In the past year commercial space startups have proposed everything from asteroid mining and lunar space-elevators to home-made satellites and private moonshots. Gravity, however, is not the only force preventing them from achieving lift-off. Although the cost of developing new space vehicles, products and services is high, just as much of a burden can be imposed by such intangible expenses as regulatory compliance, legal fees and insurance premiums. Art Dula, boss of Excalibur Almaz, a British firm touting trips to the moon aboard secondhand Russian spacecraft, says that so far his company has spent as much on navigating the legal and regulatory paperwork as it has on buying and refitting its Soviet-era space capsules for lunar travel.
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