The Space Economy

CHAPTER 3Chief Orbital Officer: Profiles in Space Economy Entrepreneurship

If you follow commercial space efforts as an industry professional or simply an interested bystander, you may already be familiar with some of the companies and entrepreneurs in this book. Most of us, however, have only glimpsed today's vibrant Space Economy in the mainstream media and remain mostly unaware of the extraordinary progress being made within it. In this chapter, I hope to rectify that.

Without a doubt, business journalists pay more attention to what goes into orbit now than they did five years ago. Even in the technology press, however, SpaceX commands the lion's share of media attention. Part of the reason for this is obvious: A private company is sending customers into space, something that only governments could accomplish a short time ago. Even more noteworthy, the company's ambitions extend all the way to Mars and beyond.

That said, the commercial Launch industry is just the how of the Space Economy. More interesting by far is the what and the why: Now that orbit is accessible to small companies and startups, what are brilliant technologists and entrepreneurs worldwide going to do with the opportunity?

Here, I will share fascinating discussions with the founders of an array of exciting companies in the Space Economy, primarily in the Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) stack of the Satellites industry. My hope is that seeing the way their services complement each other in surprising and ...