It has been a remarkable and exciting year for commercial spaceflight companies. Private asteroid mining! Commercial trips to the moon! Mars settlements! We barely had time to catch our breath from the last secret organization announcement when suddenly some other team was cropping up and declaring a bold new adventure in space. “You had the unveiling of these really audacious business plans that at first blush you would dismiss as impossible,” said journalist and aerospace analyst Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of the space-industry-watching The Space Review. “But when you look at both the technical and financial pedigree of the people backing these systems, you step back and say, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here.’” Many of these new companies have experts at their helms, founded or run by former NASA engineers and veterans of the spaceflight community. Others showed off their deep entrepreneurial pockets and touted the potential profits to be made in space. So how did 2012 turn into the year of private space? Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts. The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars. Contributing influences to 2012’s commercial space focus include an aimless NASA. Though it saw spectacular successes such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the agency is still wrestling with frozen budgets and a deeply divided Congress that disagrees on its overarching mission. Alongside NASA’s existential crisis was the aftermath of the second dot-com boom, which created a crop of young, sci-fi-crazy tycoons. “When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, “Their first thought is ‘Cool, now I can have my own space program.’” Just in case you are having trouble telling the Planetary Resources apart from the Golden Spikes, Wired presents a gallery of the year's most impressive, daring, and wild business plans from commercial companies. We also talked to a small handful of spaceflight experts to get their take on which of the big dreams will pan out and which will burn out. “I don’t expect them all to succeed, but I don’t expect them all to fail,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies’ ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. “About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you’re crazy. Now people can say, well it’s a little crazy, but considering what’s been done, it might be possible.” Image: NASA

Golden Spike Company The most recently unveiled audacious space venture is the Golden Spike Company, which wants to take people back to the moon by 2020. For the low, low price of $1.5 billion, Golden Spike will land a two-person crew on the lunar surface and safely return them. Given the expense, the company is targeting governments without large space programs that may be looking for a little international prestige. Golden Spike has a team with technical chops, including planetary scientist and former NASA science administrator Alan Stern and former NASA flight director Gerry Griffin. The business hopes to make use of low-cost existing rockets as much as possible to cut down on their expenses and estimates the entire scheme could cost as little as $7 billion. All of the experts we asked praised the company’s mission architecture as fairly plausible. “The technology is there but they still need spacecraft, spacesuits, and to train people,” said space lawyer Michael Listner. “I’d say by the end of the decade is pretty aggressive. During Apollo, we had the resources of a nation behind us and it took years to get our guys there.” Golden Spike’s largest obstacle will be securing the funding they need to get off the ground. “They need to really size how big this market is and figure out how to raise the several billion dollars to develop things like a lunar lander,” said journalist Jeff Foust. Currently, much smaller private companies involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize are struggling to raise several million dollars for space missions. Furthermore, Golden Spike needs at least five or six customers signed on in order to turn a profit. But a still-weak international economy puts this funding model on unsteady ground for the time being. Using national status as the underpinning for such a mission might also not be the best business practice. “Maybe you can sell a government on being the second country to the moon, but being the sixth, I’m not so sure,” said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. “If I were that country I might not feel my ego sufficiently boosted.” Bottom line: Golden Spike has certainly thought their mission architecture through but might want to work a bit more on their business plan. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Golden Spike Company

