Marketing Space, Part 6: The End of NASA’s Monopoly, Space Tourism, and the Rise of Private Companies

Since the 2000s, space has transformed from a subject of scientific research into a significant arena for commercialization and marketing. In 2018, for example, SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, carrying a unique payload: a Tesla Roadster with an astronaut mannequin at the wheel. The launch was not only a technical achievement but also an unforgettable PR move that captured the attention of millions. 

This was the most striking, though certainly not the only, example of private companies with substantial resources and ambitions promoting space and space tourism in the 21st century.  

Here, we continue our series on space marketing. This time, we’ll explore how far commercialization has progressed in recent years and the role private companies have played in it. Additionally, as in previous articles, we will touch on its influence on popular culture and share what we consider the most interesting space-themed advertising campaigns.

Who is driving the space economy?

Since the early 2000s, interest in space programs has surged. By the end of 2023, commercial revenues in the sector exceeded $445 billion. For their part, governments have recognized the importance of space for maintaining national security, leading to an 18% increase in global military space budgets, reaching $57 billion—46% of total government spending on space. The United States accounts for most of this spending (80%), but other nations, including Japan and Poland, have also sharply increased their spending on space defense.

Experts believe that the rapid development of the space industry is being driven primarily by the need for more reliable and faster satellite communications, as well as the growing demand for navigation in mobile devices. These technologies benefit not only humanity as a whole but also businesses: farmers can better plan their planting schedules, and logistics companies can optimize their routes. Additionally, satellites assist scientists in studying climate change and developing strategies to combat it.  

Space travel, for its part, is gradually becoming more accessible and integrated into the realm of commercial services. Wealthy individuals are increasingly willing to invest substantial sums to venture beyond Earth’s atmosphere. For now, though, such services are only available to a select few, making them all the more desirable.

The Greatest Car Advert in Space

As a result of his erratic personal behavior and unfortunate political views, Elon Musk has become a controversial figure. Nevertheless, the success of his marketing approach is hard to ignore. Take, for example, the launch of the Tesla Roadster into space. The car, which served as a symbolic payload in the place of a satellite or other spacecraft, was launched during the test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018. A year earlier, Musk had already announced that the payload would be “the silliest thing we can imagine.”  

The Roadster launch clearly demonstrated the rocket’s ability to carry substantial payloads into orbit and, just as importantly, it marked a new chapter in the history of space exploration and drew public attention to SpaceX’s achievements. Initially, the car was intended to enter a heliocentric orbit near Mars. However, nine months into its journey, it deviated from that orbit and is now headed toward the Sun.  

At present, the Tesla Roadster is too far from Earth to be considered space debris. The most likely scenario is that it will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere… in the next 15 million years or so, with a smaller likelihood that it will collide with Venus or the Sun instead.

By sending the Tesla Roadster into space as a gag, Elon Musk demonstrated his unorthodox talents as a marketer and brand manager. Esteemed publications like Advertising Age and Business Insider wrote that he’d managed to make “the world’s best car commercial without spending a dime on advertising.” Although The Guardian noted that the launch “served no real purpose beyond producing good press photos,” they still acknowledged that the Falcon Heavy was a significant technological milestone.  

The image of a car floating gently in zero gravity stood in stark contrast to the usual parade of rockets and satellites and drew attention not only to the launch itself but also to the car company and the personality of Elon Musk. The launch was streamed live on YouTube to an audience of millions, newspapers featured the cherry-red electric vehicle on their front pages, and, as the visibility of Tesla, Musk, and SpaceX grew, so did their stock values.  

How was this even possible, considering that not long ago, NASA was effectively a monopoly in the realm of space exploration?

From monopoly to private sector cooperation

NASA has continued to find ways to boost public interest in space programs, in no small part to justify its budgetary requests. In the past, the agency prohibited external branding or advertising on its spacecraft and equipment. However, over time, that stance shifted, and NASA began actively attracting investments and fostering collaboration with the private sector.

The evolution of NASA’s space policy

The first major step in this direction was taken in 1998 with the signing of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 1998, which allowed private companies to develop their own launch vehicles and orbital satellites. The legislation also simplified the process of obtaining licenses for space launches.  

The Commercial Crew Program (CCP), launched in 2011, further contributed to the development of the commercial space market. It helped to streamline the organization of commercial crew transport to and from the International Space Station (ISS), ultimately reducing the cost of sending humans into space. Additionally, the CCP accelerated the pace of space exploration and the development of new technologies for future missions and scientific research.

