Space is Open For Business at NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management

The next Elon Musk might come from Martin Tuchman School of Management, where Assistant Professor Raja Roy will teach the business of outer space in his Entrepreneurship 485 Special Topics course this fall.

Roy said the class, "Moon, Mars and Beyond: Space is Open For Business," will introduce students to stellar commercialization opportunities that could include topics such as rocketry, satellites, material science, healthcare, energy, law, the Moon, Mars, tourism, defense and more.

"It's still an entrepreneurship class and the basic issue here is how do you create value and how do you capture value. We are just shifting the context," Roy explained. He has recent experience in this area, giving a presentation about the transformation of Lunar and Martian spaces into commercial spaces at a NASA conference this year. 

Students need not understand extraterrestrial physics or any other science of a galaxy far, far away. They could come from majors such as architecture, business, computer science, any engineering field, the natural sciences, or even pre-law. "Just have a curiosity that things are going on and that there's a market beyond the surface of the Earth," Roy said. His own interest in the topic derives from research into Indian spacecraft, which in turn sprung out of his work on digital camera lenses.

The budding industry is similar to exploration of the American West in the early 19th century. Just as Lewis and Clark were followed by capitalists, so will NASA, beyond the classified defense programs and subcontractors of government-funded core space research, Roy noted. Chicago and St. Louis were gateways to the west, as the Moon and Mars could also throttle us to deeper space, he said.

Have a curiosity that things are going on and that there's a market beyond the surface of the Earth

Physics department chairman Andrew Gerrard, who also directs NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, was happy to hear about the new course. "I think it's fantastic that we're doing it. NJIT is really well known for its space physics and geospace program. That's always been from a science perspective. There's a lot of other things we can use to capitalize on that strength," he said. "From a history and humanities standpoint, there's so many things about space exploration that fit into NJIT really well. Now to have this course come online, I think it fits the bill."

Gerrard said he'd urge anyone interested in space entrepreneurship to understand the massive difference between crewed and uncrewed missions. Engineering and money can launch cargo, but the fact that humans survived multiple trips to the Moon is as much luck as it was science, he said, adding that it's unreasonable to believe that humans can thrive on Mars, Venus or anywhere else beyond our immediate lunar neighborhood due to the effects of radiation. There's a whole field, colloquially known as space weather, where experts like Gerrard and Distinguished Professor Louis Lanzerotti study how Earthlings will be impacted by astronomical events.

It's unlikely that Roy, Gerrard, or most other adults alive today will ever personally go to space. Roy said he would jump at the chance as a tourist. Gerrard said he would only go to perform scientific research. They agree that the time is right to explore new marketplaces among the stars.