The Space Review: Does investing in transportation to Earth orbit make sense?

The last few years have seen an ever-growing number of extremely wealthy investors investing in or talking about investing in space transportation. Andrew Beal spent $200 million by the time Beal Aerospace shut its doors in 2000. Kistler Aerospace, before declaring bankruptcy, raised and spent almost $900 million, about two-thirds of that in the form of debt, to build a reusable cargo vehicle for transportation to Earth orbit. More recently, Paul Allen invested over $20 million in financing Burt Rutan, who built a reusable vehicle capable of transporting three people beyond Earth’s atmosphere in a suborbital trajectory and which won the Ansari X Prize. Richard Branson is said to be investing $100 million in commercializing that technology for his suborbital space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic. Elon Musk, who founded PayPal and sold it to eBay, says he has or will spend over $100 million developing a partly reusable launch vehicle. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is financing Blue Origin, which is developing a suborbital passenger-carrying ballistic vehicle. John Carmack, a founder of id Software, spends his free time building rockets at Armadillo Aerospace. Other millionaires and billionaires have indicated an interest in investing in space. Dennis Tito, the first person to pay his way into orbit, and Larry Page, the cofounder of Google, have indicated an interest in investing in space transportation.

Do these space investors know something Wall Street doesn’t? Read this article for more info!