Rise of the Commercial Space Industry

Brian C. Odom is the Chief Historian at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) where he leads the program responsible for capturing, preserving, and disseminating the agency’s history. Based in the USA, he is co-editor of NASA and the ‘Long’ Civil Rights Movement (2019) which was awarded the 2019 Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and NASA and the American South (2024).

• 1: What is Commercial Space?.- 2: Commercial Space, Private Space, Something Else? Analyzing the Historiography of Twenty-First Century Spaceflight.- 3: Making Space for Commercial Spaceflight/Questioning the Future in a History Museum.- 4: Organizing for Success: The Lessons of Early Commercial Air for Commercial Space.- 5: “What were we thinking? Space commercialization, 1960-1990.- 6: Space Commercialization, 1983-1985: What was Promised, and What was Delivered (or Not).- 7: Pathfinder to Profit: Lessons from the Space Shuttle Era.- 8: The Politics of Commercialization and the Near Collapse of American Civil Remote Sensing, 1978-1998.- 9: ESA and the Rise of Commercial Space.- 10: The Fragmentation of American Commercial Space Law: Historical Development and Current Issues of US Space Regulation.- 11: International Law in a Commercial Space ‘World’: Historical Lessons and Future Development.- 12: Legal and Policy Implications of the Growth of Commercial Space .- 13: The Evolution of Commercial Space and Its Integration with US Military Space.- 14: The Dual-Use Nature of Space Technology from a Considerable Threat to an Opportunity.- 15: Conclusion.