Agility was one aspect of New Space that On Orbit guests could agree on, as they put the hotly debated term under the microscope during a live podcast recording at SATELLITE 2020.
Tanya Harrison, manager of science programs for Planet Labs, described the shift in mindset: “You build it, you test the hell out of it, because you want to make sure it will not fail,” was the traditional approach. In New Space: “We have a new mentality, where we’re a lot less worried. We’ll launch something and then test it in orbit.”
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Charlie Nitschelm, chair of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), argued the term may be premature: “It’s not like dotcom, where you could get together with a few friends and a laptop and build a million-dollar business over the weekend. You can’t do that in space right now.” He said it will be New Space “Once we get that barrier to entry down to where any student, anyone, can start a business in a dorm room and have an impact on the space industry.”
Ali Younis of Astranis said New Space is “transparent as much as possible. There’s not a lot of mystery or darkness to it. It’s very accessible.”
Investor Rafferty Jackson pushed back on the New Space vs. Old Space framing: “If you go back to the Apollo program, everything you are saying [about New Space] is everything that they were saying then. All the engineers that worked on Apollo were so excited, they didn’t sleep, they were so mission driven. Constraint is one of the things that defines New Space, and NASA had that.” VS
