Today’s SpaceX launch is bigger than SpaceX
Today’s SpaceX launch is bigger than SpaceX
Today’s Demo-2 launch at the Kennedy Space Center is huge for NASA and huge for SpaceX. (And huge for anyone who loves rocket launches. 4:33 p.m. EDT, folks, be there or be square.)
- “The stakes are super high,” he said, “because if it weren’t to go well, I think it would call into question everything about private enterprise, commercial crew, all of that stuff. I think it would be a real problem.”
- Taylor’s company is acquiring a number of companies in the space industry, with plans to integrate them all into a player that can compete with Lockheed, Boeing, SpaceX and the other space giants. “There’s plenty of business for everybody,” he said. “This is about just opening up the frontier.”
It’s also huge for the countless other companies rooting for a huge, vibrant, lucrative space industry. That’s what Dylan Taylor, the CEO of Voyager Space Holdings, told me:
- “What’s interesting,” Taylor said, “is the returns in space are every bit as high as anything else, they’re just more backloaded.”
- He said now is the perfect time to get into the space industry, as so much is being decided and worked out — but this business requires more patience than your average VC-backed startup.
Space was pegged to be a trillion-dollar industry by 2040, according to a prediction made by Morgan Stanley last year. Some think it’ll be higher.
In the long run, SpaceX is Voyager’s competitor. For now, it’s the canary in the coal mine hoping to prove that space isn’t just a government enterprise. The rest of the industry is rooting for it.
Originally published at https://www.protocol.com on May 27, 2020.
