Billionaire Backing Seen as Key to Some Space Launch Startups

The billionaire investors backing space launch ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin "are a market distortion," attracting other investors to businesses chock full of risk and uncertainty, said Carissa Christensen, managing partner of satellite consulting firm Tauri Group, during a Transportation Research Board panel Tuesday on the commercial space industry. "Those individuals are having a very big effect." She said traditional satellite operators are a mature, stable industry attracting mainstream financial investment, but the growing boom in smallsats is attracting a new type of commercial space investor in the form of venture capitalists. The last couple of years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of VC firms getting into commercial space ventures, she said. The smallsat boom is also creating a different supply chain than traditional satellite operators have used, with a focus on building smallsats from relatively available components instead of custom parts and thus letting companies that aren't vertically integrated enter the market, said Jason Crusan, NASA director-advanced exploration systems division.