The space economy is about to undergo a profound transformation because of SpaceX’s super-heavy launch vehicle Starship.
The 394-foot-tall craft, which flew for the first time last month, is intended to transport a mind-boggling amount of material into low Earth orbit and beyond.
Space VCs Advise Founders to Prepare for Starship’s Impact
To learn more about how they advise founders to consider the extremely heavy implications of Starship, TechCrunch+ spoke with three founders of pure-play space venture capital firms: Chad Anderson, managing partner and founder of Space Capital, Jonathan Lacoste, general partner and founder of Space.VC, and Raphael Roettgen, founder of E2MC Ventures.
The three disagree on a number of minor details, but they all agreed that founders should consider how Starship can influence their operations in the future, for better or worse.
The most obvious way that Starship is expected to change the industry is by carrying on the trend that Falcon 9’s introduction by SpaceX started: significantly reducing the cost of launching mass into space.
The 100 to 150 tons of cargo that Starship will be able to transport to orbit will represent a paradigm-shifting amount that significantly exceeds the payload limit of any rocket that humans have yet created.
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Zephalto’s Balloon Flights to Offer Unique Views of Earth
Meanwhile, a French business, and the French space agency, CNES, have teamed up to develop a strategy to start providing opulent high-altitude stratospheric balloon excursions.
Zephalto’s pressurized capsule will soar into Earth’s atmosphere as high as 15.5 miles (25 kilometers), lifted by a massive balloon filled with hydrogen or helium, giving passengers a rare perspective of the planet below.
According to a Bloomberg story, flights are expected to start in 2025, and the company’s website is currently accepting reservations for a $11,000 (€120,000) deposit.
Six passengers and two pilots will be able to board Zephalto’s balloon, which will take off from the French spaceport.
The corporation envisions extending its reach globally and has placed “next opening” dots on a world map of Zephalto spaceports in each inhabited continent.
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