The space race has one clear dominator: SpaceX. Elon Musk’s competitor, Jeff Bezos, makes the claim that they “could end up with monopolistic control of US deep space exploration.” It is impressive how quickly the company has risen to the top, launching its own rocket into orbit only 13 years ago. Elon Musk has the ultimate goal of giving humans the means to live on other planets, with the current focus being Mars. The soaring cost of such a venture is what led Musk to found SpaceX and develop a “low-cost, reusable rocket capable of making multiple trips.” Falcon 9 now regularly commutes to the International Space Station, transporting both people and cargo. The focus now lies on developing and gaining clearance for Starship, the rocket that will be used to fulfil Musk’s goal of one day “establishing a human colony on Mars.”

How did SpaceX reach its Current Position?

The company’s financial plan, along with the reusable Falcon 9 rocket, have both been key to the success of SpaceX and its Starship venture. 

The intensive prioritisation of the low-cost and reusable criteria are the foundation of Falcon 9’s success. One of the most expensive parts of the rocket, its engine, is efficiently designed and created using 3-D printing and its boosts are made to be reused – which are both critical cost saving factors. It is estimated that SpaceX was able to decrease its costs tenfold by taking an alternative route from traditional government contracting. Instead, the company designed and manufactured its own rocket components, rather than outsourcing from suppliers, and took on testing risks itself, rather than relying on payments from NASA. SpaceX’s finance plan, in conjunction with Tesla, of having access to cheap capital has allowed the company to raise over $6.5bn from the private equity market due to the high valuation investors have given to Musk’s business.

SpaceX against Blue Origin

This funding advantage has become the source of some competitors’ complaints; they lack access to similar financial benefits, which they claim has stifled scaling and pushed them out of the market. One of SpaceX’s main competitors is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. In 2012 – around the same time that Musk was still solving issues with his Tesla launch, and before he could concentrate on SpaceX- Bezos had grand plans for Blue Origin.

So how has SpaceX so quickly and indubitably outperformed Blue Origin? 

The most obvious and widely discussed answer to this question is SpaceX’s strict cost minimising objective. Any company purchase exceeding $10,000 has to be personally approved by Musk, whereas Blue Origin is “riddled with poor cost estimating.” Management consultants discovered that the two companies had very differing cultures and leadership styles. SpaceX has a highly motivated workforce with “relentless 24/7 operation with 80-hour workweeks.” The engineers do not complain about these conditions, but rather are inspired and result-focused. They may earn lower salaries than those at Blue Origin, but are rewarded with stock options for top performance. In contrast, Blue Origin is a “ghost town on weekends,” and engineers complain about the “rigid hierarchy,” which does not favour innovative ideas. There is also an unsustainable focus on speed, which prevents the company from properly addressing problems and finding the best solutions. The high involvement of Musk with his engineers and openness to unorthodox ideas has been a catalyst to the firm’s success.

There is clear rivalry between Bezos and Musk. In the race to bring Internet connection from space to Earth, Blue Origin recently challenged SpaceX’s application to modify its plan. SpaceX responded to this challenge by stating that the competitor’s track record “amply demonstrates that as it falls behind competitors, it is more than willing to use regulatory and legal processes to create obstacles designed to delay those competitors from leaving Amazon even further behind.” Amazon condemned Musk’s attitude towards regulations, asserting their perspective as: “rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks.” 

The race to extend life on and explore space continues to advance, but also appears to be developing into a personal competition between two billionaires.

A new report from the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Action (UNCCF) has announced that the world’s nations are doing “nowhere close” enough to keep the global temperature increases well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

What does the report show?

The initial Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report measures the progress of national climate action plans. The report described the findings, based on 75 countries that account for roughly 30% of the world’s emissions, as falling “far short” of what is required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and marking a “red alert” for the planet. Countries were required to submit their reports by the end of 2020, though many failed to do so due with Covid-19 further backlogging civil services. For this reason, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary insists that the report is just a snapshot, and that a clearer picture will have emerged before the COP26 climate summit in November.

Of those countries that did submit reports, the majority did indeed commit to lowering their emissions by 2030. However, the totality of the 75 countries’ current commitments would result in an estimated 1% total drop by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that to meet Paris Agreement’s lower-bound of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, the cumulative reduction should be around 45%.

Why is it important that countries do meet the Paris Agreements standards?

The historic Paris Climate Agreement, signed in 2015, is a legally binding international agreement that mandates signatories to do their part in the common effort to limit global warming. Its goal is to limit global temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably only 1.5°C above these.

If temperature levels are allowed to increase by more than this, experts predict that serious and likely irreversible harm will be done to many of the earth’s natural and human systems. While the risks will not be felt equally everywhere in the world, the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial temperature levels is likely to be significant. These facts are what have urged the UN and many of its members to call for more meaningful commitments from the Paris Agreement’s signatories.

Will 2021 see improvements from the initial report?

The UN’s General Secretary, António Guterres, called 2021 a “make or break” year for global climate action, stressing that global emissions must be reduced by 45% from 2010 to reach the 1.5°C goal, with the landmark COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow this November.

The inclination to imagine that reducing emissions by 45% compared to 2010 levels seems unlikely is understandable, given the report’s findings. Three of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters failed to submit their NDC reports on time. It is still unclear if China and India will submit reports before the COP26 summits. Additionally, countries such as Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia, failed to improve upon their 2015 plans’ commitment to emission reduction. Meanwhile, Brazil’s plan made no commitment to reducing emissions by 2030.

However, despite the dreary premonitions that the UNCCF’s report may arouse, seeds of hope can be found in the dynamic, if not rocky, field of global climate action politics. The EU27 is the only one of the world’s four largest emitters to submit a plan on time, but Joe Biden’s American government, which has re-joined the Paris Agreement, is expected to submit an NCD plan by April. It is thought that strong American action to reduce emissions will signal to the world that green commitment is the future.

China has also promised to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Many critics are understandably sceptical of the authoritarian regime’s commitment to the global attempt to mitigate climate change, given the behemoth scale of their brown investment. However, there are others who believe that the Chinese government’s changing rhetoric is not merely verbose signalling, but rather a recognition of the world’s (and its profit-seeking investors’) desire for trustworthy investments that will truly contribute to the fight against climate change.

With this in mind, 2021 may well be a “make or break” year for the effort to reduce global emissions.