I read a post by Ron Weiner about how VCs are using AI to screen pitch decks, and it got me thinking about what happens when the first reader of a pitch deck is an AI system. We spend considerable time discussing how founders can use AI to prepare their presentations, but there is another side to that conversation. The investor can use it to decide whet…

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If you have been following the financial side of the commercial space industry for any length of time, you have probably heard the term SPAC. For a few years, it was difficult to discuss space investment without discussing SPACs. Then, almost as quickly as they appeared, the conversation seemed to disappear.

Well, apparently, they are back. Before we get there, though, it is worth understanding what a SPAC actually is, where it came from, and why commercial space became so attracted to this particular financial tool in the first place.

As we have been examining the financial structure of the commercial space industry at Better Futures, I have become increasingly interested in the tools used to finance companies and whether those tools actually fit the industries they are intended to finance. SPACs provide a particularly interesting case study because the industry has already gone through one major experiment with them. So, what happened?

First, What Is a SPAC?

SPAC stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Company. At its simplest, a SPAC is a publicly traded company created to acquire or merge with another company.

It does not begin with a conventional operating business. Instead, it raises money from investors, places that money into a trust, and searches for a private company to acquire. Once a business combination is completed, the private company effectively gains access to the public market through the transaction. This process is generally referred to as a de-SPAC transaction.

The basic flow looks something like this:

SPAC formed → SPAC raises public capital → SPAC searches for a company → business combination → private company becomes publicly traded

That is obviously the simplified version. The full process involves sponsors, warrants, redemption rights, shareholder votes, PIPE investments, regulatory filings, and quite a few attorneys before everyone goes home happy. Or unhappy, but we will get to that.

SPACs Are Not New

It would be easy to think of SPACs as something Wall Street invented during the financial enthusiasm of 2020 and 2021, but their history goes considerably further back.

Their predecessors were the blank check companies of the 1980s. These companies raised money from investors for future acquisitions without necessarily identifying what they intended to purchase beforehand. Unfortunately, that market also developed a reputation for abuse and fraud.

Congress responded through the Securities Enforcement Remedies and Penny Stock Reform Act of 1990, which included reforms directed at the penny stock market, and the Securities and Exchange Commission followed with Rule 419 in 1992. Rule 419 imposed requirements on qualifying blank check companies issuing penny stock, including protections involving escrowed investor proceeds and the conditions under which those funds could be released.

That distinction is important because modern SPACs are not simply Rule 419 blank check companies. The recognizable modern SPAC structure emerged shortly afterward and incorporated some similar investor protection concepts while developing into a distinct public market vehicle.

Investment banker David Nussbaum and GKN Securities are generally associated with developing that modern structure. During 1993 and 1994, their group launched 13 SPACs, 12 of which reportedly completed acquisitions.

SPACs, then, have been around for more than three decades. What changed was their scale.

Then Came the Boom

SPAC activity accelerated dramatically during 2020 and 2021. Cheap capital, strong investor appetite for emerging technology, and extraordinary financial market conditions created an environment in which SPACs became a popular route for private companies seeking access to public capital.

Commercial space was right in the middle of it. Virgin Galactic had already demonstrated the route in 2019 when it completed its SPAC transaction, and then the floodgates opened.

Rocket Lab, Astra, Planet, BlackSky, Redwire, Spire Global, AST SpaceMobile, Momentus, Virgin Orbit, Satellogic, Terran Orbital, and others either announced or completed SPAC transactions during the broader boom. According to BryceTech, in 2021 alone, 10 space startups went public via SPAC transactions, raising nearly $4 billion.

Suddenly, companies that would previously have remained within the private investment ecosystem could access hundreds of millions of dollars from the public capital markets. At first glance, that seems like a perfect match, but the more I look at it, the more interesting the relationship becomes.

Commercial Space Has a Financing Problem

We have written before at Better Futures about venture capital and its relationship with commercial space.

VC is an incredibly useful financial tool, and I am certainly not arguing otherwise. The problem is that it is not necessarily the best financial tool for every type of company. For many emerging technology companies, it may also be the only meaningful tool available.

That distinction matters because a software company can potentially develop a product and begin scaling relatively quickly. A launch company, spacecraft manufacturer, orbital infrastructure company, or other hard technology business can face a very different development cycle.

You have research, engineering, prototypes, and testing. Then something breaks, you fix what broke, and you test it again. Eventually, if everything goes reasonably well, you have something that works.

Unfortunately, having something that works does not necessarily mean you have something ready to scale. This is where our trademarked Tier Scale™ at Better Futures becomes useful.

We identify a significant transition between Tier 2™, Development, and Tier 1™, Scaling. Tier 2™ is where technologies and businesses are being developed toward commercial viability. Tier 1™ is where those businesses begin scaling to serve an established or emerging market.

There is something important sitting between them: a market.

You Need a Market to Scale

Capital is necessary for scaling, but capital by itself does not create the economic justification for scaling. You need customers, transactions, repeatable demand, and some reasonable expectation that increased production, infrastructure, staffing, or capacity will generate paying business.

That gives us something like this:

Tier 2™ Development → Market Formation → Tier 1™ Scaling

This is also where the financing problem becomes particularly difficult. A company may have successfully developed its technology, assembled a credible management team, secured intellectual property, completed successful demonstrations, and attracted early customers. At the same time, the market may not yet be large enough to support scaling.

The company needs more time, but venture capital has a time problem of its own. VC funds have investment horizons, and their investors eventually expect returns. A company can therefore reach a point where it needs considerably more capital and considerably more time while its existing investors are moving closer to the point at which they need liquidity.

This can become particularly visible around the later venture rounds. The technology may be progressing toward maturity while the market is not progressing at precisely the same speed, and that creates a gap.

I have stated before that I prefer a bond in this case, but for many of these companies, bonds were simply not available. That does not mean these companies were necessarily ready for conventional debt. It means the underlying financial need increasingly begins to look like long duration capital for infrastructure and Scaling rather than venture capital for Development.

Whatever their original purpose, SPACs provided a financial mechanism that could help bridge this particular capital and time gap. Suddenly, the SPAC starts making considerably more sense.

Was the SPAC a Bridge?

Instead of looking at SPACs simply as an easier or faster way to conduct an IPO, I think it is useful to examine the function they performed.

A SPAC could move a company from the private capital ecosystem into the public capital ecosystem considerably earlier than might otherwise have occurred through a traditional IPO. Instead of continuing through additional private rounds and waiting for greater commercial maturity, a company could potentially access hundreds of millions of dollars through a SPAC transaction.

That provided something commercial space desperately needed: time and capital. But there was a catch. The SPAC could provide the capital necessary for scaling, but it could not provide the market necessary for scaling.

That is where I think the first commercial space SPAC wave becomes particularly interesting.

Capital Cannot Substitute for a Market

The normal progression we would hope to see is something like this:

Tier 2™ Development → Market validation → Scaling capital → Tier 1™ Scaling

But what happens if the capital arrives before the market forms?

Then we potentially get this:

Tier 2™ Development → Projected market → Scaling capital → Attempted Tier 1™ Scaling

Those two sequences may look similar in a presentation, but economically, they are very different.

A projected Total Addressable Market is not the same thing as customers purchasing products and services. A forecast of future revenue is not current revenue, and an announced opportunity is not necessarily an actualized transaction.

During the SPAC boom, public investors were frequently asked to value companies partly on what those companies could become several years into the future. That transferred some risks normally carried within private capital markets into the public market.