Planetary Resources, Inc. Asteroid mining is a staple of science-fiction, transplanting a familiar Earth-based activity to the new frontier of space. Many of the resources we dig up from underground on our planet were in fact laid down during an asteroid impact billions of years ago. So let’s cut out the middleman and simply mine riches from the skies. Such is the thinking behind Planetary Resources, Inc., which revealed their asteroid mining plans in April. The company hopes to extract water and precious metals, such as platinum, in order to get a return on their investment. Shortly after the unveiling, the internet reached a fever pitch about Planetary Resources, with Jon Stewart even calling in astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson just as a sanity check on the whole endeavor. Planetary Resources' biggest strength comes from its financial backing, with founders Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis veterans of both Silicon Valley and space technology. Other rich luminaries behind the company include Google CEO Larry Page, Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and even filmmaker James Cameron. The company’s goals are very long term, with simple plans to launch telescopes to identify and catalog near-Earth asteroids in the next few years, and the actual mining and resource extraction as much as 20 years away. “Currently, the biggest hurdle in actually mining these asteroids is that the law hasn’t been settled yet,” said space lawyer Michael Listner. If Planetary Resources is to succeed, the international community will have to decide that the venture is legal. Currently, space lawyers are split into two camps on whether or not a company can extract and keep resources from celestial objects, and no one yet knows what sort of regulation governments may impose. All this adds some risk to the business plan. But Listner says that at least the company has put the idea out into the public consciousness, and some outcome will be settled in the next decades. The only other barrier at this point is their telescope design, said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. The initial plan called for small telescopes in Earth orbit to search for the best nearby asteroids but such an instrument can’t look inside Earth’s orbit because it would be staring at the glaring sun. A much better architecture would place the telescope in the orbit of Venus to get a full census. “I think they also need a slightly bigger telescope in order to do spectroscopic surveys and find the mineralogically valuable asteroids,” said McDowell. As Planetary Resources gets up and running, they will no doubt run into more problems. Having a plan is one thing, but doing anything in space always turns out to be harder than initially thought. Bottom line: Planetary Resources has deep pockets and given itself ample time but needs to work on its technical and legal plans. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Planetary Resources, Inc.

B612 Foundation Nearly overshadowed by that other private asteroid business, the B612 Foundation’s announcement in June was nonetheless important. The nonprofit company hopes to raise money to launch an infrared telescope that will be ever vigilant for dangerous asteroids hurtling toward Earth. Though NASA is already watching for these potentially civilization destroying rocks, B612 said they would be able to more than double the near-Earth object catalog in their first month of observation. The company has some good technical backers, including former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart and former shuttle astronaut Ed Lu. As a nonprofit, B612’s approach most closely resembles a philanthropic foundation looking to build a new wing for a hospital. While donors are used to the idea of such charity on Earth, can B612 convince people that the same model works for a space telescope? “It’s going to be tricky, because they need to find an income or donation source to keep it funded,” said space lawyer Michael Listner. “But I will say if they can get the funding and license to use the technology, they have a fairly good shot.” Listner added that, should B612 have trouble raising money for their multi-million-dollar telescope, a potential path could be to partner with the U.S. government, which would provide more funding. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell suggested that B612 and Planetary Resources pool missions, considering that one has a good technical team but a dearth of money, and the other has funding coming out of its ears but a mission architecture that leaves something to be desired. “There’s nice things in each of those approaches, and maybe some combination will emerge and end up being useful,” he said. Bottom line: B612 has got a plan to save the world, now all they need is someone to fund them. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: B612 Foundation

