412 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 12 / 2018 developments in the private enterprise sector have been achieved by the company SpaceX, which sent its first spacecraft, the Dragon, to the ISS, achieving its coupling in May 2012.63 In December 2013, another milestone in space history was reached: SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 transporting rocket from California to GEO carrying the private communication satellite SES-8 manufactured by the company of the same name64 and in December 2015 it landed a rocket vertically for the first time in history.65 These technological advances have led to a race between the main private companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Orbital ATK, which are all competing to take over government space launch contracts, previously monopolised by the United Launch Alliance.66 The development of private space launchers has spread to other regions of the world. In Europe, the European Commission launched the Low-Cost Space Launch as part of the Horizon 2020 programme designed to develop light-load launchers that transport payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at low cost. One of the competitors is the Spanish company PLD Space. Even China is developing an emerging industry of private launchers with different companies such as LandSpace, after the Chinese government decided in 2014 to open up the space sector to private investment.67 The third class is space tourism, with an increasing number of operators, although others have disappeared, as did XCOR Aerospace with its suborbital ship Lynx. Although the marketing of space tourism goes back to the first decade of this cen-tury, its implementation has been deferred by a series of delays. This is the case of Virgin Galactic, a company that in 2008 set out to operate in 18 months,68 but a series of setbacks –the most important of which occurred in October 2014 after the accident of the VSS Enterprise– have prevented the first suborbital flights from 63 Chang, K., “First Private Craft Docks with Space Station”, The New York Times, 25 May 2012, <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/science/space/space-x-capsule-docks-at-space-station.html> consulted: 15-9-2018. 64 Klotz, I., “(Another) Giant Leap for SpaceX: Geostationary Orbit”, Discovery News, 3 December 2013, <http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/another-giant-leap-for-spacex-geostationary- orbit-131213.htm> consulted: 1-6-2015. 65 BBC, “SpaceX rocket in historic upright landing”, BBC News, 22 December 2015, <http://www. bbc.com/news/science-environment-35157782> consulted: 15-9-2018. 66 Davenport, C., “As human space flights get closer, the competition for launch contracts heats up”, The Washington Post, 25 April 2018, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/ wp/2018/04/25/jeffrey-p-bezos-blue-origin-getting-closer-to-flying-tourists-to-space-as-it-begins-to-compete- on-several-fronts/?utm_term=.97a346b79847> consulted: 15-9-2018. 67 Jones, A., “Chinese startups OneSpace, iSpace succeed with suborbital launches”, SpaceNews, Helsinki, 7 September 2018, <https://spacenews.com/chinese-startups-onespace-ispace-succeed-with-suborbital- launches/> consulted: 15-9-2018. 68 BBC, “Branson unveils space tourism jet”, BBC, 28 July 2008, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/7529978.stm> consulted: 15-9-2018. Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 12 - Año: 2018 - Págs.: 397 a 431
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