
Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company? - markovian
I am trying to find the ideal way to start a space business without immediately needing substantial financial resources.<p>Create a space industry giant from scratch with little external funding.
======
redis_mlc
I'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:

[https://www.savvyaviation.com/](https://www.savvyaviation.com/)

~~~
amayne
> SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand...

The launch business is tiny compared to what's possible when you can do large
volume industrial research and manufacturing in microgravity.

I take the approach that space right now is like the computer industry in the
early 1970s. We're about to have our microprocessor moment with fully reusable
rockets.

This means ridiculously cheap access to space which could yield entirely new
industries in biotech, semiconductors and other areas of research we haven't
even imagined.

We're only done the tiniest amount of research so far and have found put that
you can grow much larger and purer crystals, antibiotics work in unpredicted
ways and a hundred other examples of interesting areas of research.

If launch costs are commodity, then do something with all that capacity. Cisco
may have struggled when computer server prices fell, but that made companies
like Google and Facebook possible. We're now living in a world that benefits
tremendously from one thing becoming a commodity.

~~~
rtkwe
The thing is even if SpaceX gets actually cost down to ridiculously low prices
it's still going to be extremely expensive and very very hard. We have
practically speaking no experience manufacturing in space, the only thing
that's been made have been small test quantities of ZBLAN fiber and until we
get asteroid mining and refining setup the extra cost of lifting all the raw
materials is going to make manufacturing in space only viable for a few small
things with high margins of return.

~~~
jjoonathan
At least for semiconductors you won't have to haul up all that high vacuum
equipment :)

~~~
rtkwe
You'd still need it LEO at 500km varies between 10-700 nPa and UHV is a max of
100 nPa. It's too variable an environment to really develop chips in due to
space weather and the variability in the extreme thin reaches of the
atmosphere in Earth orbit.

~~~
markovian
What could we be able to manufacture in space in the next 15/20 years in your
opinion?

~~~
rtkwe
The only think I really know of is ZBLAN fiber because that has a definite
benefit to space manufacture and a large profit margin to justify the lift
costs of the base material. I think until we get space refining figured out
it's going to be hard to manufacture anything because of the high lift costs.
Modern manufacturing also depends on a large amount of equipment and chemicals
that will have to be redesigned for zero-G [0] and whole supply chains of
chemicals either lifted dry and recreated or created from scratch in space.

I think the first things we'll really make in space will be super structures
and pressure vessels because those are the simplest things to make and the
materials don't require a massive supply chain. We could even gain a lot just
by lifting up generic stock from Earth (metal powders, sheet stock that could
be formed into tubes, or just a lot of generic tube stock [1]) and learning
how to assemble them via machine in space. It would let us build larger
stations or telescopes than we could launch from the ground.

For example if we build a super structure in space we could launch a lot of
large inflatable modules to fill it in with that would be mechanically simpler
and lighter because they don't have to bear and transmit the thrust force just
support their own mass under thrust.

[0] Which increases the amount of benefit needed to justify redesigning an
entire chip fab for example to function in zero-G.

[1] Though lifting tubes has the problem that there's a lot of wasted space in
a stack of tubes which is one of the problems we're trying to avoid by
building vehicles in space to begin with.

------
DennisP
Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That
means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-
level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent
installations on Mars and the Moon.

Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're
relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on
Mars. Be one of those companies. If it's something modest but really useful,
you don't have to be a big company at first.

Or, recognize that everybody's building lightweight, expensive, super reliable
satellites because launch is expensive. Figure out how to build the cheapest
possible satellites instead. Your financial constraints will give you a
different mindset than people with serious resources.

~~~
StreamBright
Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's
geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.

~~~
DennisP
Radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran.
Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates.