Technology risk was still present, execution risk was still present, and market risk was still present. In some cases, even the question of whether the anticipated market would develop at the expected scale remained unresolved.

The capital had moved, but the market had not necessarily moved with it.

Then Reality Arrived

We know what happened next, and the commercial space SPAC companies did not all follow the same path.

Virgin Orbit eventually entered bankruptcy. Astra struggled with launch failures, delays, and cash burn before ultimately returning to private ownership at a fraction of its former public valuation. Other companies experienced significant declines from their original SPAC valuations.

But that is not the entire story. Rocket Lab continued developing its launch and space systems businesses. Redwire continued building a diversified space infrastructure business. Planet continued operating one of the world’s largest Earth observation satellite fleets. AST SpaceMobile continued pursuing direct to device satellite communications.

Some businesses failed, some survived, some evolved, and some are still proving themselves, with very different public market outcomes. I believe this mixed track record helps explain why SPACs remain a viable financial tool, although the conditions surrounding their use have changed considerably. We will get into that in another article.

One of those changes is regulatory. In January 2024, the SEC adopted new rules for SPAC IPOs and de-SPAC transactions that enhanced disclosure requirements involving sponsor compensation, conflicts of interest, dilution, target company information, and projections. The rules also changed aspects of the liability environment surrounding de-SPAC transactions and more closely aligned certain investor protections with those associated with traditional IPOs.

A SPAC entering the market today is therefore operating in a different disclosure and liability environment than one entering the market during the height of the 2021 boom. That makes it difficult to simply say that space SPACs failed. I think something more interesting happened.

Public markets were given access to companies at very different stages of technological, commercial, and market maturity, and over the following several years, the market began sorting them out.

What Did the First SPAC Wave Actually Teach Us?

This is where I think we need to be careful about drawing conclusions.

It is easy to look backward and call the entire period a bubble. There was certainly plenty of speculation involved, along with valuations that proved difficult to justify and projections that proved overly optimistic. But that explanation alone may miss something important.

Commercial space had, and arguably still has, a financing structure problem.

Many companies require patient capital over long development periods. Venture capital is often available to finance that development, even though its economics and investment horizons may not perfectly align with the development cycle of hard technology.

Then comes the transition from Tier 2™ Development to Tier 1™ Scaling. The company may require dramatically more capital precisely when it is waiting for the market to mature enough to justify deploying that capital.

SPACs offered one solution to that problem by providing access to public capital. What they could not do was accelerate the underlying market at the same rate.

Perhaps that is one of the most useful lessons from the first commercial space SPAC cycle. Financial tools can move capital through a system faster than the underlying economy moves.

Now SPACs Are Back

Which brings us to 2026.

SPAC activity appears to be re-emerging, and commercial space, aerospace, and defense companies are again part of the conversation. More importantly for this discussion, the commercial space industry itself is different.

There are more operating companies, more deployed systems, and more government and commercial customers. Some markets that were largely projections five years ago now exist, while other anticipated markets remain developmental. That distinction is going to matter.

We are already seeing examples. On August 25, 2026, aerospace and defense company Ursa Major announced a definitive business combination agreement with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. III. The transaction reflects a pre money equity valuation of approximately $1.6 billion and a post transaction equity valuation of approximately $2.3 billion, supported by at least $350 million in PIPE commitments.

What makes that particularly interesting in the context of this discussion is what the company says it intends to do with the capital. Ursa Major says the proceeds are expected to accelerate the expansion of established production capabilities across solid rocket motors, hypersonic engines, and space mobility systems, helping the company meet customer demand at greater scale and speed.

That sounds considerably closer to the question we have been asking throughout this article: are we financing Tier 2™ Development, or are we financing Tier 1™ Scaling?

I recently attended the venture capital briefing at SpaceCom 2026 in Orlando, Florida, and one point from that discussion was made particularly clear: SPACs are back.

That caught my attention because we have already watched the industry conduct this experiment once. We now have the benefit of seeing what happened to many of those companies and, perhaps more importantly, what happened to the markets they expected to serve.

So, I am less interested in asking whether SPACs are good or bad. I am interested in what they will finance this time.

If the first SPAC wave helped provide companies in Tier 2™ Development with access to Tier 1™ Scaling levels of capital before some of their markets were ready, this next wave gives us an opportunity to watch what happens when the same financial tool encounters a more mature commercial space industry.

Are we once again financing projections of future markets, or are we beginning to finance companies crossing from Tier 2™ Development into Tier 1™ Scaling because identifiable markets are finally there to meet them?

I do not think we have the answer yet, but we now know what to watch.

Tell us what you think in the chat below. Let’s have a conversation.

Let’s make Better Futures.

What Would a $14 Trillion Space Economy Actually Require?

In Part One, I started with a question I was asked by a director at a large corporation: How big can the commercial space industry reasonably become?

That question led me somewhere slightly different than I expected. Before trying to predict the future, I wanted a reasonable baseline for the economic territory we are talking about. Using the framework developed in Part One, we arrived at a working current Space Economic TAM of approximately $686 billion, divided into roughly $203 billion of Space Sustaining activity and $483 billion of Space Enabled activity.

We also arrived at another number that I think may ultimately be more interesting: an Enabled to Sustaining ratio of approximately 2.4 to 1. For every dollar of economic activity supporting and operating space infrastructure, current estimates suggest roughly $2.40 in broader economic activity enabled by it.

Now we can do what I deliberately avoided doing in Part One.

We can make the prediction.

Start With the Numbers

I am going to use two growth cases, 12 percent and 13 percent CAGR. I consider both stretch cases, particularly as the economic base becomes larger, but that is partly the purpose of this exercise. A stretch case gives us a target to strive for while also showing the potential scale of the industry.

Starting from approximately $686 billion, the numbers look like this:

Space Economic TAM, Space Sustaining and Space Enabled

Time frame

Space Sustaining

Space Enabled

Total TAM

Current

$203B

$483B

$686B

5 years, 12%

$358B

$851B

$1.21T

5 years, 13%

$374B

$889B

$1.26T

10 years, 12%

$631B

$1.50T

$2.13T

10 years, 13%

$689B

$1.64T

$2.33T

25 years, 12%

$3.45T

$8.21T

$11.66T

25 years, 13%

$4.31T

$10.25T

$14.56T

The chart and table assume that the current 2.38 to 1 Enabled to Sustaining ratio remains constant. I do not expect that relationship to remain perfectly constant over twenty-five years but holding it steady gives us a neutral baseline from which we can begin thinking about how the economy might actually develop.

There is an enormous difference between saying the space economy could reach $14.6 trillion and explaining how it could possibly get there. The first is easy. Put 13 percent into a spreadsheet, compound it for twenty-five years, and there is your number.

The second is the interesting part.

For this forecast to mean anything, we have to identify where enough new economic activity could come from to support those numbers. We also have to recognize that the answer changes depending on which part of the forecast we are looking at. Five years is largely about scaling markets that already exist. Ten years requires emerging markets to become meaningful economic contributors. Twenty-five years requires something much bigger. Space must become infrastructure for substantial portions of the terrestrial and cisLunar economy.

Five Years: The Trillion Dollar Threshold

At 12 percent growth, the Space Economic TAM reaches approximately $1.21 trillion in five years. At 13 percent, it reaches approximately $1.26 trillion.

That means the industry needs to add roughly $525 billion to $575 billion in annual economic activity compared with today’s baseline.