The Artemis program

In 2020, NASA launched the Artemis program which had the goal of returning humans to the Moon and paving the way for Mars exploration. Part of the purpose of these objectives was to rekindle interest in lunar research and highlight opportunities for the commercialization of the Moon. The program includes collaboration with private companies tasked with developing technologies essential for lunar exploration and preparing for future missions to Mars.  

Today, Artemis represents more than just an ambitious space project: it has become a powerful tool in international relations and a catalyst for global cooperation. By the end of November 2024, an international coalition of 50 countries had coalesced around Artemis. Ukraine was the ninth nation to sign the Artemis Accords, an international agreement on space cooperation. The most recent member, the Czech Republic, joined in October 2024.  

In essence, the agreement expands on the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967: while continuing to emphasize the peaceful use of space, it also addresses commercial activity and the strengthening of international collaboration.

The United States has leveraged the Artemis Accords as a tool of “soft power,” solidifying its status as the global leader in space exploration, and showcasing its technological superiority as a pioneer in the commercialization of space.  

One alternative to Artemis is the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, developed by the Chinese government in partnership with the China National Space Administration (CNSA). China has also launched its own coalition consisting of 13 countries, among them Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, united by the goal of building a habitable station on the Moon, to be known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).  

Given that both the U.S. and China share similar ambitions—domination in space in the 21st century and beyond—there is strong competition between the programs. 

Social media 

NASA created its first social media account in 2008 on Twitter (now X) for the Mars Phoenix Lander, a spacecraft launched that year as part of the Mars Scout program. Over the past 16 years, the agency has expanded its social media presence to nearly 500 accounts across 12 different platforms that now reache tens of millions of followers worldwide. In 2014, NASA was recognized in a JD Power report as a leader in social media engagement among government organizations. Its Twitter (X) account has also won the Shorty Award for the best government use of social media four times in a row.  

In 2009, NASA launched the NASA Social program (known until 2012 as the NASA Tweetup) for its most active followers. This program allows social media users to learn about and share news about NASA’s missions, people, and programs, turning them into full-fledged partners and brand advocates. A prime example was when, after the release of the 2013 film “Gravity,” NASA, along with a team of enthusiasts, launched a large-scale campaign to highlight real-life space achievements using the hashtag #RealGravity. The film received a record number of Oscar nominations, and, during the awards ceremony, the #RealGravity hashtag trended on Twitter in the U.S. Digiday called it one of the best real-time marketing events in the history of the awards.

In December 2014, NASA conducted another large-scale social media campaign, this time focused on the Orion spacecraft tests. NASA Social enthusiasts met with engineers and astronauts and visited several of the agency’s facilities and, to attract attention, videos, tweets, and other online content were produced, ultimately garnering millions of views. The “Test Fire” video on YouTube was watched over 700,000 times, and, on the day of the launch, more than half a million tweets were posted.

Space tourism and space startups 

We have already dedicated two articles to this topic (“The Future of Commercial Space Travel,” Part 1 and Part 2), so here we will only focus on the most interesting PR moments that accompanied the flights.  

The billionaire, Richard Branson, has been striving for the opportunity to fly to space since 2004, when he founded Virgin Galactic. However, it wasn’t until 2021 that he and a team of five people finally made a flight to the edge of space. The involvement of 70-year-old Richard Branson was a grand PR move for Virgin Galactic, which today remains the most recognizable company specializing in commercial space tourism. 

Almost immediately after landing, some 600 customers expressed their desire to be on the company’s first commercial flight, and, by the summer of 2024, over 3,000 people were on the waiting list. The company’s website states that this unique experience can be had for $450,000 (the cost of the ticket), but in reality the price usually reaches $600,000-800,000. Branson’s decision to allow the direct sale of tickets for space travel has been considered a successful marketing move, and media support from celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber is part of a carefully planned PR campaign, along with Branson’s constant activity on social media.

Virgin Galactic’s only serious competitor, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, charges space tourists between $200,000 and $1 million for a flight. Like Virgin Galactic, it specializes in short suborbital flights. During one such flight on July 20, 2021, Bezos successfully traveled to space aboard the New Shepard, an event that cause Virgin Galactic’s stock to plummet nearly 20% in a single day. On this flight, Amazon’s founder took along six passengers, including the legendary aviator Wally Funk, who, at 82, became the oldest space tourist—a move that helped draw even more attention to Blue Origin.