[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-
is-f...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-full-of-
radiation-and-why-im-not-worried/)

~~~
StreamBright
This is great article, thanks for sharing! It seems we figured out for most of
the things how to manage radiation living on Mars.

------
paolord
Look for some NASA/US Gov RFPs and open contracts for some low level
manufacturing/sub-contractor work on their space missions(or sub contract work
from prime contractors). Get the necessary certifications. When you do win
bids, hire the right people, then provide the services, and money starts
coming in. I'm sure there is a banker or financial institution out there
that'll hand out funding to someone that actually holds a contract to NASA or
a big defense contractor.

~~~
ken
There are a lot of companies that set up shop right next to Boeing, and simply
provide services to them. Probably all the other big aerospace companies, too.
That sounds like a great way to get your foot in the door.

------
heidtn
As someone who works for a space company that was effectively bootstrapped,
there are 2 ways I've seen to do it.

1\. Government Contracts - this is what my company did. Ground demonstrations
to parabola tests to ISS payloads. It's a long hard road and has a lot of NASA
bureaucracy, but we just won our first 100MM$ contract and only did one raise
7 years after the company was founded.

2\. Build something a big Aerospace company needs - there's a lot of this
these days. Company's like Gomspace are building tools for cubesats with
minimal startup costs. This is the more independent route, but comes with the
challenges of convincing a risk averse industry to use something that hasn't
been tested in the correct environment.

------
growlist
I've kicked this about in my head also, because what geek wouldn't love to do
it? I've come to the conclusion though that unless one is already a business
and engineering genius with the luck of the gods, it's a ridiculous dream.
With that said, a chap called (Sir) Martin Sweeting started Surrey Satellites
in the 80s which went on to revolutionise the satellite industry and was sold
partially to SpaceX, and then fully to ESA, so it is possible, but he was
already a PhD-level scientist/engineer working in the field. Anyway here's a
few ideas:

1\. You could look at novel launch methods, i.e. centrifugal, rockoon, light-
gas space-gun. On the latter Gerald Bull did reach space but needed a truly
enormous gun

2\. ...but imagine the know-how and resources required to develop a whole
system like above that can get something to orbit. And quite apart from
building the thing, how are you going to test it without become a lawyer to
get the necessary approvals? So perhaps concentrate on one aspect of an
example above that is transferrable to other industries. But even then to
investigate materials that perform well at high temperatures, for example, it
would help to already be a world-leading materials scientist, wouldn't it?

3\. Fabrics. Looking at the latest NASA space suit I refuse to believe there
isn't scope for improvement, and apart from that I suspect there'll be all
kinds of novel fabric requirements. Again you might well find what you develop
can be sold for earth-bound use

4\. IP. Could you take an ARM-like approach and be merely an IP licenser? You
could for example design modular launch systems and let others build them

------
parsimo2010
I'd sat that you need to start small if you don't want to take on a bunch of
investment money. A lot of magazine articles make it sound like anyone with
$25k can get a cubesat launched, but it is clearly not that simple.

Martin Platt and the AmbaSat project have given me some insight on how much
work it takes just to design and get approval for really simple satellites.
They post regular updates to their Kickstarter page. I think you can see the
updates even if you aren't a backer:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-
ed...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-educational-
space-satellite-kit/posts).

Perhaps you should get in touch with some space industry insiders that know
the regulatory environment and know what rules can be broken and what can't.
Then also get in touch with people that have worked on space equipment before,
because space is a complicated domain.

------
ArtWomb
1\. 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 ;)

~~~
adrianN
Each one of those steps is a billion dollar company.

~~~
sincerely
Sounds like a 5 billion dollar company in the making then! :)

------
danpalmer
Some feedback for HN: repeating the story of PayPal/Amazon and saying "you
just need lots of money" isn't an answer here. That's exactly what the author
put in the question, they know.

Explaining _why_ the question is flawed may be a good answer, but otherwise
think about the question and if you don't have a good answer, don't answer.

------
LegitGandalf
Millionaires play golf. Billionaires play space.

Step 1. Make billions in something (not space) Step 2. Turn billions into
millions with space

~~~
trianglem
Isn’t spacex profitable? Starlink sounds like how someone would go about
becoming a multi billionaire.