That sounds enormous until we remember that this growth does not have to come from one market. Launch, satellite communications, defense, Earth observation, PNT, direct to device communications, commercial stations, government programs, and other existing markets are already expanding or creating new demand.

The question is whether some of today’s emerging markets also begin moving from technical demonstrations into commercial deployment during this period.

Orbital computing is one of the markets I would watch closely. I do not think orbital data centers have to become a massive industry within five years for this forecast to work. What matters is whether we begin seeing evidence that economics can work at all.

The same applies to space manufacturing. The milestone is not whether factories in orbit suddenly compete with terrestrial manufacturing. It is whether enough products demonstrate that the additional value created by manufacturing in microgravity exceeds the additional cost.

Five years, therefore, is less about the new markets becoming enormous and more about validation. If orbital computing, space manufacturing, commercial stations, and other emerging markets begin producing repeat customers and measurable economic returns, the infrastructure investment that follows becomes much easier to justify.

That is why I think the five year range of $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion is aggressive, but reasonably imaginable.

Ten Years: This Is Where the Forecast Gets Harder

The ten-year numbers are approximately $2.13 trillion at 12 percent and $2.33 trillion at 13 percent.

At this point, simply doing more of what the space industry does today becomes a much weaker explanation for the growth. Launch can grow substantially. Defense spending can grow. Satellite communications can grow. Earth observation can grow. Existing markets can become considerably larger, but supporting an economy above $2 trillion probably requires new markets to begin contributing meaningful economic activity.

This is where my assumptions about orbital data centers and space manufacturing become much more important.

If orbital computing demonstrates attractive economic returns during the first five years, years five through ten becomes a scaling period. More computing means more spacecraft, power generation, thermal management, launch, communications, construction, maintenance, and logistics.

The same is true for manufacturing. Successful products create demand for additional production capacity, which creates demand for transportation, facilities, power, storage, servicing, and eventually raw materials.

The important point is that those markets begin sharing infrastructure. An orbital data center may help pay for power, communications, transportation, and servicing capabilities that a manufacturing operation can also use. Manufacturing creates additional demand for transportation and logistics, improving the economics of those systems. More customers spread infrastructure costs across a larger economic base.

That is where I think the possibility of acceleration during years five through fifteen becomes interesting.

The Difference Between Growth and Acceleration

There is an important distinction between assuming the industry grows and assuming the industry begins generating reinforcing economic activity.

If every new market requires an entirely separate infrastructure system, growth becomes expensive. Every company has to solve power, communications, transportation, thermal management, logistics, and servicing independently.

If multiple markets begin sharing infrastructure, the economics change. One market pays to solve a problem. Another market gets to use the solution. More users improve utilization. Better utilization lowers effective costs. Lower costs make additional markets viable.

The economic relationship begins looking something like this:

Return → Capital → Infrastructure → Capacity → New Markets → Demand → Return

That does not guarantee acceleration, but it creates a mechanism through which acceleration can happen.

The difference matters because sustaining 12 to 13 percent growth on a $2 trillion economy requires adding roughly $240 billion to $260 billion of economic activity every year. The industry cannot do that indefinitely by simply selling more of the same products.

It needs economic multiplication.

The 12 to 13 percent growth rate may seem like a stretch, but there is precedent for industries sustaining growth at this level, and even higher, during periods of major technological and economic expansion. Semiconductors sustained roughly 16 percent annual growth over a twenty-five-year period, while commercial aviation experienced decades of double digit growth during its major expansion.

That does not mean commercial space will automatically follow the same path. It does show that sustained double digit growth over long periods is not without historical precedent when technology becomes infrastructure for a much larger economy.

That is really what we are testing here. Can commercial space make that transition? Can it move from being primarily an industry unto itself to becoming infrastructure that enables computing, communications, manufacturing, energy, logistics, resources, and other economic activity?

If it can, then 12 to 13 percent begins to look less like an extraordinary assumption and more like a question worth seriously examining.

The Moon Starts Becoming an Economic Question

This is also where I think Lunar resources begin moving from a long-term space development idea into an economic question.

The case for Lunar mining has always had a chicken and egg problem. Mining resources because they exist does not create a market. Someone must need the resources badly enough to pay for them.

A larger orbital economy changes that.

Orbital computing, manufacturing, commercial stations, logistics infrastructure, communications systems, and other large structures require mass. They need shielding, propellant, structural material, power infrastructure, and eventually increasingly sophisticated supply chains.

If nearly all of that mass originates on Earth, Earth’s gravity well remains part of the cost structure of the cisLunar economy.

Lunar mining potentially introduces another source.

Water is particularly important because it has multiple potential functions. It can support people, provide radiation shielding, and potentially become feedstock for propellant. Lunar materials could eventually provide feedstock for construction and manufacturing.

The economic threshold is not simply whether we can extract Lunar resources. It is whether the delivery cost of those resources to customers in cisLunar space becomes competitive with the delivered cost of equivalent resources from Earth.

If that happens, Lunar mining becomes infrastructure.

That would also create an important feedback loop. More orbital activity increases demand for Lunar resources. Lunar resources reduce some infrastructure costs. Lower infrastructure costs make additional orbital activity possible, and that additional activity creates more demand for Lunar resources.

That is the kind of reinforcing economic system required if we are going to talk seriously about sustained double digit growth beyond the first decade.

Twenty Five Years: The Numbers Become Difficult to Ignore

This is where exercise becomes uncomfortable.

At 12 percent CAGR, our working TAM reaches approximately $11.66 trillion after twenty-five years. At 13 percent, it reaches approximately $14.56 trillion.

I do not think we can get anywhere close to those numbers by imagining today’s commercial space industry becoming twenty times larger. We have to imagine something different.

By this point, space would have to become an economic platform supporting industries whose primary markets may not even be considered space markets today. Computing is one obvious possibility. Manufacturing is another. Energy could become another if space-based solar power becomes economically viable.

This is also why the distinction between Space Sustaining and Space Enabled activity becomes so important. If we mechanically hold today’s approximate 2.4 to 1 Enabled to Sustaining ratio constant, the twenty-five-year picture gives us between $3.45 trillion and $4.31 trillion in Space Sustaining activity, supporting between $8.21 trillion and $10.25 trillion in Space Enabled activity.

I do not expect the ratio to remain perfectly constant for twenty-five years. In fact, one of the things I would expect from a maturing infrastructure system is for the relationship between sustaining and enabling activity to change.

That may ultimately become one of the better indicators of whether the space economy is actually maturing.

Space Based Solar Power Could Change the Scale

Space based solar power sits furthest out of the four markets I am using in this exercise because it has an additional set of problems that orbital data centers do not have.

Both require large scale power generation, large structures, thermal management, construction, launch, communications, maintenance, and logistics. If orbital computing scales first, many of those problems have an economic reason to be solved before SBSP must solve them independently.

But SBSP still has to solve the transmission problem.

Generating enormous amounts of electricity in orbit is only useful to terrestrial customers if that energy can be delivered safely, reliably, and economically across roughly 36,000 kilometers from GEO. That requires Wireless Power Transmission, DC to RF conversion, enormous, phased array transmitters, precise beam control, and terrestrial rectennas.

Orbital data centers avoid that problem because they consume their electricity locally.

That distinction is why I place ODCs ahead of SBSP in the development sequence. ODCs potentially create economic returns while solving many of the shared orbital infrastructure problems. If they do, SBSP inherits a more mature industrial base and can concentrate on problems unique to transmitting power to Earth.

