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My (perhaps overly optimistic) hope is that the private space race begins to look more like the autonomous car race. Rather than seeing a straightforward battle

My (perhaps overly optimistic) hope is that the private space race begins to look more like the autonomous car race. Rather than seeing a straightforward battle of old vs new, we're seeing companies at different stages take entirely different approaches by leveraging their own strengths. GM might be the best comparison, as they've purchased Cruise while keeping several distinct R&D groups within GM, all focused on different levels of autonomy. They have a lot of resources and they're willing to spread their bets. I'm hopeful that a similar thing is going on within Boeing, where they have their own R&D groups (including their ULA teams), and then are making bets on external projects as well. If they continue to invest in bold bets like this, we could see more and more aerospace companies investing in new projects with the intent of actually productizing their tech (just to keep up). That would be a lot of fun to watch.

dmix 9y ago
There seems to be far less competition and much more state-heavy financing in the aerospace industry than autonomous cars. Not to mention higher capital requirements than a mobile app + customer service + sales team. It's really not surprising it hasn't taken on the same form of multiple high growth startups + big company acquisitions all over the place. But that said, it seems far more entrepreneurial, iterative, founders with big dreams, etc than the space industry ever has in the past. They could certainly use more of it. Although, even the golden children like Planetary Resources failed to get a financing round and delayed their "asteroid mining" project indefinitely. So it isn't easy to aim high. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-venture-misses-fundraising-target-forcing-cutbacks/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-v...

dmix 9y ago

There seems to be far less competition and much more state-heavy financing in the aerospace industry than autonomous cars. Not to mention higher capital requirements than a mobile app + customer service + sales team. It's really not surprising it hasn't taken on the same form of multiple high growth startups + big company acquisitions all over the place. But that said, it seems far more entrepreneurial, iterative, founders with big dreams, etc than the space industry ever has in the past. They could certainly use more of it. Although, even the golden children like Planetary Resources failed to get a financing round and delayed their "asteroid mining" project indefinitely. So it isn't easy to aim high. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-venture-misses-fundraising-target-forcing-cutbacks/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/planetary-resources-asteroid-v...