~~~
onion2k
It may be profitable _now_ , but don't forget that SpaceX has been going for
17 years, has raised well over a billion in VC funding to date, and Elon has
put more than $100m of his own money in.

SpaceX is _in absolutely no way whatsoever_ a company that Elon bootstrapped.

~~~
justanotherhn
Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0]
Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean
anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not
the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC
money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-
musk](https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk)

~~~
hef19898
SpaceX received billions of VC money on top of government contracts while
Ariane and Co. got government contracts and government funding. So no, SpaceX
is not bootstrapped. We also don't know for sure as SpaceX is privately held
and not publishing financial reports. The one leak back up to 2017 wasn't that
stellar.

------
nickparker
1\. Find a way to return cubesats from orbit

2\. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has
to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open vacuum
not a station.

3\. Find goods that can only be manufactured in micro-g which are profitable
at tiny scale, make them with your returnable cube sats. Made in Space, FOMS,
etc are trying to do this but you could iterate faster/cheaper on cubes than
mucking with ISS bureaucracy.

The window to do this is small and might not exist though. Eventually private
stations will likely be the better option.

~~~
rtkwe
> 2\. Sell your system to anyone who wants to do science where the payload has
> to come back, but can't get onto the ISS / wants to experiment in open
> vacuum not a station.

Probably a tiny market there's already the exposed facility on Kibo [0] on the
ISS that can take a lot of experiments.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_(ISS_module)#Exposed_faci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_\(ISS_module\)#Exposed_facility)

------
netman21
I have thought of this my whole life. Well, since I was 12 years old, so 48
years anyway. I would develop small reaction engines for orbital maneuvering.
Make them lightweight and inexpensive and infinitely customizable. Sell them
to every rocket company and satellite producer. Make a whole family from
hypergolic to plasma to ion thrust. Be really good at it. Establish a 100%
reliability record.

But, how to bootstrap that? Perhaps write the software for some other reaction
engine company? Or create a simulator for orbital maneuvering?

------
catacombs
1\. Find life outside the solar system.

2\. Send message to them via the Sun.

3\. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet
to conquer the planet.

4\. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity.

5\. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to
spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological
innovations.

...

450\. Profit.

~~~
DannyB2
> World focuses attention on humanity's survival

We can't focus on global warming. Would we actually focus on an impending
asteroid collision, or an incoming alien invasion?

~~~
catacombs
I think anything that is a danger to Earth that is not human caused would
receive more attention.

------
troydavis
Could you share why bootstrapping this business is attractive?

I’ve bootstrapped many companies, but I did so because the situation seemed to
warrant it (capital requirements, perceived market size, achievable short-term
revenue, etc.).

If you’re absolutely dead-set on both space and bootstrapping, I’d start by
consulting in that field. Get paid while you spot a problem and build a team
to moonlight on it.

~~~
markovian
By "bootstrap" I mean a way of self-financing part of the activities, finding
a source of income quickly rather than relying solely on fundraising.

Raising money is not a problem, but I don't see myself getting involved in
creating a business that requires billions and billions of dollars in
financing before generating a single cent.

~~~
greglindahl
There are quite a few examples of space companies that meet that definition,
have you looked at them?

~~~
malux85
It would be helpful if you named them

------
randomsearch
Develop useful tech for cubesats. Build a demo/prototype hardware box and go
to a space conference after contacting people in the industry beforehand. Get
an "in" with a small startup and work with them to build it on a satellite.
Through a partnership with them find others, become a satellite builder. Get
experience using the launch market and begin to learn about rockets. At that
point, my knowledge runs out - but I think you'll need a few hundred million
if you want to have a go at developing a rocket yourself, so that's how big
your cubesat / satellite company will have to be.

------
chasd00
Figure out a way to make LOX cheaper than anyone else on an industrial scale.
I bet LOX production is a pretty sleepy business with few competitors. Use the
money selling LOX to bootstrap the space business.

~~~
Ancalagon
Now that's an interesting idea. Granted I have no idea how competitive/costly
this market it, but I didn't think LOX was that expensive to begin with in
comparison to other costs in aerospace.