If those problems are solved, the addressable market changes dramatically because space infrastructure begins competing for a portion of the terrestrial energy economy.

That is one possible mechanism for producing the enormous Space Enabled activity required by the twenty five year numbers.

The Ratio May Matter More Than the Headline Number

One of the things I did not expect when I started this exercise was how interested I would become in the Enabled to Sustaining Ratio.

Right now, our working estimate is approximately 2.4 to 1.

If that ratio increases over time, it could indicate that each dollar of activity sustaining space infrastructure is supporting progressively more downstream economic activity. That would suggest the infrastructure is becoming more economically productive.

If the ratio decreases temporarily, that does not necessarily mean the economy is weakening. It could indicate an infrastructure buildout period in which enormous amounts of capital are flowing into launch, power, manufacturing, stations, Lunar infrastructure, communications, or other systems before the enabled markets fully develop.

That gives us something more useful to watch than the headline size of the space economy alone. We can ask whether the sustaining base is growing, whether enabled economic activity is growing, and whether the relationship between the two is changing. Those three pieces together may tell us considerably more about the health of the industry than simply announcing that the space economy has reached another record.

What Could Break the Forecast?

There are plenty of ways this growth case fails.

Orbital data centers may never become economically competitive with terrestrial alternatives. Space manufacturing may remain a collection of valuable but relatively small niche markets. Lunar resources may remain more expensive than launching material from Earth. Space based solar power may never overcome the technical, regulatory, and economic problems surrounding Wireless Power Transmission.

Launch could remain a bottleneck. Capital could become expensive. Governments could reduce spending. Regulation could slow deployment. Debris and congestion could increase operating costs. A major accident could change public or political attitudes toward large orbital infrastructure.

There is another risk that deserves attention as well. The Space Enabled economy may grow enormously without producing proportional growth in the Space Sustaining economy. Terrestrial companies may capture much of the value created by space capabilities while the underlying infrastructure providers struggle to capture sufficient return.

That would be good evidence that space is economically important, but it would not necessarily mean that investing in space infrastructure is equally attractive. Economic importance and economic capture are not the same thing.

That distinction is going to matter increasingly as the industry matures.

So, Do I Think We Get There?

I think the five-year case is achievable, although certainly not guaranteed.

I think the ten-year case is plausible if orbital computing, manufacturing, defense, communications, and other emerging markets begin producing meaningful economic returns and the infrastructure supporting them begins to scale.

The twenty-five-year case is different.

I have a difficult time believing we reach $11.7 trillion to $14.6 trillion by simply expanding today’s commercial space industry. To reach those numbers, space has to become infrastructure for much larger terrestrial and cisLunar markets. I think it can, but that requires us to account for something we do not have yet.

That means computing, manufacturing, resources, energy, communications, logistics, defense, and probably several markets we are not thinking seriously about today. It also means Lunar resources become increasingly important because eventually an expanding cisLunar economy has to ask whether it makes economic sense to continue lifting nearly everything it consumes from Earth.

None of this is inevitable.

But after working through the numbers, I also do not think it is absurd. I think it is possible. In fact, I deliberately chose the range I think is easier to defend rather than the higher projections that my gut, and the guts of several others in the industry, are telling us may be possible.

And that may be the most important difference between the number someone threw out in that corporate discussion last week and the numbers I am presenting here. A very large number without an economic mechanism underneath it is speculation. A very large number connected to identifiable markets, infrastructure requirements, economic returns, historical precedent, and clearly stated risks is something we can actually analyze.

The 12 to 13 percent growth cases can be seen as a stretch, but that is exactly why I find them useful. They give us a target, expose what has to happen to reach it, and show us what the real potential of the commercial space economy could look like if the infrastructure and markets begin reinforcing one another.

Now we have something to measure against. While none of this is set in stone, 12 to 13 percent gives us a reasonable growth range that I think is fairly easy to defend. I, along with several others in the industry, believe the actual growth could be even higher, but that is not what I was trying to prove here. I wanted to build the case we could reasonably defend and see where it took us.

So, what say you? Was this exercise useful? Did you get something out of it? Did it open your eyes a little to where this industry may be going, and where, in my opinion, it is most likely headed?

Ultimately, that is what I want to know. If you found this valuable, let me know in the comments or send me a DM. And if you really want to, you can subscribe to the newsletter. If you want to be generous, you can even become a paid subscriber.

Below is a graph that shows the numbers and the breakdowns. Maybe you will find them useful.

Place in the chat your comments or what you think the TAM is going to be and why. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s make Better Futures.

Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker

Reporting Period: August 17, 2026 – August 23, 2026

Purpose

The Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker documents publicly disclosed capital commitments and publicly announced future capital opportunities within the commercial space industry.

The tracker maintains two independent ledgers:

• Actualized Finance records capital that has been publicly committed.
• Phantom Finance records publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

The tracker reports transactions only. It does not provide market analysis, forecasts, or investment opinions.

Actualized Finance

Market Signals

MDA Space Globalstar Next Generation LEO Constellation Contract

Category
Strategic Investments

Recipient
• MDA Space, $1.1 billion CAD

Customer
• Globalstar

Total Contract
$1.1 billion CAD
Approximately $768.1 million

Summary
MDA Space won a $1.1 billion CAD contract from Globalstar to build more than 50 AURORA satellites for Globalstar’s next generation low Earth orbit constellation. The agreement represents a disclosed commercial capital commitment to satellite manufacturing and constellation deployment. Because the contract value is public and the companies announced that the full contract is in place, the disclosed value is recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• Payload

Muon Space Series C Financing

Category
Venture Capital Raised

Recipient
• Muon Space, $250 million

Total Financing
$250 million

Summary
Muon Space closed a $250 million Series C financing round led by Eclipse Capital, with participation from Galvanize, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, I Squared Capital, Woven Capital, Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Activate Capital, ACME Capital, ArcTern Ventures, and Overlap Holdings. The financing will support expanded satellite production capacity and broader mission offerings. Because the round was closed and the amount was disclosed, it is recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• Payload
• SpaceNews

Letara Pre Series A Financing

Category
Venture Capital Raised

Recipient
• Letara, ¥2.6 billion

Total Financing
¥2.6 billion
Approximately $16 million

Summary
Japanese propulsion startup Letara closed a ¥2.6 billion pre Series A round to fund development of hybrid rocket engine technology for launch and in space applications. Headline Asia, JIC Venture Growth Investments, and Incubate Fund led the round, with participation from additional U.S. and Japanese investors. Because the financing round was closed and the amount was disclosed, it is recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• Payload

ispace Future Lunar Mission Contract Awards

Category
Government Contracts Awarded and Strategic Contracts

Recipients
• ispace, ¥6.4 billion JAXA Space Strategy Fund contract
• ispace European subsidiary, $22 million Magna Petra payload contract
• ispace, $8 million Taiwan Space Agency payload contract

Total Awards
Approximately $72.6 million combined

Summary
ispace announced a set of contracts for future lunar missions, including a ¥6.4 billion JAXA Space Strategy Fund contract to develop, launch, and operate a lunar remote sensing satellite to detect water on the Moon, a $22 million contract through its European subsidiary to carry a Magna Petra mass spectrometer payload on Mission 3, and an $8 million Taiwan Space Agency payload contract for Mission 4. Because the contract values were publicly disclosed, the committed contract values are recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• Payload

SpaceWERX 2026 STRATFI Awardees

Category
Grants and Awards

Recipients
• Agile Space Industries
• Antares Nuclear
• EO Solutions
• Hydrosat
• Kall Morris Inc.
• Method Security
• Muon Space
• Scout Space
• Sedaro
• Star Catcher
• ThinkOrbital

Total Award
$562.5 million total program value
Includes $245 million matched private capital

Summary
SpaceWERX named 11 recipients in the 2026 Strategic Funding Increase program. The program total was disclosed as $562.5 million, including SpaceWERX funds, program office funds, non traditional business contributions, and private capital, with $245 million matched by private capital in this cycle. Because the award cycle and aggregate program amount were publicly disclosed for named space companies, the disclosed program value is recorded as Actualized Finance under Grants and Awards.

