We’ve reached a new level of excitement about space in Seattle, and across the country, with “The Martian” as the No. 1 film at American movie theaters for the second weekend in a row.
This adds to an already amazing year in which humanity has landed a probe on the surface of a comet, taken beautiful images of Pluto from the New Horizons mission, and made continued strides in the development of new commercial spacecraft.
People are thinking and talking about space in ways that we haven’t seen in at least a generation. The tantalizing prospect of space as a new commercial frontier is helping expand our notion of who and what we’ll send into space, and why we’ll do it. [We’ll cover Seattle’s role as a hub for entrepreneurship in a new era of space exploration at Xconomy’s Seattle 2035 conference Oct. 30. Check out the full agenda here.]
Space exploration and entrepreneurship are perhaps as complicated a business as there is, with overlapping and interlocking technologies, motivations, and, yes, often enormous price tags—though the dramatic improvements in cost and capabilities that put powerful computers in our pockets are working in this industry, too.
It can be hard to separate the substance from the hype, particularly right now, when Hollywood’s greatest space director and NASA team up for a blockbuster, which the space agency is using to elevate awareness of its own real-life plans for sending humans to Mars. NASA, no slouch at media relations in the age of Apollo, has demonstrated its mastery over social media, contributing to a new space craze unlike any experienced by those of us who grew up after the Apollo Program. Even the Moon got in on the act, showing up all bright and gorgeous late last month, then blushing red… almost Mars-like.
Before we get to the substance, let’s dispense with the hype. In this case, I love and accept it, and here’s one reason why: Nothing gets kids, and adults, excited about science and technology like space. Kids grasp early on that space is all about the cutting edge of technology, that science—Science!, as “The Martian” makes abundantly clear—is what it takes to go to space, and survive there. “Don’t speculate, rely on data,” said Rebecca Yeung, 10, who with her sister, Kimberly, 8, launched a balloon that reached an altitude of 78,461 feet, at the GeekWire Summit. (A full interview with the Yeung sisters is here.)
At a time when calls for more STEM education are ringing out at tech conferences, political rallies, and across the Internet, excitement can be the overlooked ingredient: You still have to get kids excited enough to begin and continue the long journey to becoming proficient in STEM disciplines. Space is something you can point to and say, “This is why.”
Rocket Building Boom
Now what of the substance behind this new space excitement? It seems to me there’s plenty of it. Here are a few recent examples:
Astronaut Michael Barratt—a native son of Washington who joined NASA in 1991—called this “a unique time” in human space exploration during a recent event at The Museum of Flight. He cited rockets designed to carry crews and cargo into low Earth orbit being built by Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin. “There has never been a time in history where so many manned spacecraft have been built—not thought about—these are being built,” he said.
Here in Seattle, space-related businesses and the entrepreneurs, investors, and engineers who would start and join them, are growing, and gaining visibility. Our local billionaires are part of the reason, though their companies—Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Aerospace—conduct lots of work outside the region, too. Meanwhile, we’re benefitting from the expansion of other billionaires’ space companies into the region.
Indeed, the opening of what could become a large satellite SpaceX office in Redmond, announced late last year, is perhaps the biggest news to come out of the local space sector, such as it is, ever. (The office is not just remote from SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA, headquarters, it’s also going to work on satellite communications.)
SpaceX joins an interesting and somewhat eclectic group of Seattle-area space businesses, numbering in the dozens, depending on how and who you count. Some, like rocket-engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne, were here before the Moonshot. Others, like Planetary Resources, represent a new breed of space business imbued with a new entrepreneurial spirit.
Seattle: Space Outfitters
Chris Lewicki, a veteran of three NASA missions to Mars and Planetary Resources’ president and chief engineer, joined about 100 people for a Space Entrepreneurs MeetUp at the pavilion in Kirkland’s Marina Park on one of the last warm evenings of summer. (Sean McClinton, organizer of the Space Entrepreneurs, said most of his group’s membership is in the Pacific Northwest, but that “people outside of Seattle are definitely noticing what’s happening here.”)
Lewicki talked about his company’s “crazy, audacious” plans to capture asteroids and