~~~
chasd00
per Musk fuel/oxidizer costs make up the bulk of launch expense. If you could
save launch providers 2% on LOX with equal service they'd buy it in a heart
beat. It's like going to the next gas station to save $0.10/gallon gas.
Granted your competition may just say, "ok now we'll sell at a 5% discount".
Of course the devil is in the details, it may take hundreds of thousands of
dollars in permits to transport it. Maybe you could invent a popup LOX
processor like those popup concrete factories near big construction projects.
That would be pretty cool.

------
55555
Not all companies can be bootstrapped, and even more shouldnt be. How would
you bootstrap an oil refinery or a floating casino? I mean, maybe you could,
but why not just become a person capable of taking the shortest route to your
goal?

Often, the reason you cant bootstrap companies is because opportunities are
time-sensitive and your competition isnt bootstrapping. Imagine trying to
bootstrap an Uber competitor in Uber's market at the same time as Uber. Even
if somehow you could in the absence of Uber, Uber would destroy you.

------
ISL
Start 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.

------
motohagiography
The "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 regulatory
arbitrage, so if you can deliver content and secure a physical space
jurisdiction for a legal system, it will be the new off shore.

~~~
markovian
In short, infrastructure. Where would you start?

~~~
motohagiography
Infrastructure doesn't cover it. Without a way to defend it, there will be no
investment, so crypto and directed energy defences. Payments, identity, etc.
Same as earth.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's space. Kinetic weapons will be just enough; one needs to make the
shooting mechanism reliable in space.

------
soared
You... don’t? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped
space companies and very few others.

~~~
fastball
SpaceX has raised $3.2B in funding[0]... they are far from bootstrapped.

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-
te...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-
technologies#section-overview)

~~~
justanotherhn
They're not bootstrapped NOW. Say that in 2007 when they had the falcon 1.
Obviously, they've gone on to raise money after showing that they can get into
LEO.

------
PaulHoule
Learn how to use mission planning software, for instance:

[https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-
design...](https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/space-mission-design-tools)

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.

~~~
amelius
Also learn to use formal specification tools like TLA+. Space companies will
probably not use software without correctness guarantees. Especially if your
software was verified by only a small number of people, it is likely to have
bugs.

------
keiferski
No one has suggested this so far, strangely enough: start with content. Aim to
become _the place_ for excellent news, interviews, videos, etc. about anything
space related. Or, go a fictional route - if George Lucas / Lucas Films wanted
to get into actual, real space travel or space products, he's in an excellent
position to do so. The brand is related and they've got billions to spend. I
would bet that this happens sometime in the next ±100 years - imagine Disney
having a Star Wars theme park in space. And you certainly don't need to be as
successful as Lucas to build a fictional brand around space - even a smaller
company could make space products if it has an audience.

How to start from scratch: build up an audience, relationships with industry
members, and an overall familiarity with the marketplace and potential
opportunities. Develop a product, sell it to your audience, hire smart people,
rinse and repeat. Your starting costs are basically zero, assuming you know
how to write/create content.

~~~
netman21
I like this. There are over 100 rocket companies. You could become an industry
analyst and publish about them. Or become the Walt Mossberg of space.
Eventually host a conference everyone has to exhibit at.

------
avmich
It's been said "rocket science is not rocket science".

Elon Musk put reportedly 90 millions his own dollars into Falcon-1. So it was
enough a decade ago to spend $90 millions for Kwajalein launch pad, 5 units of
Falcon-1, design, transportation, operations.

Should we assume that today that ought to be cheaper - especially if we find a
cheaper launch pad and be more lucky with at least first launch? Rocket Lab
isn't that successful with it, but shouldn't it be possible at all? A recent
new Japanese launcher was lighter than 3 tons.