Sources
• Payload

Actualized Finance Summary

Category | Amount

Government Contracts Awarded | Approximately $50.6 million
Venture Capital Raised | Approximately $266 million
Private Equity | None identified
Strategic Investments | Approximately $790.1 million
Public Financing Activity | None identified
Debt Financing | None identified
Grants and Awards | Approximately $562.5 million
Mergers and Acquisitions* | None identified

Mergers and acquisitions are reported separately and are excluded from capital totals.

Total Actualized Finance, This Week

Approximately $1.669 billion

Note
Foreign currency items were retained in their disclosed currencies in the transaction entries. Approximate U.S. dollar equivalents were used only for tracker aggregation. Mixed public and private funding programs were categorized according to the tracker section most directly applicable to the disclosed transaction.

Largest Transaction

MDA Space Globalstar Next Generation LEO Constellation Contract
$1.1 billion CAD committed
Approximately $768.1 million

Largest Venture Capital Financing

Muon Space Series C Financing
$250 million

Largest Debt Financing

No major debt financing transactions were identified during the reporting period.

Actualized Finance Running Total

Reporting Begins: Week of July 13, 2026
Previous Running Total: Approximately $119.258 billion
This Week: Approximately $1.669 billion
New Running Total: Approximately $120.927 billion

Actualized Finance Breakdown

Category | Running Total

Public Financing | $75.000 billion
Venture Capital & Private Equity | Approximately $11.513 billion
Strategic Investments | Approximately $0.937 billion
Debt Financing | $25.000 billion
Government Contracts | Approximately $7.915 billion
Grants and Awards | Approximately $0.563 billion
Total Actualized Finance | Approximately $120.927 billion

Phantom Finance

Phantom Finance represents publicly announced future capital opportunities with publicly disclosed monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

Active Opportunities:

ispace Planned Public Share Issuance
Category
Public Financing Opportunity
Potential Issuer
• ispace, up to ¥18.3 billion
Potential Value
Up to ¥18.3 billion
Approximately $121.9 million
Summary
ispace announced that it planned to issue shares of common stock in an effort to raise up to ¥18.3 billion to fund development and launch of its next two Moon missions and cover working capital. Because the announcement described intended future capital raising rather than a completed financing, the disclosed amount is recorded as Phantom Finance.

Previously recorded active Phantom Finance items remain active unless later converted into actualized commitments, canceled, or superseded by new public disclosures.

Phantom Finance Running Total

Previous Active Phantom Finance Pipeline: Approximately up to $18.654 billion equivalent
New Phantom Finance: Approximately up to $0.122 billion equivalent
Active Phantom Finance Pipeline: Approximately up to $18.776 billion equivalent

Excluded Items

Portal Space Systems Dedicated Falcon 9 Purchase

Excluded from Actualized Finance because Portal Space Systems announced the purchase of an entire SpaceX Falcon 9 launch for the Motus Via Sol 2028 mission, but the announcement did not disclose the financial terms of the launch purchase or rideshare slots.

Source: Payload

Zeno Power Firefly Lunar Payload Agreement

Excluded from Actualized Finance because Zeno Power announced a commercial payload agreement with Firefly Aerospace for a radioisotope heating unit demonstration on a future lunar mission, but the value of the agreement and related survive the night incentive were not disclosed.

Source: Payload

HEO Planet Labs Non Earth Imaging Network Agreement

Excluded from Actualized Finance because HEO and Planet Labs announced an agreement to expand HEO’s non Earth imaging network, but no transaction value was disclosed in the reviewed announcement.

Source: Payload

Rocket Lab Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator Award

Excluded from the August 17–23 reporting period because public reporting on the Rocket Lab Space Force SB AMTI award appeared before the start of the current reporting period. The award should be counted, if at all, in the earlier period in which it was announced.

Source: Payload

SpaceX Quarterly Earnings Report

Excluded from Actualized Finance because quarterly revenue, earnings, share price movement, and operating results are financial performance disclosures, not new capital commitments, financing rounds, contract awards, or future capital opportunities under the tracker standards.

Source: Payload

Reporting Standards

Actualized Finance Includes:

• Government contract awards
• Venture capital financing
• Private equity financing
• Public offerings
• Debt financing
• Strategic investments
• Grants with publicly disclosed monetary values

Phantom Finance Includes:

• Procurement ceiling increases
• Future procurement programs
• Infrastructure funding authorizations
• Publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values

Excluded:

• Mergers and acquisitions from capital totals
• Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs)
• Letters of Intent (LOIs)
• Partnership announcements without publicly disclosed funding
• Policy announcements without funding
• Undisclosed financing amounts
• Market size estimates
• Projected future investment values
• Speculative estimates
• Prior period announcements outside the current reporting period

Data Sources

Weekly updates are compiled from publicly accessible sources, including:

• Government agencies
• Regulatory filings
• Major financial publications
• Commercial space industry publications
• Official company press releases

Last Updated
August 23, 2026

Podcast Guest Invitation

Open Call for Guests

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The Unknown Quantity explores the intersection of money, technology, and the commercial space economy. Hosted by Thomas Andrew Olson and Michael J. Laine, the show features conversations with the people building, funding, and shaping the future of space.

I am Sean Key, MBA, Head Producer of the show. We are always looking for knowledgeable guests who can provide practical insights and real-world experience.

Live Broadcast:
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Interested in appearing on the show?

Message us to be considered for an upcoming episode.

The Unknown Quantity

The Unknown Quantity examines the business, finance, and infrastructure driving the commercial space industry.

Each episode features:

• Industry news and analysis

• Conversations with founders, investors, and industry leaders

• Perspectives on the opportunities and challenges shaping the future space economy

Available on Spotify and major podcast platforms.

Contact Better Futures

Whether you are launching a podcast, publishing a newsletter, or seeking strategic advisory support, we would be happy to discuss your goals.

We begin with a conversation about fit, objectives, and cadence. If there is alignment, we move forward. If not, you leave with greater clarity.

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Better Futures Inc.

Purpose
The Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker documents publicly disclosed capital commitments and publicly announced future capital opportunities within the commercial space industry.

The tracker maintains two independent ledgers:
• Actualized Finance records capital that has been publicly committed.
• Phantom Finance records publicly announced future ca…

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Center for Space Commerce and Finance

Observations on Truth, Tyranny, and Commercial Space: The Growing Pains of a Maturing Industry

This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I love philosophy. I love that you can unravel abstract concepts, examine them in search of that elusive thing we call truth, and reconstruct them into a clearer orientation toward reality.

I also love that you can have an argument with someone who has been dead for several millennia. Not the emotionally driven frustrations we commonly call arguments today. I mean argument in the philosophical sense, using reasoning to justify a claim.

