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Fusion energy has long been heralded as a clean, safe, and virtually limitless alternative to fossil fuels, promising an energy revolution free from emissions and hazardous waste. Despite scientific advances demonstrating fusion’s viability, its commercial deployment remains elusive, often seen as decades away. At the Future Trends Forum in Madrid, over 20 international experts convened to explore how to accelerate fusion’s development, culminating in a report outlining five critical axes to scale fusion as a climate and economic driver. Central to this effort is learning from other high-tech sectors that have transitioned from experimental to scalable solutions—most notably, the aerospace industry.
Charles Bolden, former NASA Administrator and astronaut, shared insights from NASA’s transformation under his leadership, where a shift from government-only operations to public-private partnerships enabled commercial spaceflight milestones. Bolden highlighted how NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program employed calculated risk-taking, milestone-based financing, and strategic oversight to foster innovation and scale complex technologies. He argued that fusion energy faces a similar challenge: moving beyond experimental reactors to commercially viable, grid-connected power systems. To meet this challenge, Bolden advocates for a fusion equivalent of COTS—a coordinated international effort with phased funding, shared facilities, independent evaluations, and data sharing to catalyze private sector involvement alongside public support.
Bolden emphasizes that the fusion sector’s success hinges not only on scientific breakthroughs but on leadership that aligns governments, industry, and society behind a shared mission. The goal is practical: to make fusion energy a scalable, cost-competitive, and employment-generating technology integral to the energy system. The Bankinter Innovation Foundation echoes this call for an industrial strategy based on collaboration, agile governance, and political commitment. Fusion energy is no longer science fiction; with coordinated action now, it can become an inevitable cornerstone of the future energy landscape.
What can NASA teach about nuclear fusion? Charles Bolden explains how to accelerate commercial nuclear fusion by applying successful models from the space sector
Fusion energy has been promising an energy revolution for decades. A clean, safe and inexhaustible source that could replace fossil fuels without emissions or long-lasting waste. However, its commercial arrival always seemed to be several decades ahead.
At the Future Trends Forum held in Madrid by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, more than 20 international experts analysed how to accelerate this future. As a result of that meeting, we have prepared the report Fusion Energy: an energy revolution underway, which defines the five critical axes for scaling fusion as a climate, economic and technological engine.
In our mission to bring innovation closer to society, we continue with the Fusion Forward series. On this occasion, we move away from plasma laboratories and superconducting magnets to listen to the vision of a benchmark in the aerospace sector: Charles Bolden, Former Administrator of NASA, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of The Bolden Consulting Group LLC, astronaut with four missions in space and current trustee of our Foundation.
His experience leading NASA’s transition to a public-private partnership model – culminating in the launch of commercial manned missions – offers key lessons for the fusion industry. Because, as he himself says, taking humans into space and putting fusion on the network share the same challenge: to move from the experimental to the scalable.
If you want to see Charles Bolden’s presentation at the Future Trends Forum, here it is:
Charles Bolden: “Supply Chain Innovation Experience of the Space Sector” #FusionForward
What can space exploration teach us about fusion energy?
“What do I do in a forum on fusion energy if I am not a nuclear physicist?” joked Charles Bolden at the beginning of his speech in Madrid. But he immediately makes it clear why his experience is especially relevant.
Bolden was NASA administrator between 2009 and 2017, a key stage in the transformation of the US space agency. Under his leadership, the shift towards a new model of space exploration was consolidated, where the private sector, in addition to collaborating with the public, takes on tasks that were previously in the exclusive hands of the government: from transporting cargo to the International Space Station to sending astronauts into space.
That paradigm shift was not simple or immediate. It required courageous policy decisions, innovative collaborative structures, and profound cultural transformation. Today, the U.S. space ecosystem is an example of how to align public and private capabilities to scale complex technologies. And that, as Bolden emphasizes, is just what the fusion industry needs now.
From Absolute Control to the Collaborative Model: NASA’s Transition
For decades, NASA had a centralized approach: designing, building, operating, and controlling all of its missions. But that approach, while effective for programs like Apollo or the Shuttle, was too costly and time-consuming for a new era that demanded more access, more flexibility, and more efficiency.
The turning point came in the early 2000s, when the Bush administration promoted the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program. The objective: to develop payload capabilities to low orbit through contracts with private companies, based on technical milestones and payments for results. It was a risky bet: it was about transferring part of NASA’s historic mission to emerging players such as SpaceX or Orbital Sciences (later Orbital ATK and today within Northrop Grumman).
