Portfolio Company News
SpaceX’s Transporter-5 Rideshare will potentially be carrying 3 Starbridge portfolio companies satellites - Orbital Sidekick, Lynk, and Umbra - as payloads on their upcoming launch targeted for May 25th
Axiom Space broke ground this week on their new headquarters and factory in Houston, Texas
General Space News
SpaceX secondary sale values the company at $125 billion
Starbridge is working on access to this round but the deadlines are very tight. See below for details.
Rocket Lab Q1 Results Underscore Growing Space Systems Business
Rocket Lab is no longer just a launch company, which makes them more interesting to us. They acquired SolAero Technologies earlier this year and are also producing solar panels for OneWeb’s broadband constellation. In Q2, Rocket Lab will likely have $51M–$54M in revenue with launch being ~$19M and space systems at ~$32M–$35M.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner is on its way to the International Space Station
The human spaceflight market has been dominated by SpaceX ever since the first NASA commercial crew flight. Many in the industry are starting to become concerned that SpaceX may have a natural monopoly simply because they are able to move faster than everyone else. While NASA has put its hopes in Boeing’s Starliner program as a commercial crew alternative, Boeing has had severe troubles during development and testing early last year. Starliner is also shown prominently in Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef graphics but few consider Starliner to be remotely economical for truly commercial missions. NASA may consider Starliner a viable alternative but few others do.
Scientists found that plants can grow in lunar soil, although not very well
This article was widely circulated as proof that you can live on the Moon by growing your own food. But few who actually work on Lunar development and settlement ever considered regolith as a growth medium when the terrestrial aquaponics, hydroponics, and vat grown meat and plant systems have shown artificial growth media are perfectly fine.
When SpaceX dumped Spaceflight Services earlier this year there was some speculation about who would replace them since SpaceX clearly doesn’t like herding cats. There was some speculation that Tom Mueller’s Impulse Space was the preferred new vendor but others such as Launcher or D-Orbit may be filling in behind Spaceflight.
The ability of government agencies to keep up with commercial technology developments has been a complaint going back to World War II. One of the core issues is the short rotation times for officers where they move on to other roles in their branch at just about the time they start to understand what is going on. There is little confidence this problem can be fixed.
This is an important milestone for SpaceX and for South Texas. But it may be too little too late since SpaceX is building Starship factories in Florida. We expect alternative launch sites to be developed either offshore or in other countries although both currently present logistical and national security challenges.
Check out this map of Starlink’s current availability worldwide
Other Space News
Sanctions on Russia are starting to affect ISS operations, NASA's safety advisers said Thursday
NASA confirmed Tuesday that the end is in sight for the InSight Mars lander
NASA is puzzled by telemetry coming from the Voyager 1 spacecraft
Stratospheric ballooning company Space Perspective has raised an additional $17 million
China's Zhurong Mars rover is going into hibernation for the Martian winter