My passion for philosophy influences how I look at commercial space. I try to accurately say or write what I see, while recognizing that I can be wrong. I may lack important data, misunderstand the data I have, or simply be disoriented in how I perceive what is happening.

With that acknowledged, here is my observation.

Commercial space is getting a dose of growing up.

The industry is becoming more a part of industry and less a part of ideology. Governments are not the only entities with needs that commercial space can serve. It is naïve to pretend defense does not have a major role to play, and corporate America is going to be vital to the industry’s success and, ultimately, to humanity reaching toward the stars on a more permanent basis.

We still need some cowboys. We just do not need as many as we once did. The mythological Wild West days of commercial space are coming to an end. That is not necessarily something to mourn. It is what happens when an industry matures.

As for those who still ask, why go to space? By this point, I think that argument has been answered and thoroughly shot down. The industry, however, has done a shit job of defending itself.

Why spend resources going to space when there are problems here on Earth?

We could apply that reasoning to almost every human endeavor. Why not stop everything beyond what is immediately necessary to sustain life and redirect those resources toward whatever problem someone believes should take priority?

That creates another problem.

Who gets to decide?

There will be quarrels over that decision unless, of course, you are the tyrant in charge. It does not matter whether you were elected or forced your way into power with a gun.

Let that be a reminder that all governance is built on tyranny.

Yes, I know that is provocative, and I mean it. Some forms of governance simply restrain that tyranny more effectively than others.

That brings us back to space. If we decide resources should not be spent there because other problems are more important, someone eventually has to decide which human endeavors are worthy and which are wasteful.

Human beings have never devoted themselves exclusively to survival. We explore, create, build, investigate, compete, trade, and attempt things whose value may not be immediately apparent.

Space is not an exception to that pattern.

It is another expression of it.

The Future May Be Getting Harder to Predict

I have been skeptical of long range technology and market predictions for some time, particularly when we start getting out to 20 or 25 years. It is not that I think forecasting is useless. Quite the opposite. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about where industries are going, particularly commercial space and deep technology. However, there comes a point where a forecast begins looking less like something we can reasonably defend and more like a mathematically sophisticated guess.

I may have found part of the reason I think this way.

Ray Kurzweil has been writing about accelerating technological change for decades. One of his observations has stuck with me:

“The pace of change of our human-created technology is accelerating and its powers are expanding at an exponential pace.”

That is interesting enough by itself, but another observation gets closer to the problem I have with long range predictions:

“The more that progress accelerates, the shorter the distance measured in years that we may see ahead.”

I think there is something important in that idea, especially considering what is happening with artificial intelligence today.

The Feedback Loop Is Getting Faster

I recently read an article about the development of what are being called Self Driving Labs. The idea is relatively straightforward. AI systems are increasingly being connected to laboratory equipment, scientific literature, proprietary datasets, and automated experimentation systems.

An AI system can help develop a hypothesis, design an experiment, operate or direct laboratory equipment, analyze the results, record failures, modify the experiment, and try again.

That creates a feedback loop.

AI improves research. Research produces better technology. Better technology improves AI and automation. Those systems then accelerate the next round of research.

There is already some evidence that pieces of this are happening.

A 2026 review in Nature Reviews Chemistry describes Self Driving Laboratories progressing toward systems where algorithms can propose, execute, and interpret experiments with limited human intervention. Another paper in Communications Materials describes autonomous laboratories as allowing scientists to learn faster, use fewer resources, and fail more intelligently.

The National Science Foundation has gone considerably further than simply studying the idea. In July 2026, NSF announced a $380 million investment in 20 teams intended to establish a national network of AI enabled automated laboratories, supplemented by another $20 million in philanthropic support.

None of this proves Kurzweil’s larger predictions about exponential technological development. We need to be careful about making that leap.

But it may provide limited evidence that one of the mechanisms capable of producing that acceleration is beginning to emerge.

And I think the mechanism may be considerably larger than the closed AI research loop.

Technology Does Not Develop in Isolation

Technology operates within society and, more importantly, within a network of other technologies.

A breakthrough in materials science can improve computing. Better computing can improve AI. AI can accelerate biotechnology. Biotechnology can influence human performance and agriculture. Improvements in energy can change manufacturing economics. Manufacturing improvements can change what is possible in space. Space infrastructure can provide new scientific instruments that contribute information back into physics, materials science, Earth science, and other fields.

A particularly good historical example is the development of the transistor and the technological chain that followed it, because it demonstrates how one breakthrough can propagate across seemingly separate domains.

In 1947, researchers at Bell Labs developed the first working transistor. That breakthrough depended on earlier advances in quantum physics, semiconductor materials, chemistry, and wartime electronics.

Then the interactions multiplied:

Quantum physics → semiconductor materials → transistor → integrated circuits → smaller computers → digital control systems → industrial automation → telecommunications → satellites → global communications → more powerful computing → modern AI.

But it did not remain a straight line. Better computers gave scientists better tools for modeling semiconductor materials and designing increasingly complicated chips. Better chips produced better computers. Telecommunications created enormous demand for computing. Satellites benefited from increasingly compact electronics, while space and defense programs helped create demand for reliable integrated circuits.

Eventually, those interacting technologies produced the computing infrastructure that made modern machine learning possible.

The relationships are not linear.

They are feedback loops interacting with other feedback loops.

Then we have to add capital, markets, regulation, infrastructure, education, defense requirements, consumer demand, and government policy. Technology changes these systems, and these systems subsequently influence which technologies receive resources and develop further.

That makes technological development look less like a collection of independent curves and more like an increasingly interconnected network.

AI may dramatically increase the speed at which information moves through that network.

Sometimes Innovation Is Just Making the Right Connection

I have an anecdotal example of this from my own family.

When my son began his PhD, he was trained in laser physics, although his doctorate was in astrophysics. At one point, his understanding of laser physics gave him insight into an astrophysics procedure. He recognized a way to eliminate a step, or at least make the step that was supposed to be taken considerably more efficient.

What interests me about this example is that the insight did not necessarily require discovering some entirely new branch of physics.

It required knowledge from one field encountering a problem in another.

Humans do this all the time.

The problem is that humans have limits. A scientist can only read so many papers, understand so many disciplines, attend so many conferences, and maintain working knowledge of so many technologies. There may already be solutions sitting somewhere in the world’s accumulated knowledge that could solve problems in completely different fields. The people working on those problems simply may not know those solutions exist.

AI potentially changes that constraint.

Imagine an AI system continuously examining physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, manufacturing, energy, computing, and engineering and asking a very simple question:

Has somebody somewhere else already solved part of this problem?

That may prove almost as important as AI generating entirely new discoveries.

Your breakthrough does not always have to be something humanity has never seen before. In fact, I suspect that innovation through recombination is more common than entirely new discovery. Sometimes innovation occurs because the right piece of existing knowledge encounters the right problem.

AI dramatically increases the number of opportunities for those encounters.

Now the Prediction Problem Gets Interesting

This brings me back to long range forecasting.

Suppose we are trying to forecast the commercial space industry 25 years from now.

We could model launch growth. We could model satellite deployment. We could estimate communications markets, Earth observation, Lunar development, orbital computing, manufacturing, energy, materials, and other sectors. We could apply reasonable growth rates and produce a TAM.

The mathematics might be perfectly correct.

But there is another problem.

We are implicitly assuming that we know most of the important variables.

