Leverage and Preserve: Need for DOD to Strengthen Support for U.S. Commercial Space

Many U.S. commercial space companies have benefited from significant venture capital (VC) investment, including the steady rise in VC investment beginning in 2008, which culminated in a spike in 2021 only to decline by nearly 50 percent from 2021 to 2023. As U.S. defense space leadership increasingly seeks to use commercial space assets and services, the rise and fall in VC investment presents both a dilemma and an opportunity for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). This chapter discusses how, in some scenarios, the DOD can leverage U.S. commercial space assets and services that were paid for by other investors—or in other situations, serve as an anchor tenant (the biggest or main customer for a commercial capability) to ensure it can use these assets and services in the future. 

Authors: Wei "Bill" Chen, Mindy Han, Sarah Georgin, and Sam Wilson

This paper was published in Space Agenda 2025, an effort by the Center for Space Policy and Strategy (CSPS) at The Aerospace Corporation to highlight and provide insights into some of the major space challenges facing policymakers. You can read the entire list of Space Agenda 2025 papers here.