I’ve been fixated on space since I was a little kid. I was 5 years old when Apollo 11 happened, and it was the first time all the adults were excited about something at the same time. I remember playing in the backyard and getting called in to watch the launch, and I was hooked. While the three astronauts traveled to the moon, I spent most of my waking hours trying to build a Saturn V out of Legos. We huddled around the TV every night to watch Walter Cronkite share the latest progress.
And then they landed, and we stayed up to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. The next night, I found an old telescope in the bottom of a closet, pulled it out, and set it up on the sidewalk, pointing at the moon so that I could see the astronauts.
I didn’t see the astronauts, but I did see the moon. I remember that blurry image of white and gray and the wonder it created in my mind. A wonder never went away. It grew as I learned about physics and engineering, followed by a career applying technology to multiple industries. Space has always held a special place in my mind and my heart.
That is why my favorite trade show is the Space Symposium. Each spring, anyone and everyone involved in space heads to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to talk about policy, science, and business. The giant exhibit halls are full of models of space stations, rocket motors, and space suits. Startups schedule meetings with prime contractors and plan missions together.
Companies like ours reach out and connect to help other companies plan, design, build, test, and fly rockets, satellites, and deep space probes. You may ride in the elevator with a two-star general from the U.S. Space Force or the woman who guided a probe around Pluto.
I’ve been going for a few years. For most of that time, the talk was about “when” we would return to the moon or when we would find a way to repair and refuel aging satellites – conversations where “if” and “when” were used. People planned and hoped that both commercial space and the government’s space program would take off.
Until this year, this year was different. This year there was an exciting urgency underlying the discussions. What had been meeting about how they “might” do this or that changed to how they “will” plan and carry out a wide variety of missions. From earth observation to deep space probes, small sats to lunar landers, business is growing in space.
On the event’s final day, the largest rocket ever built, the Space-X Starship, exploded soon after launch. And no one blinked an eye. It is part of the process, and everyone expects that the same spacecraft will take people and cargo into space in two years.
We now plan business knowing there will be multiple space stations and multiple companies launching payloads. A few thousand more smallsats into orbit and more probes will venture between and to the planets. Universities and startups will hitch a ride with established companies.
Soon, some five-year-old kid will pull an old telescope out of a closet and point it toward the moon, hoping to see the humans once again walking on the surface. They won’t see any people or spaceships, but they will see the moon, and they will feel the wonder that was pulsing through this conference. Space is no longer a frontier or where we may eventually go. It is where we are going.
Are you ready? Is your business ready?
Eric Miller, a regular contributor to the Business Journal, is co-owner of Tempe-based PADT Inc. Reach him at eric.miller@padtinc.com
