Starbridge Update
Felix Hartmann, founder of Hartmann Capital as well as one of our wonderful Starbridge fund LPs, invited Steven Jorgenson and Michael Mealling to his podcast during Starbridge's recent business trip to Miami to talk about all things space investing, what to keep an eye on, and even addressing some long-standing conspiracy theories! (Runtime: 1 hour 22 minutes)
Portfolio Company News
Axiom
Axiom confirmed that two Saudi astronauts will fly on the private Ax-2 mission to the ISS. The Saudi Space Commission announced that Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali Alqarni (center) will fly to the ISS on the Ax-2 private astronaut mission with Mariam Fardous (left) and Ali Alghamdi (right) as backups.
Lynk
Tyghe Speidel, Lynk Global's CTO, was on a panel with other 'direct to device' companies and had an interesting exchange on markets, spectrum, and strategy with some of Lynk's competitors. Spectrum strategy divides the emerging direct-to-smartphone market
SpaceX
Voyager
Voyager Space raises $80M as it continues development on private space station, Starlab
General Space News
Camden County spaceport dream scuttled by Georgia Supreme Court ruling
The long, tragic story of the only greenfield spaceport on the East Coast of the US is winding down and the conclusion across the industry is that, while the site has various organizational and political problems, at the end of the day it simply isn’t possible to build operational tempo, eastern facing, launch sites in the continental United States anymore.
Blue Alchemist Technology Powers our Lunar Future
While a lot of questions remain about taking this technology operational, this is proof that you can build complex electronics using nothing but what you find on the Moon. One of the places you could build an incredibly large space-based solar power station for an incredibly low price is on the surface of the Moon.
ISRO's second SSLV mission successfully launches trio of satellites
As we have said before, India is a growing space power and one that Starbridge is paying close attention to.
This is the second time this has occurred using Russian systems. While the new leadership at Roscosmos is being significantly more forthcoming with information, there does seem to be a downward trend with quality control at Roscosmos.
The SmallSat Symposium was last week and there several discussions about how the business of smallsats has impacted both investors and startups.
As discussed in our predictions for 2023, the chess pieces for a space policy jurisdiction fight are being placed:
Other Space News
Exotrail raises $58M for spacestudio, spacedrop, spaceware, and spacetower
As record rocket launches crowd airspace, the FAA fights to limit travel disruptions
Lockheed Martin, Viasat executives named to presidential advisory panel
NASA Awards Spacecraft Processing Operations Contracts to SpaceX and Astrotech
Intuitive Machines moves landing site of first mission to lunar south pole
United Launch Alliance is closing a Texas facility that builds Atlas rocket components.
Amazon gets key FCC approval for more than 3,000 LEO broadband satellites
Voyager Space raises $80M as it continues development on private space station, Starlab