7 Expert Answers for How Big Business Will Spend Cash in Space
Joe Pappalardo
Popular Mechanics
Of all the tons of fuel that drives modern space flight, cash is the most critical. That was the stark reality brought front and center on Wednesday at the first-ever Space Business Forum in New York, where leading rocket scientists, military officers and even hedge-fund managers crunched the numbers to illuminate the future of the space industry. From the European influence on suborbital tourism to why the Air Force doesn’t trust private rockets, and from the increasingly outsourced business model at NASA to a place for that other “green” movement, here’s a news analysis of where the power lies.
Challenges Ahead for New Space Investors
Tariq Malik
Space.com
“New startups hoping to make their mark on the space industry still face high entry barriers just to cover their initial costs, investors said Wednesday.
“The high cost and risks associated with new commercial ventures, as well as the bureaucratic government hoops they have to jump through, provide substantial barriers for nascent companies aiming for space, experts said during the 2008 Space Business Forum here presented by the Space Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organization.”
SPACE ANGELS PRESS RELEASE
Space Angels Network, LLC, a national network of seed- and early-stage investors focused on aerospace-related ventures, announced today its initial group of “Founding Members”—individual accredited investors with significant experience in aerospace ventures.
Founding Members include:
“Since our Founding Members form the core of our organization by actively helping with strategic advice, deal flow, and membership recruitment, we sought individuals with extensive experience in both angel investing and also aerospace ventures,” said Guillermo Söhnlein, founder and managing director of Space Angels Network. “They play a critical leadership role in screening deals, conducting due diligence, and negotiating terms. We value their time and commitment, and we look forward to working with them as we grow our community of aerospace-focused accredited investors.”
Continue reading ‘Space Angels Network Announces Founding Members’
Spacehab and NASA announced an agreement on Friday to use the International Space Station for research and development aimed at creating commercial products on Earth.
“The finalization of this agreement unlocks an entirely new market for us,” said Thomas Pickens III, chairman and CEO of the Webster, Tex.-based company. “The ability to utilize the unique microgravity environment for industrial processing purposes is expected to revolutionize a myriad of industries. We believe the utilization of the ISS as a national lab will have a significant social and economic impact and shows great promise of saving lives and providing thousands of new jobs in the coming years.”
The work will be done by Spacehab’s BioSpace Technologies subsidiary, which also has partnered with Space Florida to develop multiple vaccine models aboard ISS. The Space Shuttle Discovery will carry a salmonella model when it is launched to the orbiting laboratory. The experiment flew aboard the last shuttle flight in March.
“We’re establishing a space-based, biotech corridor that stretches from the International Space Station to the Space Life Sciences Lab at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center,” Steve Kohler, president of Space Florida, said in a press release.
“Validating a model for vaccine development on this mission opens the door to help people live healthier lives, build a new industry related to pharmaceutical development, and drive diversity in aerospace economic development,” Kohler said.
The X Prize’s Will Pomerantz has some notes from a recent closed-door confab held in Colorado between U.S. Air Force officials and members of the entrepreneurial space community just prior to the National Space Symposium.
The half-day session, co-sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, gave military and business folks a chance to talk candidly about how to work together. The U.S. Air Force is interested in developing operational space response assets capable of deploying anywhere in the world.
The conclusions reached were fairly basic but sound: the military can’t ask companies for more than they can actually delivery, contracts must be adjusted to the realities faced by entrepreneurs, and businesses need to stay clued in on future military plans. Entrepreneurs must be aware that timing is essential when it comes to snagging government contracts to develop new technologies.
UPDATE: Pomerantz has published Part 2 of his report. The report has almost nothing to do with the RLV summit; it’s mostly about how the National Space Symposium is really cool.
One interesting bit of news that came out of the Space Access ‘08 conference in Phoenix involved efforts by Florida to lure Orbital Sciences’ COTS program away from Virginia.