Now there are more modest companies, which don't put payloads to orbit, yet
still qualify as "space business". I'd recall Altius Space Machines and Masten
Space. You can add parts manufacturers for cubesats - parts like star trackers
reaction wheels, RCSes, communications... They usually start with way less
than tens of million dollars.

Why a particular approach should cost a lot? Kistler Aerospace found that
buying components for orbital launchers on the market is too expensive to
survive, but may be there are other ways?

------
joshmarlow
NOTE: The below suggestion is assuming Starship pans out and launch costs drop
dramatically.

The way I see it, there are 3 (overlapping?) ways of making money in space:

1) put something up there (like a satellite) 2) take something down (asteroid
mining, space based manufacturing, etc) 3) do something in space you can only
do there

Here's an idea that falls into category 3 that I've been kicking around -
space based entertainment. Maybe design a new sport that's only playable in
space (or start with a currently popular one and extend it with space-only
dynamics).

You would definitely need some significant capital and it'll be several years
before you could actually put some athletes in space. But assuming launch
costs are cheap enough and human transport is reliable, I don't think it would
require speculative new technologies. Possibly the biggest technical gap would
be in building large enough structures for the sport. The work of Bigelow
Areospace or Nanoracks seems to be going in the right direction.

~~~
DennisP
The enemy's gate is down.

~~~
joshmarlow
Exactly. I think Ender's Game is what got me thinking along these lines.

------
notahacker
Governments with space programmes will fund lots of research-type projects as
well as purchase goods and services they actually use.

But if you'd best pick something you can do for the million or two they might
give you like niche software or analysing EO data or space imagery or
lightweight materials rather than hope to launch a cubesat constellation or
get to Mars.

------
larnmar
Realistically 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.

------
jbms
Move to Glasgow (like Spire did). It's got a bunch of companies making cube
sats & cube sat software & satellite data analysis.

Clyde Space will sell the bits to make a cubesat or even build it for you.
[https://www.aac-clyde.space/](https://www.aac-clyde.space/)

Alba Orbital do the same thing at a smaller (& cheaper form factor):
[http://www.albaorbital.com/](http://www.albaorbital.com/)

Add a sensor that you can sell the data from. Make a deal to sell the data.
Use the money / guarantee of the deal to raise money to fund the satellite
development and launch.

------
bradneuberg
Here's some different resources that might help you tap into the
entrepreneurial space community as well as help get you bootstrap, seed
funding for your space business:

\- The New Space Conference
([https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/](https://spacefrontier.org/newspace2019/)),
which alternates between being based in the Bay Area and Seattle. This
conference is a great, accessible way to find out what is going on with
startup companies attempting to do interesting things in space.

\- The NASA Ames Space Portal
([https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal](https://www.nasa.gov/ames/partnerships/spaceportal))
- A group based at NASA Ames field center in Mountain View that pursues
public/private partnerships between NASA and the private sector.

\- NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL)
([https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/](https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/)) -
A two month "research sprint" that takes place in the summer time in Mountain
View, bridging machine learning and space science & exploration, as well as
the public and private sectors.

\- NASA SBIR grants ([https://sbir.nasa.gov/](https://sbir.nasa.gov/)) - a
great program that helps seed small businesses and solo inventors with seed
grants for promising entrepreneurial programs that might help NASA and the
general space economy

\- NASA NSPIRES
([https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/](https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/))
- NASA portal page to find out calls for contributors, that also have funding,
that can help you get plugged into the space community and also get seed
funding.

\- NASA Centennial Challenges ([https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-
challenges.html](https://www.nasa.gov/open/centennial-challenges.html)) -
X-Prize like competitions that will pay out if you meet their guidelines and
win in a particular area, like the Regolith Excavation Challenge which has
been held several times, where the team who can best move simulated lunar soil
in an automated way wins. The last winning team got 500k, for example, which
is a nice purse to help bootstrap a space venture.

