Inside
a series of nondescript buildings in the driest desert in North
America, an entrepreneurial enclave is chasing the next frontier of
commerce. Explosions are routine. The science is complex. Brain power
and ambition are high, as is danger. This cluster of 17 young companies
at the Mojave Air and Space Port, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is
shooting for the moon—and beyond.
The
startups there are building the components, engines, materials, and
rockets that are dispatching a new generation of cell-phone-size
satellites and more into space. These so-called NewSpace companies have
sprung up around a former military base in the California desert. The
remoteness of Mojave and the permissive attitude toward, say, detonation
and flames—the airport’s slogan: We eat explosions for breakfast—make
it the ideal location for companies aiming to reach the heavens.
“Mojave
is the Silicon Valley of space exploration,” says Mark Bünger, who
follows the sector at Lux Research. Mojave isn’t alone, as galactic
entrepreneurship is also burgeoning in Seattle, Tucson, and Silicon
Valley itself. Says Sunil Nagaraj of Bessemer Ventures: “2017 will be
the year that NewSpace startups will hit their stride.”
It
used to be that space projects were so daunting and expensive that only
governments and their massive corporate partners could take them on.
Then, in the past decade or so, a cadre of billionaires—think Elon
Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson—entered the arena with what first
seemed like eccentric pet projects. Today, in the wake of their
successes, there’s a third generation: minnows that service those
private companies and leverage the growing economies of scale such that a
startup without extraordinary resources can now contemplate a voyage to
another planet.
Plenty
of factors are making space missions cheaper and more feasible: the
miniaturization of electronics, the development of stronger and lighter
materials, better engineering, and new standards that make it easier to
build mini-satellites and send them up as hitchhikers on a larger
launch. A traditional low-earth-orbit satellite, for instance, weighs
three tons, stands two-stories tall, and costs tens of millions of
dollars to build. Today there are “microsatellites” between 22 and 220
pounds and even “nanosatellites” under 22 pounds. A so-called cubesat,
for example, weighs around two pounds, is about the size of a fist, and
costs less than $100,000 to build. Some 60 companies now sell them,
allowing small governments and companies to put a tiny probe into orbit
for precision agriculture, oil spill monitoring, or security systems.
Of
the 115 space-related companies started in the past decade and backed
by investors, 84 focus on satellites, according to the Tauri Group,
which tracks space investments. Just last year, those companies launched
100 microsatellites, up from 25 in 2011. Tauri projects that 2,400
nano- and microsatellites will launch between 2017 and 2023.
Investment
is starting to take off. Venture capitalists have put $8.2 billion into
space companies over the past five years, according to Tauri, most of
it into rockets and satellites.
Mojave
has become an oasis of billionaires, scientists, vendors, and service
providers. Branson’s Virgin Galactic has 500 people there building and
testing propulsion systems and a suborbital spaceship, according to CEO
George Whitesides. Paul Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace is nearing completion
of its massive Stratolaunch airplane. NASA officials scout Mojave for
technology and commercial space partners, and rockets are launched by
small companies like XCOR and Masten Space Systems, which are assembling
light, reusable launch vehicles to drastically reduce the cost of
spaceflight. All that activity has drawn even smaller operations,
including a school for test pilots and tiny vendors that provide
everything from industrial coatings to ancillary offerings like
financial services and a gym.
The
biggest driver has been the deep pockets and confidence of Musk, Bezos,
and others, including dotcom entrepreneur Naveen Jain and hotel mogul
Robert Bigelow, who have been funding startups through venture
investments and contests like the Google
XPrize. Musk’s SpaceX slashed tens of millions of dollars from rocket
prices, helping land the company a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to fly 12
cargo missions to the International Space Station. Musk and Bezos are
now, separately, planning missions to Mars. “They were the primer to the
pump for this new resurgence,” says Jay Gibson, CEO of XCOR.
Moon
Express, funded by Jain, plans its maiden voyage to the moon later this
year, vying for Google’s Lunar XPrize, a $20 million award to the first
company to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon and accomplish several
technical challenges. Once there, Moon Express plans to extract iron
ore, water, minerals, and precious metals, as well as nitrogen,
hydrogen, and more. Ultimately, Jain thinks, the moon could become a
fuel depot where spacecraft can stop before continuing longer journeys.
“Entrepreneurs have the potential to change the trajectory of how
humanity lives,” he says, “where the moon becomes the eighth continent
and a great place to live.”
Needless
to say, the challenges remain immense. “I sound like a curmudgeon, but
people always say this will be the year,” says Gary Hudson, an industry
veteran and the president of the Space Studies Institute. “Everything
costs more and takes longer than you think, and people die if you screw
up.”
The
difficulty hasn’t curbed enthusiasm at Interorbital Systems, a
12-person operation in Mojave. Cofounders Roderick and Randa Milliron
started their business two decades ago with a goal of eventually living
on the moon. Interorbital sells satellite kits and says it will launch
137 satellites this year with its modular rocket, whose size can be
adjusted depending on the mission. The revenue from satellite and launch
sales, space-testing missions, and more should help it reach its goal
of using its rocket to get to the moon this year, as part of a team
competing for the Lunar XPrize.
Perhaps
the ultimate evidence that space technology is catching on is that it
is even filtering down to hobbyists. A hacker space called Mojave Makers
allows individuals to, say, build their own 3D-printed rocket motors.
Says Bessemer’s Nagaraj: “You now have people tinkering with space just
as the previous generation tinkered with computers.”