NASA recently awarded the Dulles, Virginia-based company with a $170 million contract to develop commercial transport to the International Space Station under its COTS initiative. Orbital Sciences will operate out of Wallops Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Jim Muncy of PoliSpace told conference attendees that Florida is trying to convince Orbital to move the program south, according to an account of his talk on Rand Simberg’s Transterrestrial Musings blog.
“You should see the list of things that Orbital wants from Florida to get them to move there from Wallops,” Muncy is quoted as saying. Simberg’s post provides no elaboration.
Continue reading ‘Will Florida Lure Orbital’s COTS Program Away from Virginia?’
XCOR PRESS RELEASE
Los Angeles, March 26, 2008 – A small California aerospace company today unveiled a new suborbital spaceship that will provide affordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for the millions of people who want to buy a ticket.
The company, XCOR Aerospace, of Mojave, CA, announced that its two-seat Lynx suborbital spaceship will carry people or payloads to where they will experience weightlessness and see the stars above and the Earth and its atmosphere below. This will launch XCOR into the emerging space tourism market, estimated at over a half-billion dollars.
The Lynx will offer affordable access to space for individuals, researchers and educators,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “Future versions of Lynx will offer ever-improving capabilities for scientific and engineering research and commercial applications.
The spaceship, roughly the size of a small private airplane, will first take off in 2010 and will be capable of flying several times each day.
Continue reading ‘XCor Unveils the Lynx; New Vehicle Will Fly to the Edge of Space’
NASA Ames Director Pete Worden was in London, Ontario this week, talking to a group of physics students and faculty at the University of Western Ontario. He predicted that NASA would put astronauts back on the moon by 2020 but that private companies might get there first.
“It’s NASA’s unstated policy that the moon is available for economic activity,” the paper quotes Worden as saying in response to a question about the legal regime for developing the moon.
The London Free Press has the full story.
The X PRIZE Foundation’s Director of Space Projects William Pomerantz discusses how small entrepreneurial companies can partner with larger space firms and government agencies in an article for Ask, NASA’s in-house publication for project management and engineering excellence.
Pomerantz says that although many of the companies who compete in the X PRIZE’s competitions enjoy advantages over larger more traditional aerospace organizations, significant partnership opportunities exist.
“The good news is that, despite the occasional playful bravado of some of the more colorful characters involved in these competitions, all our teams are die-hard supporters of a robust space exploration program and will gladly do their parts. As such, they can function as highly specialized components of the greater aerospace workforce,” Pomerantz writes.
“These small, innovative teams can quickly and cheaply provide services to their larger brethren. Whether it is a Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge team providing a flying platform capable of carrying experimental sensors on dozens of flights a week, or Ansari X PRIZE competitors carrying scientific payloads and their human operators into the blackness of space, or the eventual Google Lunar X PRIZE winners testing systems and returning data that will support NASA’s return to the moon, the entrepreneurial community is poised to help the national space program like never before.”
More than 70 representatives from about 20 space-related businesses and interests lobbied Florida House and Senate offices on Thursday in favor of more state support for space, Florida Today reports.
Facing the end of the shuttle program and increased competition from other states and nations, the group emphasized the important of space exploration to Florida’s economy during the annual Space Day event.
“We want to make legislators aware of the economic importance of the aerospace industry to the entire state, not just to Brevard County,” said ASRC Aerospace’s Pedro Medelius. “It’s especially important now, because other states are starting initiatives to take the business that Florida has traditionally had.”
Space consultant Jeff Krukin has penned an op-ed article for The (Charlotte) News-Observer about recent efforts by him and others to promote North Carolina to the commercial space industry.
Krukin believes that North Carolina, with its Research Triangle and strong universities, is a great for the “NewSpace” companies that are commercial transportation and space tourism.
“The work of the last four years has conclusively shown that North Carolina has a strong business and academic foundation to be a significant force in the space economy,” Krukin writes. “But it isn’t the only state with the necessary resources, and other states are already acting. If you think I’m referring to the traditional ’space states’ such as California, Florida and Texas, think again. I mean Hawaii, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wisconsin. Is North Carolina doing enough to ensure its place?