\- NASA Advanced Innovative Concepts (NIAC)
([https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html))
- Award program that funds very far-reaching, innovative space programs. These
are always incredibly cool programs; here's the awarded NIAC grants for 2019
for example ([https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-
in-18-potent...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invests-
in-18-potentially-revolutionary-space-tech-concepts))

\- Luxembourg Space Agency ([https://space-
agency.public.lu/en.html](https://space-agency.public.lu/en.html)) -
Luxembourg is a leader in private, mining oriented operations in space, and
acts as an angel and seed investor in many, small early entrepreneurial space
startups

If you have more questions feel free to reach out to me on twitter at
@bradneuberg

~~~
dls2016
Wow! I've been watching various SBIRs this year with a buddy, but have never
heard of some of these programs. Muchas gracias!

~~~
bradneuberg
Yeah, there's alot of niche programs that can provide nice amounts of seed
space capital without being a billionaire, it's just they are fairly in the
weeds and a bit hidden.

------
j45
Bootstrapping is a marathon, not a sprint. Bootstrapping is kind of like
stacking bricks, except you mught be making each brick too.

Sometimes you have to build the first thing to get to the second thing.

Before developing hardware, I'd see if there's a lucrative software based
problem in this area that could be bootstrapped to generate revenue to fund
the next project.

In a way SpaceX is doing their equivalent of this by building Starlink to
generate ongoing monthly revenue that conceivably could be directed elsewhere.

------
woadwarrior01
I have this mental model that I borrowed from the space industry. Just like
how SSTO (Single-stage to orbit) is extraordinarily hard, although not
impossible, I've always held the opinion that bootstrapping a startup in hard
tech is similarly hard but not quite impossible.

An less riskier approach IMO, would be the multi-stage approach, by solving a
series of less capital intensive problems and progressively solving harder and
harder problems while accumulating capital for the ultimate goal.

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danenania
Build software that improves some clunky or inefficient process common in the
space industry, then sell it to the space industry. Voila, you now run a
bootstrapped space company :)

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droidno9
Unless you're bringing a big industry name with you as cofounder, it's simply
not possible.

Just to get certified to do any work as a subcontractor would be in the
$XXX,XXX range.

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friendlybus
Space based solar like CassioPeia is an interesting format. Designed in a way
that you can start with a smaller scale model to prove the concept and then
work upwards.

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smm2000
Find country that need (but does not have yet) ICBM capabilities and pitch
them that you can build rocket for them. They will provide all funding you
will ever need.

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chasd00
that's a great way to end up dead by the countries who do not wish said
country to have an ICBM.

~~~
jonas21
or, more likely, to end up dead by said country once they realize you have no
idea what you're doing

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wasdfff
First, start something massive and unrelated to space, like a paypal. Then
ride your dividends straight into your burn rate, securing idealistic investor
money to go into the furnace along the way.

Seriously, that’s the playbook for what you suggest. The only playbook.
Anything else in these threads is going to be baseless presumption; if it were
as the commenters said, they’d themselves be doing it and not sharing it
online.

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raven393
If you really want to bootstrap it, start with toy/hobby rockets and drones
and slowly work up. Alter the services you offer as you go eg: aerial
photography, weather monitoring, engines etc etc till eventually you're
launching small sattelites and stuff

It's the kind of thing that'd probably take decades before you were
realistically even beginning to look at space though

~~~
chasd00
the amateur rocketry crowd has had large solid rocket motors for a while now
but bi-propellent motors (event the most simple designs) are very very rare.
If you could design one in the N impulse range and price it at < $2500 they'd
sell like hot cakes. Then you could scale up the design to a bit more powerful
and sell it to universities at around 10k a pop. The service contract to keep
them running would be worth a lot o f money too. Eventually, you'd be able to
sell a Karman line capable kit and that would sell like hotcakes to both the
amateur rocketry and university crowd.

