Space Business Podcast

Space Biotech - this is the first episode in a new sub-series of episodes just on this topic. Ken Savin is the Chief Scientific Officer of Redwire, the American space holding company. Before that, he worked at the U.S. National Lab and for a long time in the pharma industry. JUST OUT: Raphael's fully revised introductory book on the Space economy, "To Infinity" - https://a.co/d/6jIQ2LO Follow us:...

Software for satellites. We are overdue to talk about it – it’s important and it could be a big business opportunity, for reasons you’ll hear about in this episode. My guest is Alvaro Alonso Ruiz, co-founder of the French startup Leanspace who raised a EUR6MM seed round last year. Enjoy! Follow us: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/podcast_space LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelroettg...

Space in Israel! My guest is Uri Oron, the Director General of the Israel Space Agency. We talk about various aspects of the Israeli space ecosystem, including what "infrastructure" is required to build it out successfully. Enjoy! Follow us: Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/podcast_space LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelroettgen/ Instagram -  www.instagram.com/raphael_space/ Learn mo...

Asteroid mining – do I really need to say anything else to get you excited and curious about listening to this episode? My guest is Matt Gialich, the co-founder and CEO of AstroForge, an LA-based startup. Over a decade on from when the last asteroid mining companies started, AstroForge successfully raised a sizable seed round last year. Asteroid mining is back - hear all about it in this episode,...

Nima Shahinian is a Norwegian industrial designer planning on going to space, and he has already started some of the training, which he will tell us about. He has now even put together a whole project and team in Norway that is working on taking a group of people to space, including several candidates with disabilities. Hear all of about it in this episode – and, since he is a designer, we also ta...

How about accessing space not with rockets, but with basically a big gun that shoots stuff into space? You may be surprised to hear that that is actually not a new idea. Our guests this week, the founders of a startup called Wave Motion are working on an updated version of it. Unsurprisingly, there is strong dual use element, too. We’ll talk about all that and more in the episode. Enjoy! Follow us...

This is our second conversation with a crew member of the dearMoon project. Just as a reminder, dearMoon will be a circumlunar Starship mission, to which Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku "MZ" Maezawa has invited 8 artists to join him. One of those lucky 8 is the photographer, filmmaker and whale swimming guide Karim Iliya. We talk about his expectations and objectives for the mission. Enjoy! https://k...

Did you ever wonder what the experience of flying on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket is like? I certainly have. So I invited one of their recent crew members, Victor Hespanha from Brazil, onto the podcast. He takes us through the entire experience -before, during, and after the flight- in great detail. You get a good sense of what the experience is like, so don’t miss it! Please do not...

Daniel Bock and Istvan Lőrincz are the co-founders of Morpheus Space, an innovative electric propulsion company based in Germany and the U.S. I met them for the first time at IAC in 2019 when they won the pitch competition and since then they have done really well, including announcing a US$28 million Series A last September. Please enjoy listening to them talk about their technology and their ent...

This is our annual preview of some of the things to watch out for in the space sector in 2023! Follow us: https://www.twitter.com/podcast_space Instagram - brand new! @raphael_space Learn more about space & the space economy: Check out the edX/EPFL Space Economy MOOC: https://www.edx.org/course/new-space-economy There is now a certificate for those wanting to enter the space sector: https://www.sp...

I’m guessing many if not most of you are aware of the dearMoon project. Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, or MZ, is inviting 8 artists to join him on a circumlunar flight on Starship. One of the 8 selected crew is American documentary filmmaker Brendan Hall. He is our guest on this episode and we discuss everything from his motivation to apply, over the selection process, to his objectives for...

Casey Handmer writes a blog that many of you may already read called, well, Casey Handmer's blog. His posts regularly explore fascinating space topics such as e.g. explaining misconceptions about Starship or how to terraform Mars. We could not possibly do justice to the wealth of topics he’s written about in one podcast episode, but we are talking somewhat of a whirlwind tour through some of his b...

