In 2002—the year Elon Musk founded SpaceX—the notion of a space startup was far-fetched at best, a doomed wild goose chase at worst.
Now, SpaceX is a public company with a trillion-plus market cap that just reported its first earnings. And there’s a whole new generation of founders looking to build out a space economy that once seemed like science fiction, like Impulse Space’s Tom Mueller, Apex’s Ian Cinnamon, and Northwood Space’s Bridgit Mendler.