If AI accelerates the movement of knowledge between technological domains, the number of meaningful interactions between those domains potentially increases. A materials breakthrough affects computing. Computing affects AI. AI affects materials research. That breakthrough affects energy storage. Energy storage changes the economics of robotics. Robotics changes manufacturing. Manufacturing changes launch infrastructure. Cheaper launch changes orbital infrastructure. Orbital infrastructure creates new computing or scientific capabilities.

And around we go.

Some of those interactions will produce nothing.

Others may create industries we currently do not have names for.

That is where Kurzweil’s observation becomes particularly useful.

“Predicting specific projects is indeed not feasible. But the result of the overall complex, chaotic evolutionary process of technological progress is predictable.”

We may be able to predict the direction of the system without being able to predict its eventual composition.

Computing will probably become more capable. AI will probably become more capable. Automation will probably increase. Scientific productivity will probably improve. Humanity will probably deploy increasingly sophisticated infrastructure.

Those are directional predictions.

Exactly what technologies emerge from their interaction is a very different question.

Twenty Five Years Is a Long Time

This is why I become increasingly uncomfortable when I see precise TAM predictions extending 20 or 25 years into the future.

The problem is not simply that there is more uncertainty the farther into the future we look. That has always been true.

The more interesting possibility is that the rate at which new variables enter the system may itself be accelerating.

That is different.

If technological development remained relatively stable, we could extend today’s industries forward with increasingly wide confidence ranges. But if AI begins accelerating scientific research while simultaneously increasing knowledge transfer between technological disciplines, then the structure of the economy itself may change faster.

Kurzweil made another observation that captures this problem rather nicely:

“The last 20 years are not a good guide to the next 20 years.”

That does not mean we should stop forecasting.

It means we should understand what forecasts actually are.

A five year forecast can potentially tell us something reasonably useful about markets, technologies, capital requirements, and infrastructure. A ten year forecast becomes more uncertain but can still provide strategic direction. At 25 years, particularly during a period of accelerating technological change, we may be describing a possible future rather than predicting one.

There is nothing wrong with that as long as we call it what it is.

The Direction May Be Easier to See Than the Destination

This actually leaves me more optimistic about forecasting, not less.

We do not necessarily need to know exactly what the world will look like in 2050 to make useful decisions today.

We can identify functions that will probably remain necessary. Humanity will need energy. We will need computing. We will need transportation. We will need materials. We will need communications. We will need food, water, infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated ways of processing information.

The artifacts performing those functions may change considerably.

That is one reason I keep coming back to functions rather than artifacts when thinking about the future.

Perhaps the mistake is believing that forecasting requires us to identify the artifacts.

We may be able to see the direction of technological development surprisingly well while becoming progressively worse at predicting exactly what technologies will exist along the way.

If AI increasingly connects previously isolated pools of human knowledge, accelerates experimentation, and allows technologies to influence one another faster, Kurzweil’s prediction horizon may indeed begin getting shorter.

We do not have enough evidence yet to say that has happened.

But for the first time, we may be able to see some of the machinery that could make it happen.

And that is something worth watching.

What do you think: will AI make the future easier to predict by revealing the direction of technological progress, or harder to predict by creating entirely new possibilities faster than we can model them? Leave your answer in the chat.

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How Big Can the Commercial Space Economy Reasonably Become?

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to brief a very large corporation that I cannot name on where I think the commercial space industry is going over the next five and ten years. A few days later, during the after action questions, a director asked what should have been a relatively simple question: How big can this industry reasonably become?

Someone offered a number, and it was absurd. I am not going to repeat it because the number itself is not really the point. What bothered me was that I could not immediately point to a reasonable industry number and say, this is the economic territory we think commercial space can actually address.

We have forecasts, growth projections, and reports telling us the space economy could reach $1 trillion, $1.8 trillion, $2 trillion, or considerably more depending on how far into the future we are willing to travel. What I am not convinced we have is a reasonable baseline for how large this industry can actually become. That bothered me enough that I decided to start working on one.

Start With What We Know

Space Foundation estimates that the global space economy reached approximately $686 billion in 2025, growing 12 percent from the previous year. Commercial activity accounted for $544.3 billion, while government space spending reached nearly $141 billion. Space Foundation also reports a five year CAGR approaching 10 percent, so the 12 percent increase did not appear out of nowhere. (Space Foundation)

That gives us a place to start, but $686 billion tells us approximately how large the economy is today. It does not tell us how much economic territory is available for the industry to grow into, and those are two very different questions.

For this exercise, I am using Total Addressable Market, or TAM, in its simplest sense. How much economic activity can the commercial space industry reasonably address if the technologies and markets we can identify today mature?

The word I keep coming back to is reasonably. I am not interested in producing the largest TAM possible because that is actually pretty easy. Connect enough industries to space, make enough assumptions, and eventually you can produce a number large enough to make everyone in the room uncomfortable. I want the opposite, a number we can defend.

I Think We Are Looking at Two Economies

The more I worked through the problem, the more I became convinced that we need to separate the economic opportunity into two categories, Direct Space Activity and Space Enabled Activity.

Direct Space Activity is what most of us already recognize as the space economy. It includes launch, spacecraft manufacturing, satellite operations, communications, Earth observation, ground infrastructure, human spaceflight, government space procurement, and the infrastructure supporting those activities.

Space Enabled Activity is where things get more complicated. Agriculture uses positioning and Earth observation. Aviation and maritime transportation depend on navigation, communications, and weather. Logistics depends heavily on positioning and timing. Financial systems use precision timing. Insurance uses weather and Earth observation. Defense increasingly depends on communications, ISR, navigation, timing, missile warning, weather, and other space based capabilities.

This is not just theoretical. Space Foundation estimates that satellite enabled products and services generated $385.9 billion in 2025, or 70.9 percent of commercial space revenue. ESA similarly describes satellite data, signals, and services as increasingly embedded in the broader digital economy. (Space Foundation)

These industries do not suddenly become part of the space industry simply because they use space infrastructure. We cannot take the entire global defense budget, add agriculture, finance, logistics, telecommunications, transportation, and energy, and announce that we have discovered a gigantic space economy. That may make a great slide, but it does not make a particularly useful analysis.

The question is how much of that economic activity space can reasonably address. That gives me the basic framework I am working with:

Direct Space TAM + Space Enabled TAM = Total Space Economic TAM

This is still a work in progress, but I think it gives us a better boundary for thinking about the opportunity. The goal is not the largest number we can justify. It is the most reasonable number we can defend.

Once we separate the economy this way, we can finally begin putting numbers against it. Orbital Progress estimates the narrower space sustaining economy at approximately $203 billion, while Space Foundation estimates the broader 2025 global space economy at $685.6 billion.

The methodologies are not identical, so I do not want to pretend that subtracting one from the other produces a perfect accounting identity. It does, however, give us a reasonable working baseline. Using the $203 billion estimate for the sustaining side leaves approximately $482.6 billion in broader space enabled activity.

That gives Better Futures a working current Space Economic TAM of approximately $685.6 billion, divided into approximately $203 billion of Space Sustaining TAM and $482.6 billion of Space Enabled TAM.

Another number falls out of this exercise that I think may be just as interesting. The relationship between enabled and sustaining activity is approximately 2.4 to 1. In other words, the current estimates suggest roughly $2.40 of broader space enabled economic activity for every $1 of economic activity sustaining the space infrastructure underneath it.