Blue Origin also established a nonprofit organization, Club for the Future, whose mission is to inspire and coordinate resources for future generations to pursue careers in STEM. Through its “Postcards to Space” program, the Club regularly conducts space-related lessons and events, engaging enthusiasts to evangelize on its behalf, much like NASA does.

In addition to commercial flights, there have also been charitable space missions, such as SpaceX’s Inspiration4. This was the first space mission with an entirely civilian crew. The flight, which launched on September 16, 2021, was initiated and sponsored by the American billionaire Jared Isaacman. His goal was to raise awareness and funds for a children’s hospital.

Space in advertising

The scale of the Tesla Roadster advertising campaign, of course, is hard to surpass. Putting a car in space, even an electric vehicle once owned by Elon Musk, still seems hard to believe. This particular PR stuntm however, is not over: on this website, you can track the Roadster’s current location and expert opinions continue to appear in the media about its potential collisions with planets.

Not every company can boast visionaries like Elon Musk. However, this doesn’t mean there haven’t been other standout PR campaigns promoting brands and products in the 21st century. For example, Pizza Hut became the first pizza company to send its pizza into space. In 2001, an astronaut aboard the ISS filmed himself trying a pizza heated in space. The pizza, which was made according to a special “space” recipe, cost the company $1 million.

In 2012, Red Bull sponsored the Red Bull Stratos project, which involved the Austrian skydiver, Felix Baumgartner ascending to a height of 39 km in the stratosphere over New Mexico in a special capsule resembling a spacecraft and then freefalling to Earth in a spacesuit. The media widely covered this “space” advertisement (though the actual boundary of space is higher): 80 TV channels in 50 countries broadcasted the jump live, and the number of viewers who watched it exceeded 50 million.

You can see how spectacular it was here: 

Hyundai, for its part, did not try to replicate Tesla’s success, instead focusing on the emotional aspect of space travel in an advertisement for the 2015 Hyundai Genesis. 13-year-old Stephanie, the daughter of one of the ISS astronauts, wanted to tell her father that she loved him. So Hyundai’s stunt drivers wrote a message on the dried-up Delmar Lake in Nevada, covering an area of 5.5 km² with the words “Steph <3’s you,” which could be seen from space. This message set a Guinness World Record for “the largest tire track image.” Hyundai received three bronze Cannes Lions for the ad:

Pepsi also decided to revisit space in its advertising. This was not their first experience, as they had done something similar in 1991 when they sent a giant model of a can of their soft drink aboard a spacecraft. In 2015, together with UrtheCast, a company that produced equipment for the ISS, PepsiCo created an unusual short film. For this project, high-resolution cameras were placed aboard the ISS to capture quality images of Earth from orbit, which were then complemented by video inserts filmed on four continents:

Influence on 21st century pop culture

Space continued to exert an influence on popular culture well into the 2000s. The beginning of the century was marked by the release of such films as “Gravity” (2013), “Interstellar” (2014), “The Martian” (2015), and “Arrival” (2016). These films not only entertained and amazed audiences with their realistic special effects but also raised questions about the future of humanity in space, stimulating interest in scientific research and commercial projects in the field of space exploration.

Among the documentary series of that period, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” (2014) stands out. It was initially created to bring scientific content back to network television and convey the spirit of space exploration to a wide audience. The series won a Peabody Award for educational content, and in 2020 was followed by a sequel, “Cosmos: Possible Worlds,” which aired on the National Geographic channel. 

Since the early 2000s, many space-themed video games have been released, but the most famous (and still popular) is the multiplayer EVE Online. This simulator features a shared universe for all players, uniting thousands of star systems, which become arenas for various activities such as space exploration, warfare, resource gathering, trade, and other economic endeavors.

Ongoing interest in space has also been highlighted by unusual examples of collaboration. For instance, in 2024, astronauts aboard the ISS participated in a football match during the Super Bowl in a weightless environment. Previously, many references to space had appeared in the advertising for this major sporting event.

Since the early 2000s, marketing and the commercialization of space have changed significantly thanks to the efforts of NASA and private companies. Space is now of interest not only as an object of scientific research but also as part of business and culture. Space has become not only a subject of scientific inquiry but also an important part of culture and business. This trend is likely to continue in the future, and we will soon hear about new initiatives, projects, and collaborations that once seemed fantastical.