- The race to conquer space has become an unsuspected entrepreneurial testing ground for reducing the Earth's environmental problem.
- Fields such as asteroid mining, agriculture, solar and wind energy are being developed and tested beyond Earth's borders.
- The economic potential of these external resources could exceed all existing global investment in our planet.
In the midst of the Cold War, during the height of the space race to reach the moon, Kennedy said on 12 September 1962: "We must do this not because it is easy, but because it is very difficult and we should not be willing to put it off". Almost sixty years later, the problems are different, but the conquest of space is still an unfinished business in which countries are still wrestling for the balance of power. But it is also a major opportunity for disruptive projects proposed by public institutions and private companies seeking to resolve the obstacles to life on other planets. And it is also an unsuspected possibility to reduce the environmental problems suffered by the Earth, as space is presented as a testing ground for initiatives with a sustainable vocation, where ingenuity and technological capacity are sharpened in parallel.
Space has regained interest, and Spain is claiming its place in a space economy that is set to grow in the future.
A total of 466 spacecraft were deployed in 2020, 51% of which belonged to private companies, and 85 countries have taken part in the space race. NASA had a budget of \\\$23.3 billion, according to the report 'The Space Race: Commercialising the Way' by BDO, a benchmarking organisation. The global space sector is expected to reach \\\$1 trillion by 2040, with private initiative leading the way. Already by 2020, the sector has generated \\\$385 billion.
The Spanish company Zero2 Infinity, founded in 2009 by aerospace engineer José Mariano López Urdiales, is looking to this future full of potential. "My father is a research professor at the CSIC, and from an early age he saw that spacecraft could be made more cheaply and sustainably. I have two patents that have to do with how to make a light capsule, with panoramic windows, to carry people, and then the other is a satellite launcher using a balloon to leave the atmosphere. Our space proposal is the only one on the market today that has zero emissions. The only thing they emit is helium, a noble gas that has no environmental impact because it doesn't react with anything in the atmosphere," he says.
More in the full article in spanish below
