I was excited to read this book for two reasons:

1. I enjoyed Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk a few years ago. (I’m also looking forward to Isaacson’s one as a lot more has happened since 🍿).
2. I am peripherally aware that there is a renaissance in the private space industry, but wanted to learn more. We all know about SpaceX but who are the other promising new private space companies?

This book explains why we are in a new space renaissance and profiles four companies which illustrate this new wave: Planet Labs, Rocket Lab, Astra, Firefly Aerospace. I learned that it is especially tough to make it as a private space company as:

1. the capital required to demonstrate proof points (whether for a new Launcher or to hitch a ride to test your satellites) is enormous, and
2. there are defence/geopolitical implications which can slow you down if you’re not an All-American actor

This makes for pretty amazing founding stories which Vance recounts well, and to which these notes don’t do justice. Enjoy nonetheless!

Prologue: a shared hallucination

• This book is about the companies trying to build an economy in low-Earth orbit, not about space exploration.
• Number of satellites launched into space has been increasing exponentially. Double from 2020 to 2022. Predicted to hit between 50k and 100k per year in the next 10 years (currently we are at about 5k). Why?

Planet Labs

• Founded Dec 2010
• The goal of the company is to continuously monitor the Earth at high resolution through lots of ultra-low-cost satellites made of consumer hardware
• Use cases:
  • defence (eg spying on North Korea)
  • environmental monitoring (eg deforestation)
  • financial data companies like Orbital Insight (eg how many cars are in the Walmart parking lots and how will that affect earnings)
• “A zero-defects culture had built up over the forty years. The only way to fix it was to rip everything down and start over.” – Fred Kennedy, inaugural Director of the U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) Space Development Agency (SDA)
• Pete Worden – NASA critic who became Director of the AMES Research Center and encouraged the founders. Changed the culture of safetyism and reduced bureaucracy
• Close early relationship with Google who invested
• Russian Army now attempt to camouflage warships to trick satellite monitoring

• They do continous monitoring and also on-demand more precise monitoring of certain areas (with an API first data platform companies/defence subscribe to)

• Public via SPAC since July 2021 worth $900m today

Rocket Lab

• Rocket company founded in 2006 by Peter Beck a genius self-taught engineer from New Zealand
• Stayed based in New Zealand. Built and launched a multi-stage rocket called Atea-1 in about 3 years – first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space

• Goal is to deliver the world’s first cheap, reliable rocket ready to launch at a moments’ notice. Belief that SpaceX had abandoned that goal after the Falcon1 (and put efforts into larger rockets for space exploration)
  • “Rockets only came in medium and large size”. Ticket price $30m minimum. Rocket Lab want to offer $5m launch price
• Raised funds from Silicon Valley, the only place in the world who would take a bet on them. Beck: “After we signed our term sheet, I went straight to the supermarket and bought an American flag”

Astra

• Company founded by
  • Dr Adam London, MIT PhD and had built miniature rocket technology for NASA and DARPA. He is the engineer behind the company
  • Chris Kemp CEO and really handling the fundraising and hyping the company, not handling engineering matters
• It was in stealth for a long time. They were in ‘production hell’ and there are a lot of gripping stories of them trying to showcase just enough in their launches to be able to fund the next attempt
• SPAC’ed in Feb 2021 and it’s now a $70m market cap company so has not gone well… overall it seems they have not managed to produce a reliable rocket. They have now pivoted to selling engines.

Firefly Aerospace

• Founded by Tom Markusic who was at Virgin Galactic, rescued out of bankrupcy in 2017 by Max Polyakov
• Polyakov a very colourful character who made a fortune in ecommerce & seedy websites in Ukraine and basically put it all into this company
• The company was half based in the US half in Ukraine and this did not sit well with the US government & its agencies, worried that IP would leak to Ukraine and Russia. Huge “witch hunt” and Polyakov was treated as a likely Russian informant

In late November 2021, Maxim Polyakov received a letter from the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) asking Polyakov and his investment firm Noosphere Venture Partners to sell a stake in Firefly (nearly 50%) for national security reasons. Polyakov denied the threat to US national security, but agreed to comply. Noosphere Ventures has announced that it will hire an investment banking firm to sell. Even before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the future of the Firefly R&D center in Ukraine was uncertain; after the invasion started, the Dnipro factory was bombed and many of the Ukrainian engineers either joined the army or fled the country.^[58][59]

Even after Noosphere and Polyakov sold their controlling stake in the company, the US government continued to push them to sell all their remaining shares, blocking Firefly from launching their second rocket and denying them launch licenses until Polyakov was completely divested. The government did not give reasons beyond Polyakov was Ukrainian and Ukraine and Russia had once worked together on rockets.^[59] Despite Polyakov’s anger,^[59] he agreed, and on February 24, 2022, it was announced that Polyakov and his company Noosphere would sell their stake in Firefly to AE Industrial Partners.^[60]

– Firefly Aerospace Wikipedia

• Given Polyakov activities since the start of the Ukraine war it is clear he is not on the Russian side
• Both Polyakov and Markusic are out of the picture now. Seems the company is doing alright, they were awarded a large contract as part of the NASA Artemis moon mission

LeoLabs

• Interesting company mentioned towards the end. With the proliferation of activity in orbit these guys help satellite companies monitor their satellites and predict collisions.
• Raised $65m Series B in 2021