Starship's Explosive Encore

Frontier Focus Newsletter

Your Comprehensive Guide to the New Space Economy

G. Pettit here, 

Welcome to the first edition of the Frontier Focus Newsletter, your top source for political, economic, and social developments in the New Space Economy and other emerging markets.

From breaking industry news and event announcements, to labor market reports and financial analysis, the glorious future has never been closer, nor a more entertaining read! Our mission is to collect and distill only the most newsworthy, exciting, and inspirational info for your weekly updates on the Second Space Age.

Join us on this journey into new frontiers.

This Week’s Next-Gen Newsflash

🚀 SpaceX Starship has successfully launched for a second time, but failed to reach orbit.

☢️ In case you think that nuclear powered rockets are still “eternally 20 years away,” check out this partnership between the Space Force and some of the industry’s top players

🔭 While the James Webb Space Telescope explores new frontiers, the senior Hubble continues to amaze by capturing incredible images of rare galaxies

State of the New Space Economy

1) Another Star in the Satellite Constellation: Amazon has now launched the first batch of its Kuiper satellites aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 on October 6th. As if a borderline monopoly in cloud computing, online shipping, and video streaming wasn’t enough, Amazon has now breached the atmosphere on its quest to carve a slice from the promising emerging market of satellite constellation technology. It may be the future of the internet, after all, and any self-respecting tech company would plan for a part in it. 

The two satellites are test prototypes for the 3200 planned to be launched over the next 6 years starting in 2024. The prototypes will be de-orbited around the same time, at mission end. This development comes off the news of Amazon’s $120 million dollar investment into a state-of-the-art satellite manufacturing facility near Kennedy Space Center, Florida. 

The new site will be a stone’s throw away from launch partner and fellow Bezos-founded company Blue Origin’s compound, where Kuiper satellites fresh off the production floor will have a short trip to their ride on the New Glenn rocket. With so much capital flowing into the field, satellite constellations are undoubtedly here to stay. What’s a few more stars in the sky?

2) New Rockets on the Pad: Stoke Space has revealed the name and design of its next-generation reusable rocket, in addition to announcing its eye-watering $100 million dollar raise. 

Dubbed Nova, the new rocket aims for full reusability, and is built off “ideas and achievements of prior generations,” claims CEO Andy Lapsa. Coming off the back of their successful vertical takeoff and landing test this summer, the industry is excited to see what Stoke cooks up.

As a culmination of that excitement, the company announced its series-B round had closed with $100 million dollars in fresh financing from a long list of investors, including Toyota Ventures, Y Combinator, and the University of Michigan (Go Wolverines?). Who says there’s no money to be made in aerospace?

3) Just Don’t Name it HAL-9000: AI’s high velocity advancements were bound to go orbital sooner or later, with Slingshot Space using it to track satellite movements. Specifically, naughty Russian satellites trying to spy on everyone else from geostationary Earth orbit (GEO). 

After a tense situation in 2015 when a Russian satellite performed the orbital equivalent of sloppy parallel parking between two Intelsat commercial communications satellites, concerns over space espionage have grown. And where there’s national security threats, there are lucrative defense contract opportunities for patriotic young startups.

Slingshot Space, founded in 2017, has found novel uses for AI in space where few others have. Rapid progress in machine learning will open new opportunities to study our universe, space technology data, and environment, and those companies ahead of the curve will reap those exponential benefits.

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International Insights

With the United States launching nearly more payload than the rest of the world combined, and aerospace affinity ingrained in its very culture - from fighter jet formations at summertime airshows to space shuttle toys filling the hands of children across generations - it’s easy to forget that the space economy is a worldwide effort with international innovation, each corner deserving some recognition. Sometimes, the best work is done at the edge of the map.

This week’s focus will be France.

Europe is having a tough time in the launch market right now. The French-German Arianespace has led the European launch market for years, primarily subsisting off consistent contracts from the European Space Agency (ESA). 

Through this, the heavy-lift Ariane 5 and smaller Vega rockets came to be some of the most cost-effective rockets around. And when paired with Russian Soyuz launches out of the French department of Guiana in South America, everything fell into place perfectly. A status quo for many stable decades.

(Official ESA illustration of Ariane 6)

But the past decade has yielded unprecedented change. And as most in the industry can attest to, ten years is a surprisingly short amount of time to adapt major programs. The rapid rise of SpaceX and reusable rocketry has nearly obsoleted France’s fleet, and sanctions against Russia have resulted in their swift redaction of cooperative Soyuz launches from Guiana. 

On top of this, the Ariane 6, intended to replace the aging Ariane 5, is delayed for at least another year, leaving Europe without domestic medium and heavy lift capacity for the first time in half a century. All this on top of rising industry competition from allies and adversaries alike, in the form of the USA and China.

These rapid changes are impacting all of Europe’s space economics, but France, with its control over Guiana and its spaceports, is particularly feeling the burn. Seeking to adapt, as of 2022, France has allocated a 25% increase in space spending, and forged partnerships with fellow ESA members Germany and Italy to develop new rockets. 

If there’s one trait Europe’s space industry has long championed, it’s cooperation, and through it, France knows it can help maintain European competitiveness in the New Space Economy.

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