also addressed multiple domains and numerous variables at once (for example, Parhankangas & Rernko, 2017;Zhou et al, 2018;Song et al, 2019;Ryoba et al, 2021).…”

“…The benefits of crowdfunding include online platforms that allow for efficient matching of fund-seekers and funders, aggregating small donations into large pools of capital, lowering geographic barriers to fundraising, funding projects that may otherwise be outside of traditional funding methods, and democratizing research and exploration in underexplored fields (Pomeroy et al, 2019;Popescul et al, 2020;Felipe et al, 2022). Crowdfunding platforms provide fund-seekers and funders with means for investment transactions to take place that create value (that is, via legal groundwork, pre-selection screening, and processing financial transactions), as well as allowing for the testing of new products, estimating demands, and running new marketing campaigns (Cordova et al, 2015;Lukkarinen et al, 2016;Borst et al, 2018;Wehnert et al, 2019;Popescul et al, 2020).…”

New Space and Innovation Policy: Scotland's Emerging “Space Glen”

“…However, an additional driver for this development was the re-definition of the Space Sector actors, with both new countries 4 as well as new communities emerging. 1,49 Although the latter will not be examined in too much detail in this article, it is particularly interesting that these new communities are being actively developed. On one hand, (super-) angel investors with interest in space, for instance, Elon Musk (SpaceX), Richard Branson (Virgin), and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin), 1 are attracting significant international expertise into their (new) entrant firms' R&D processes.…”

“…On the other hand, through the establishment of a ''Global Space Community,'' composed of space enthusiasts now globally connected via the Internet, actual public/citizen science and crowdfunding operations (e.g., Mars One, Lunar Mission One, Planetary Society) are being enabled. 49 While there always was a large community of space enthusiasts, they were previously unable to participate in most of the actual developments due to key barriers to entry, such as the need for amassed expertise and significant capital investment.…”

Identifying Attack Surfaces in the Evolving Space Industry Using Reference Architectures

“…This change to the environment, which has seen commercial space take a more prominent role, has been described as 'NewSpace' by NASA researchers [2]; others talk of 'alt.space' or 'entrepreneurial space'. Examples include SpaceX's SmallSat Rideshare Program, with costs as low as $1 million per satellite, with a payload up to 200 kg [3] (although previous base prices were set at $2.25 million for a payload up 978-1-7281-2734-7/20/$31.00 c 2020 IEEE to 150 kg [4]) and the use of crowdfunding to decrease barriers to entry [5]. Such developments are allowing many new parties to deploy devices in space.…”