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Profile On: ROCKET LAB By Evan Anderson Why Read: The expansion of SpaceX to encompass the vast majority of the US orbital launch market has so far been unchallenged. After a brutal few years, it appears one challenger may be making progress - and it's publicly traded.
Space. The Final Frontier. Also: Graveyard of startups. In 1980, Arianespace, a French company spun out of the European Space Agency and government-supported launch efforts, became the first commercial space company. Since that time, the industry has grown in fits and starts. As governments struggled to cope with the costs of developing new solutions and the costly (in blood and treasure) failure of old systems, privatization of the industry has accelerated dramatically. It is, after all, far easier for governments to watch and wait for private industry starts to become shoots. Those shoots can then be funded, at less expense, to see if they flower. We have entered an era increasingly defined by private space enterprises servicing public agencies. And the competition is fierce. |