The key to success, Bolden explains, was designing a model with three fundamental principles:
- Calculated risk-taking: as they were initially cargo missions, a certain margin of error was allowed without compromising human lives.
- Milestone financing: each payment was conditional on the completion of specific stages, which incentivised performance and avoided dependence on public funds without results.
- Strategic, not operational, oversight: NASA set goals and certified achievements, but did not intervene in every detail of design or development. The “how” was solved by the contractor.
This approach generated a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, reduced costs, and paved the way for commercial human spaceflight, which became a reality in 2020 with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission.
Fusion and space: the same scalability challenge
“Before the Shuttle, we could only put three people into orbit. With the Shuttle, we fly up to eight. That’s the difference between limited technology and an expanding industry,” Bolden says.
The analogy with fusion is obvious: today, large research projects (ITER, NIF, SPARC) are demonstrating that fusion is scientifically viable. But the next step is missing: translating that knowledge into secure, repeatable, and commercially viable grid-connected energy systems.
To do this, Bolden proposes applying the lessons of space to the development of fusion. Among them:
- Do not wait until you have everything resolved to act. the COTS program began when private rockets were still exploding. But the framework allowed for quick learning, without compromising the overall mission.
- Design public policies that encourage collaboration. Public investment should catalyze private effort, not replace it. The ideal model combines seed grants with results-based contracts.
- Create agile governance structures. NASA learned to delegate without losing strategic control. In merger, that involves coordinating regulatory standards, licensing, intellectual property, and access to public facilities.
- Change the institutional culture. Space agencies (and now energy agencies) must move from operators to facilitators. The public role is to enable the ecosystem, not monopolize it.
A COTS for the merger? Why Now Is the Time
The current moment is reminiscent of the one experienced by the space sector two decades ago. Technology advances, startups flourish, governments begin to make a move. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Milestone-Based Fusion Development program, which selected eight companies to design fusion pilot plants, with funding tied to verifiable technical milestones.
Europe, Japan, the United Kingdom, and South Korea are also rolling out initiatives to accelerate public-private collaboration. And entities such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have proposed global governance frameworks to harmonize these efforts.
Bolden’s proposal is clear: create an equivalent of the COTS program for fusion. An international structure that combines:
- Competitive funding in phases, not open grants .
- Shared access to public testing facilities.
- Independent evaluation of technical milestones.
- Commitment to share key data, without eliminating industrial property.
The goal is not to replace large consortia such as ITER or DEMO, but to complement them with more agile initiatives, focused on scaling, that prepare the ground for a future global fusion industry.
Useful Fusion, Real Fusion: The True Legacy of Space
Bolden insists on one key point: Success does not depend only on engineers. It requires leaders capable of aligning governments, businesses, and citizens around a common mission. In the case of NASA, it was necessary for a president to make the decision to bet on change. In fusion, something similar will be needed.
“The goal is not just to ignite a star on Earth. It’s making that star power factories, hospitals and homes,” Bolden says.
That pragmatism is what led to the success of the commercial space sector. And it is the one that must now guide the fusion sector. It is not enough to demonstrate that it works: it must be demonstrated that it can scale, integrate into the electricity system, compete on costs and generate employment. In other words, to become a useful technology.
Conclusion: changing the model to change the world
Charles Bolden did not come to the Future Trends Forum to talk about science, but about systems. How to transform a technological feat into an economic engine. How to go from experiment to impact.
His message is clear: fusion needs an industrial strategy, not just a scientific one. And that strategy must be built on public-private collaboration, aligned incentives, agile regulation and political leadership. Just like in space.
Because, as our patron recalls, the most difficult thing has already been achieved: to prove that it is possible. Now it’s time to show that it’s inevitable.
At the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, we are clear: fusion energy is not science fiction. It is a real industrial opportunity. But only if we act now – with vision, collaboration and ambition.
This article is part of the analysis that we have carried out at the Bankinter Innovation Foundation. The full report, Fusion Energy: An Energy Revolution in the Making, brings together input from more than twenty international experts and defines the five critical axes for scaling fusion energy as a climate, economic and technological driver.
Download it here and find out in detail how we can build tomorrow’s energy system today.
And if you are interested in continuing to explore this transformation, don’t miss the next installments of the Fusion Forward series, where we continue to bring society closer – with rigour and vision – to the keys to the energy future that is already being designed.
Ex Administrador de la NASA, Fundador y Presidente Emérito de The Bolden Consulting Group LLC
