2008-2018: A NewSpace Primer

By David M Bullock

NewSpace Revolution: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future of the Commercial Space Industry

"We want to explore; we want to understand. We want to believe." ―

• Language: English
• Publisher: David M. Bullock
• Release date: Jan 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985665017

Book preview

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Second Edition

David M. Bullock

2008 - 2018

A

NewSpace

Primer

Copyright © 2022 David M. Bullock

All rights reserved

Second Edition

David Bullock Publishitng

Bronx, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-0-578-56142-4

Printed in the United States of America

For Connor and Gavin,

future space explorers

and to the memory

of Bob and David

Preface

Space today encompasses so much more than ever before. Besides Pluto being demoted as a planet, the emergence of exo-solar planets and the discovery of gravitational waves, there has been more business and commercial opportunity in space as well. Names like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson have been associated with the rockets they each build. As a result of this business, one could call all these new companies and the work they do a part of an economy known as NewSpace. To be more specific, NewSpace refers to the emerging space economy in the private sector. This book looks at the NewSpace economy and how it has grown over the past ten years.

Not to minimize the science of the past ten years, which has been amazing and profound in many ways, and in some sense, it crosses over into the NewSpace arena at times, but I wanted to focus here on the businesses and their achievements made in their own right. This book looks at a decade of change and, at the end, touches on its future because after 2018, there is going to be much more to come.

If you are caught up with all the achievements of NewSpace before the initial publishing of this book and want to find out how we got to where we are, I hope this book would be a great history for those curious to find out what happened in the NewSpace past.

Acknowledgments

Any significant endeavor is not done alone, and writing this book was no exception. I first want to thank the many people that I’ve interviewed for this book, which included, in no particular order: Anup Singh, Jeff Greason, Thomas Andrew Olson, Garrett Schneider, Michael Paul, Sean Casey, Hoyt Davidson, Jon Zaikowski, José Mariano López-Urdiales, Marc Fusco, Keegan Kirkpatrick, Clark Lindsey, Maria-Vittoria Giugi Carminati, and Steve Wolfe. These interviews were enlightening and congenial. The participants took time out of their own schedules to talk to me, and not everyone I reached to interview responded.

Special thanks should be given to The Commercial Space Blog editor, Chuck Black, who took the time out of his busy schedule to do additional edits to my manuscript and write my foreword during a busy winter.

I want to thank Page Publishing, who published this book. The editors did a fantastic job of keeping me on my toes and the support representative, Brooke DeVantier, was very pleasant to work with. Being a neophyte book author, it was great to have the support of the Page Publishing team.

Finally, I want to thank my family and friends. At every stage in my life, I’ve been blessed to meet some of the most talented and generous people. As a kid, my circle included the people from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, and the people from Staten Island, New York. I have also gained some great support from my classmates and professors at Bates College, the University of North Dakota, General Theological Seminary, and the City University of New York’s Lehman College. As an adult, my circle included people from Lewiston, Maine, Grand Forks, North Dakota; Battery Park City, Manhattan, New York; Riverdale, Bronx, New York; and people living in the general New York City Metro area. My parents, Barbara and James Bullock, have given me unlimited support in all my projects throughout my life. My sister, Deanna Rigby, my brother-in-law, Shane Rigby, and my two nephews, Connor and Gavin Rigby, all remind me of the joy I have of sharing space to both the young and the old as a career.

Thanks again, everyone. I hope you enjoy the book.

Starward dreams,

David Bullock

Foreword

Over the last decade, at least to the casual observer, the space race has transitioned from being a largely centralized government dominated and academically supervised monolith driven by science and political considerations, into a far more interesting, fiscally driven and distributed ecosystem dominated by larger-than-life, eccentric and emotional entrepreneurs willing to dare all for the chance to obtain massive wealth and everlasting fame.

It’s as if the "robber barons" of America’s gilded age had re-incarnated into the bodies of contemporary entrepreneurs, looked around and realized that the railroads were already built and they needed to come up