Dan Katz is the co-founder and CEO of Orbital Sidekick, a San Francisco-based company deploying a constellation of hyperspectral remote sensing satellites. Among other things, I talk to Dan about the capabilities and use cases of this exciting technology. Enjoy! Follow us:   https://www.twitter.com/podcast_space Instagram: @raphael_space Learn more about space & the space economy: Check out the ed...

Egbert Jan van der Veen is the head of strategy of well-known, publicly-listed German space company OHB. He’s also the head of their corporate venture capital arm, which has invested in a number of well-known space companies, including some that have been on this podcast. So he has a really good view of the space sector in general and also specifically about space startups. Enjoy! Btw, happy Thank...

Our guest this week is Jaume Sanpera, CEO & founder of Sateliot, a Barcelona-based startup providing IOT connectivity from space. IOT is an interesting market which various startups (and established companies) are tackling and we discuss current and future use cases, what technology Sateliot uses, how it is executing its go-to-market, and many other things. You will not want to miss this one. Enjo...

The English version of my introductory book to the space economy is finally about to come out. In this special episode, I read the introductory chapter for you. Opportunities to learn more about space & the space economy: Check out the edX/EPFL Space Economy MOOC: https://www.edx.org/course/new-space-economy Do you want to specifically learn about investing in Space? Join the pre-release of Raphae...

My guest Ole Dokka probably knows the Norwegian space ecosystem like nobody else. He is the organizer of the Spaceport Norway conference, which will take place in Oslo next week. We talk about what is going on in space in Norway, including the Andøya spaceport, and of course also about the conference. Enjoy! Opportunities to learn more about space & the space economy: Check out the edX/EPFL Space...

In this episode we talk about predicting extreme weather, timely (if not planned!) given hurricane Ian -- by the way, we hope you are all safe & sound! Dan Harkins, the COO of Tropical Weather Analytics will tell us about extreme weather and how their proposed satellite constellation may help us predict it.    TWA Website: https://weathersats.com/   Opportunities to learn more about space & the sp...

My guest this week is Austin Link, a co-founder of Starfish Space. Starfish develops a space tug that can be used for satellite life extension and space debris removal. Austin and his co-founder Trevor both came out of Blue Origin and are now well on their way at Starfish, which raised a seed round last year. Please enjoy listening to their story.   https://www.starfishspace.com/   Opportunities t...

This episode is with a guest who I wanted to have on for a while. Avi Loeb is a Professor of Science at Harvard and was the chair of its astronomy department from 2011 to 2020. He has written 8 books, including the best-seller “Extraterrestrial”, and hundreds of research papers. Among many other things, he is well-known for his views on the Oumuamua interstellar object, and he now heads the Galile...

This week we talk about military space. The military has been part of space exploration since the beginning, and it continues to be very important, including as a major customer of, and even occasional investor in, commercial space companies. So it makes sense that we spend some time talking about military space in this podcast. I suspect there will be several episodes on this topic, but my first...

My guest this week is the CEO and founder of Phantom Space, Jim Cantrell. Having started at JPL, Jim is also a decades-long veteran of commercial space. He has been involved in around a dozen space startups, including SpaceX in its early days. There are probably few people who have been around the commercial space sector as much as he has, so we do not only talk about Phantom but about the space e...

My guest this week is the President of Portugal Space, the Portuguese Space Agency, Ricardo Conde. Portugal Space was only recently formed, in 2019. Ricardo and I talk about that experience of founding a new national space agency and dive into some of their marquis projects, including in the remote sensing value chain and the Santa Maria Spaceport in the Azores Islands. We also talk about the spac...

My guest this week is Bessie Schwarz from Cloud to Street, a company that uses satellite imagery, and other data, to come up with better flood models for customers like governments and insurance companies. Hence, it is an example of the use of space technology for something useful right here on Earth, which is one of our favorite topics!   Opportunities to learn more about space & the space econom...

Raphael reviews what has happened so far in the space sector in 2022 and what some of the exciting things are that may happen during the rest of the year.   JWST images: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/   Space Perspective capsule: https://www.space.com/space-perspective-capsule-balloon-tourist-flights   Opportunities to learn more about space & the space economy: Check out the new edX/EPFL S...