Mars One Getting people to Mars has long been a goal of the spaceflight community. While many thought it was the next logical step after the Apollo program, the United States has never been able to commit to the necessary funding for such a mission. But now a private company named Mars One has stepped in with their own audacious plan. Announced in May, Mars One has an extremely aggressive goal: land a crew of four on the Red Planet by 2023. The company hopes to cut costs with a radical mission. They intend to send people on a one-way trip to set up a colony, with a new set of four settlers arriving every two years after the initial touchdown. Mars One said it intends to pay for the plan by creating “the biggest media spectacle in history” with a reality TV show that will follow the astronauts. While mentioning that the goal of expanding human civilization is worthy, our experts were not entirely convinced that Mars One’s business model is fully thought through. “It doesn’t strike me as as plausible as the others,” said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. “I’m not sure there’s enough money out there to fund something as complex and expensive as a human mission to Mars,” said journalist Jeff Foust. “The best I can say is good luck.” “Going to Mars is 100 times difficult than going to the moon,” said space lawyer Michael Listner. Besides the fact that we don’t currently have the technology to put enough mass for a human mission on the Martian surface, there are many unknowns, including radiation and corrosive dust on Mars and the debilitating effects of long-term space travel, which could deteriorate the astronauts’ bones and eyes. Regulation from Earth governments looking to introduce safety measures could also delay or alter the mission. Though Mars One estimates their first mission would cost only $6 billion, Listner said the entire plan, including future resupplies and crew, could be on the order of $1 trillion. Funding such a mission through ad sales sounds about as plausible as a Pinky and the Brain plan to take over the world. “I suspect it wouldn’t be that good for TV,” said Foust. “NASA televises their space activities, and I’m sure almost nobody watches it. It’s mostly tinkering with experiments, replacing an air filter.” Sustaining interest once the novelty wears off could be a major challenge, he added. Mars One recently converted itself into a nonprofit company, so it will likely have many of the same challenges at something like B612. Though they may be the least likely of the recent private space companies to achieve their goals, “you’ve got to dream big,” said Listner. “And they will certainly inspire a lot of people.” Bottom line: Mars One has sky-high plans that will most likely struggle to get off the ground. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: SpaceX

Falcon Heavy Though not announced this year, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has been a hot topic as the company prepares to launch this new rocket in 2013. Once operational, the vehicle would be the most capable existing rocket, able to bring 120,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit for as little as $1,000 per pound. The closest current spacecraft is United Launch Alliance’s Delta rocket, which can take 50,000 pounds up at a cost of $6,000 per pound. Falcon Heavy has a number of other companies hoping to ride on its success. Both Golden Spike and Mars One plan to use the vehicle in their operation while NASA and the military are also looking forward to its capabilities. The question for SpaceX is just how soon they can get the new rocket ready. “It’s possible to do a test launch in the second half of 2013, though that date could slip depending on technical issues,” said journalist Jeff Foust. Falcon Heavy will have three times the rocket engines of the current Falcon 9, which add many complications to the technology. But based on their recent successes, things are looking good for SpaceX. “They’re pretty confident that they’ll go next year,” said space lawyer Michael Listner, “And everything is pointing in that direction.” Bottom line: If SpaceX can build on their current achievements, they have a decent shot of launching Falcon Heavy in 2013. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: SpaceX

The Google Lunar X-Prize Intended to stimulate new ideas for exploring the moon, the Google Lunar X-Prize was announced in 2007. The goal is for a small private team to land an autonomous rover on the lunar surface, travel about 1,000 feet, and beam back high-definition images and video. The first team to do so will win $20 million, and constellation prizes are offered for other tasks. The prize’s deadline was originally meant to expire this year but after insufficient progress was made, the foundation extended their target date to the end of 2015. While more than 20 teams are still technically in the running, very few are where they need to be right now to claim the reward and accolades. Though 2015 seems a while away, this year and next are “really a make or break period for the teams left in the competition,” said journalist Jeff Foust. That’s because rocket launches are planned at least two years in advance. So anyone without a launch manifest by the end of 2013 is out of luck. Only two teams, the Barcelona Moon Team and Astrobotic, have secured a launcher. Furthermore, the technical readiness of most teams doesn’t seem quite up to snuff. “They need to start building hardware now,” said Foust. “A lunar rover isn’t something you put together over a couple weekends. It needs years to make sure it works properly and get it there in the first place.” Most teams have struggled to get the millions of dollars in funding necessary for this expensive mission. Furthermore, in 2013 China plans to land a probe on the moon, which automatically drops down the prize money offered to $15 million. If by the end of next year, these problems remain, it’s possible that no one will win the competition. “I haven’t really seen any entrants for that that fill me with a lot of confidence,” said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. “Maybe it’s a step too far, and the prize money relative to the investment needed is just not enough.” Bottom line: The Google Lunar X-Prize is struggling and may simply prove to be too ambitious. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Edward O’Conner/Flickr