There's a group on youtube working on nitrous oxide/methanol engine for
hobbyists now. I think they're headed in the right direction although I would
have done the combustion chamber differently.
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEkE_gf1VxBngLugexHz2KQ)

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hos234
Maybe useful- [http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-
is...](http://www.forbesindia.com/article/startups/we-are-seeing-isro-
employees-quit-and-start-ventures-narayan-prasad/55187/1)

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billconan
I went to a Elon Musk's talk. He said he wouldn't have started spacex and
tesla if he hadn't had the initial capital he gained through paypal.

I want to start a robotics company and I guess I would start by selling
robotic toys and kits.

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crwalker
Start and then sell a financial services company. Then build the space
company.

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losthobbies
You could look at developing something that would make being in space more
habitable for humans. Better spacesuits, better equipment. Maybe something in
the cryostasis..eh..space?

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boznz
Why not wait until people are out there already and sell shovels

~~~
greenyoda
1\. It may take many years before significant number of people are out there.

2\. What kind of equipment or services would these "shovels" be? Is there any
kind of equipment used in space that could be produced by a bootstrapped
company that doesn't have billions of dollars in funding? Why would a new
company in this business succeed when competing against established companies
that already have experience producing such equipment?

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logfromblammo
Start a non-space company, grow wildly successful, and use the substantial
financial resources from that to fund your space company. Space is a capital-
intensive industry. You cannot compete with those who can leapfrog you with
one investment round or bond issue.

Presuming you don't want to do that, or to become a primary launch provider,
start by networking with people already in the industry. Move to space hot
spots like Cape Canaveral, Huntsville, Houston, or Los Angeles, and start
stalking insiders.

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WilliamEdward
There's a reason most of these comments are saying this is impossible.

First you need some actual technical knowledge, like PhD level knowledge of
some slightly innovative new space tech. I like to think one of the big boys
in space money will be asteroid mining. So present a detailed and well
researched pitch to some investor about how you would go about using a company
to RnD this endeavour. Hopefully, they give you a lot of money.

But you said you want little external funding, so, yeah, not going to happen.

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PopeDotNinja
Define space company. You want to launch things? Hitch a ride on OP (other
people's) rockets?

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mrfusion
If anyone tries this, drop me an email. I’d love to get involved in any
capacity.

~~~
sheepybloke
Me, too! I'd love to help.

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ratsimihah
1\. Partner with Elon Musk 2\. Use partner's capital and experience 3\. Profit

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hoerzu
How do you make money with Satellites?

~~~
SaintAnode
All of the data that you sell. E.g. Planet provides complete Earth coverage
approx every 24h. Hyperspectral imagery, tracking ships/planes with
specialised receivers, monitoring other space assets, running weather
services, etc. That data is all worth HUGE amounts of money to the right
people.

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bitL
Start an e-commerce company from the scratch, grow it, make it automated, then
use revenue to bootstrap your space company.

~~~
markovian
How about a logistics company ?

~~~
bitL
Yeah, any scalable profitable company would do. I just have practical
experience with exponential growth from automated e-commerce, but see no
reason why that couldn't work for logistics or some other type as well.

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PaulHoule
Cubesats?

~~~
markovian
For what purpose?

Telecommunications?

~~~
sfifs
Rich hobbyists - like the businesses that specialize in model trains

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deepnotderp
Satellites on a chip.

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rtkwe
It will be hard to get approval for that to launch (at least from the US). In
order to be tracked to ensure the safety of future launches objects need to be
much larger than a single chip. Smaller than that the tracking techniques used
have trouble tracking the vehicles.

~~~
deepnotderp
Huh, that's interesting, can you elaborate?

What are the minimum size requirements? Are they multidimensional?

~~~
liuhenry
At least 10cm in any dimension (i.e. a 10cm diameter sphere, or a 10cm x 10cm
x 10cm cube).

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-81A1.pdf)

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jamisteven
How does anybody bootstrap anything these days? Marketing and kickstarter!

~~~
kristianc
Given marketing encompasses ‘only building things people want’ this actually
isn’t too far off base.

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zeofig
1\. Make a PayPal 2\. Space time

