Space innovation is falling behind

Without refocused federal and private funding, we risk losing our leadership in orbit. With the close of the Cold War, the West plowed headlong into 30 years marked by one tech-fueled boom after another. As if by right, the United States and its allies began to take for granted America’s technological supremacy and the seemingly inevitable expansion of liberal democratic hegemony both on Earth and in space. And almost immediately, we became blinded by our own success.