Since the middle of the last century we have witnessed the exciting development of the conquest of space. At first, it was the major world powers -the United States and the former Soviet Union- who played the starring roles in this space adventure. They had one clear objective: to show the world their scientific, technological and military supremacy.
Decades later, other countries entered this field. Sometimes, it was space agencies from large countries who performed this work but on other occasions it was country conglomerates like the ESA (European Space Agency) who devoted large budgets to this purpose. Later on, large aviation corporations joined the race for space, although they were almost always dependent on contracts funded by the state.
However, at the start of the 21st century, the rules of the game changed drastically. Technology has advanced significantly and its costs are much lower. We now have more people with fresh ideas, we have more companies who are either directly or indirectly involved in the aerospace industry and, above all, we have entrepreneurs who have the necessary funding and the decisive boldness to undertake initiatives in space.
Most of their names will be familiar to us: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, López Urdiales, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Greg Wyler, Chris Lewicki, Robert Bigelow… These are the space pioneers of the 21st centuries.
Behind these names are suborbital launch projects, there are projects whose goal is to mine asteroids and there are also several others involving large satellite communication networks. There are many more, but these are some of the most prominent examples of a change for the better that has marked the race for space. And we have only just begun.
This infographic is a window to some of these private initiatives to conquer space.
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Source: Produced internally.
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