Space is going through what the Internet went through in the 1990s. What was once government-funded is now privately funded, and you have miniaturization which is bringing the price down. The markets are also huge: Weather alone is a multibillion-dollar industry.
— Stephen Messer, Internet entrepreneur and the first investor in Spire, a San Francisco startup that developed the first crowd-funded satellite.
Bloomberg reports that since 2010, the private space industry has risen more than sixfold to more than 800 companies, and investment in private ventures during that period is set to reach $10 billion by the end of the year. Last month, San Francisco-based satellite maker Planet Labs announced that it raised $95 million. Early last year, Pat May wrote about Bay Area space companies attracting funding, including Planet Labs and Mountain View-based Skybox Imaging. Skybox was later bought by Google for $500 million.
And as Pete Carey reported, SpaceX last month raised $1 billion from Google and Fidelity Investments, putting Elon Musk s company s valuation at $10 billion. Hawthorne-based SpaceX is getting plenty of credit for sparking today s space race, or what the Bloomberg article calls the galactic gold rush.
A lot of us grew up during the space race, and there was a long lull when a lot of childhood dreams were put on hold, venture capitalist and SpaceX director Steve Jurvetson told Bloomberg. Now investors have the sense that there is money to be made, and there have been a flurry of business plans since SpaceX.
Scott Nolan, an early SpaceX employee who is now a partner at Founders Fund, told Bloomberg: SpaceX took this Silicon Valley, startup approach to design and efficiency and applied it to aerospace.
Photo: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches in 2013 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for its second resupply mission to the International Space Station. (Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT)
