You... don’t? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped space companies and very few others.
Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
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Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#12The "spaceness," of the business needs definition. Maybe you build drones to defend asteroid mining claims and equipment, stealth communications for space prospecting, cryptographically sovereign networks for space supply chains, low gravity weapons and anti-piracy defences, solar sails, a navigation scheme and commercial beacon network, etc. The nearest term use case for commercial space tech is going to be regulato…
In short, infrastructure. Where would you start?
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#13Start and then sell a financial services company. Then build the space company.
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#141. Use Deep RL to predict stable 3D protein structures that would not normally occur in Nature
2. Simulate gravitational dynamics to winnow down candidate crystals that cannot be synthesized in terrestrial conditions because they would collapse under their own weight
3. Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation
4. Design a prototype microgravity factory that operates at scale and exploits rapidly falling launch costs
5. Convince Big Pharma to invest using the rationale that space is the next big profit driver
Best of Luck ;)
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#15Learn how to use mission planning software, for instance:
https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design...
with this you can help people spin tales of space project such as: "to build a sunshade, is it worth mining the moon?" Does it make sense to build the "Lunar Gateway?" Could lunar oxygen be delivered to LEO and HEO in order to retank SpaceX Starships?
Pick up the tools to answer questions like that.
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#161. Use Deep RL to predict stable 3D protein structures that would not normally occur in Nature 2. Simulate gravitational dynamics to winnow down candidate crystals that cannot be synthesized in terrestrial conditions because they would collapse under their own weight 3. Find novel applications for those proteins such as DNA data storage and computation 4. Design a prototype microgravity factory that operates at scale…
Thanks, very interesting.
Could you develop steps 2 and 4?
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#17Start a transformative web-commerce company, then transform it into the premier cloud-hosting company. Sell some shares. Pay a lot of good people to help you.
Seriously. Bezos is the only major player to be playing only with his own money. I think everyone else (SpaceX, ULA, Virgin, etc.) all have substantial external investment.
Space is expensive to get to. In general, you're going to need to pool a lot of capital and human effort.
If starting small is a goal, finding great Cubesat applications seems like a good place to start (but you'll need enough money to get to orbit). It looks like there is a lot of competition, though.
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#18I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade.
Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general.
Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity.
(SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.)
So if you really want a career in space, go join an existing company or agency.
However, there's a lot of smaller aviation-related projects that are equally challenging, but more affordable.
Examples of recent remarkable aviation advances are:
- Robinson Helicopter (world's largest-volume mfg)
- Williams small jet engines (started in cruise missiles, now certified for civil use)
- uAvionix ADS-B tailBeacon (first affordable ADS-B transponder)
- Scaled Composites' projects. The whole reason Rutan used composites was to make wings 10x faster. You can do that too.
There's room for anybody (who wants to spend their savings) on:
- composite mfg. techniques
- applying the latest in electronics (without competing with Garmin)
- willing to navigate the FAA TSO process
- installing ADS-B. It's literally a gold rush until 2021.
- be like Mike Busch, the world's top aviation entrepreneurial mind:
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#19Millionaires play golf. Billionaires play space.
Step 1. Make billions in something (not space) Step 2. Turn billions into millions with space
Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?
#20Realistically you don’t, but...
You’re definitely not building hardware without much money. Maybe you can build software? Spend a lot of time talking to companies that already operate in the space industry, find some unmet software need that you can somehow build a software solution for (better than the thousands of other software engineers who have already worked in the field for decades) and sell it to them.
For instance, maybe you figure out a better way to write satellite management software. And then you sell that for a while (tricky, you’ve got very few possible customers and they’re all quite capable of copying what you’ve done if it’s so great) and eventually you get to the point where you start launching your own satellites.
I’m not saying there’s a reasonable business model in there; but if there’s a reasonable business model somewhere it’s likely to look something like that.