I would not treat 2.4 to 1 as a precise accounting ratio yet because we are comparing estimates built with different methodologies. For now, I think it is better treated as a directional measure of the economic leverage created by space infrastructure. As we refine the model, that ratio is something I want to keep watching.

Now we have something we did not have when that director asked the question last week. We have a reasonable working estimate of the current economic territory, and we have a way of looking at the relationship between the infrastructure and the economic activity it enables.

The next question is whether we can reasonably expect that economy to continue growing at 12 to 13 percent.

Is 12 Percent Really That Unusual?

My initial reaction to 12 percent growth was that sustaining it for very long would be difficult, so I went backward before going forward. What I found changed how I looked at the question.

The automobile industry provides one interesting comparison. U.S. passenger car registrations increased from approximately 458,500 in 1910 to more than 8.2 million in 1920, which works out to roughly 33.5 percent compound annual growth for a decade. Radio provides another example, with sales increasing from roughly $60 million in 1922 to more than $840 million in 1929, roughly 46 percent compound annual growth.

Railroads take us even further back. The United States had about 40 miles of railroad track in 1830, but by 1855 it had more than 20,000 miles.

These are obviously not perfect comparisons to commercial space, nor am I suggesting that space will repeat any of those growth curves. They do answer a narrower question. Industries can sustain growth above 12 percent for years, particularly during periods when new technology is becoming infrastructure for other economic activity.

The automobile did not simply create automobile manufacturers. It created roads, fuel stations, dealerships, mechanics, insurance, financing, trucking, motels, restaurants, suburbs, and eventually an enormous logistics system. Radio did not simply create a market for radios, it helped create broadcasting, advertising, entertainment, news, sports programming, and a new communications economy. Railroads did not simply create railroad companies, they changed where factories could operate, where cities developed, where businesses could sell products, and how national markets functioned.

In each case, the direct industry grew, but so did the economic activity enabled by it. That is where I think the comparison to commercial space becomes interesting.

Why I Think 12 Percent May Be Reasonable

I am not assuming the commercial space economy will conveniently grow at exactly 12 percent every year because it will not. There will be good years and bad years, companies will fail, technologies will take longer than expected, capital will become expensive, and government priorities will change.

I also think there is a reasonable possibility that growth could accelerate during part of the next five to fifteen years. That sounds optimistic, and it is, but the assumptions behind it are analytical rather than simply optimistic bets.

The first major driver I am watching is orbital data centers. The demand for computing, data storage, and AI infrastructure is growing rapidly on Earth, while orbital computing still has serious technical and economic questions to answer. If orbital data centers demonstrate sufficient economic returns, however, they do more than create another space market.

They create demand for launch, large scale power generation, thermal management, communications, spacecraft manufacturing, orbital construction, maintenance, logistics, and replacement hardware. If the return is there, capital has a reason to build those capabilities, and capital tends to follow return.

Then Space Manufacturing

Space manufacturing has a different economic case. The question is not whether we can manufacture things in microgravity because we already know that we can. The question is whether we can produce something in space whose additional economic value is greater than the additional cost of producing it there and, when necessary, bringing it back to Earth in one piece.

If the answer becomes yes for enough products, space manufacturing begins to scale. It then becomes another customer for transportation, energy, communications, logistics, construction, storage, and servicing, while sharing portions of the infrastructure already being developed for orbital computing.

That shared infrastructure is important because infrastructure built for one market can lower the barriers facing another. Instead of every emerging space market having to solve the same problems independently, one economically successful market can help pay to solve problems that benefit the markets following it.

And that brings us to the Moon.

Lunar Mining May Be Key to Scaling the cisLunar Economy

I have believed for some time that Lunar mining is important to the long term expansion of the cisLunar economy, but mining the Moon simply because resources exist there is not much of an economic model. Someone has to need what you are mining, and a growing orbital economy begins creating those customers.

Orbital data centers require infrastructure, as does space manufacturing. Large orbital structures require mass, shielding, energy, logistics, propellant, and materials. If all of that mass has to come from the bottom of Earth’s gravity well forever, transportation remains a persistent constraint on the economy.

Lunar resources potentially change that equation. Water has potential value for life support, shielding, and propellant, while Lunar materials could eventually provide feedstock for construction and manufacturing. The point is not that Lunar resources suddenly become cheap, but that as the amount of infrastructure in cisLunar space increases, the economic case for sourcing some of its mass from the Moon becomes stronger.

The relationship then begins working in both directions. Growing cisLunar activity creates demand for Lunar resources, that demand creates an economic reason for mining, Lunar resources support additional infrastructure, and additional infrastructure creates more demand. At that point we are no longer talking about mining in search of a market, we are talking about mining as part of an emerging economic system.

And Then There Is Space Based Solar Power

Space based solar power comes later in my assumptions, but this is where orbital data centers become important for another reason. The two technologies share many of the same problems, including large scale power generation in space, large orbital structures, thermal management, construction, maintenance, launch capacity, communications, and logistics.

If orbital data centers scale, there is already an economic reason to begin solving those problems. That does not automatically solve space based solar power because SBSP still has several important problems unique to delivering power from orbit to Earth.

It has to transmit enormous amounts of energy over roughly 36,000 kilometers from GEO to Earth. That requires Wireless Power Transmission, large scale microwave conversion hardware, phased array transmitters, beam control, and large rectennas on Earth to receive the energy. An orbital data center does not have those particular problems because it consumes its electricity where it is generated.

The distinction is important. Orbital data centers can help solve many of the shared infrastructure problems first, leaving space based solar power with a narrower set of major problems to solve. If those remaining transmission problems can eventually be solved at commercially competitive costs, SBSP would not have to create the entire orbital industrial base from scratch.

It could build upon infrastructure and capabilities that orbital computing, space manufacturing, Lunar development, and the expanding cisLunar economy have already helped create. At that point, space infrastructure could potentially participate directly in the terrestrial energy market, and that is a very large economic territory.

This Is Why I Think Acceleration Is Possible

What I am describing is not four independent bets. I see an economic progression in which Orbital Data Centers, Space Manufacturing, Lunar Resources, and Space Based Solar Power increasingly reinforce one another.

Around those markets develops another layer of infrastructure consisting of launch, power, communications, logistics, construction, servicing, and manufacturing. The important part is that each market does not have to solve every problem from scratch. One market pays to solve a problem, another market gets to use the solution, infrastructure built for one customer reduces costs for the next, and new customers improve the economics of the infrastructure.

If the economic returns are there, capital has a reason to continue entering the system. The potential feedback is fairly straightforward:

Return → Capital → Infrastructure → Capacity → New Markets → Demand → Return

That is the analytical basis for my optimism, and it is why I do not necessarily assume growth begins slowing simply because the economy becomes larger. If those markets demonstrate sufficient economic return, there is a plausible period during years five through fifteen where growth could accelerate instead.

There Are Plenty of Ways I Could Be Wrong

Orbital data centers may fail to produce returns competitive with terrestrial alternatives, while space manufacturing may create interesting products without creating markets large enough to matter. Launch costs may not decline sufficiently, Lunar resources may remain more expensive than bringing equivalent materials from Earth, and space based solar power may never solve its transmission problems at commercially attractive costs.

Capital could become a constraint, regulation could become a constraint, government spending could change, and technical failures could delay entire markets. There will almost certainly be markets we currently expect to develop that do not, just as there will probably be markets we are barely thinking about today that become important.

There is also a basic mathematical reality we cannot ignore. As the economy becomes larger, maintaining the same percentage growth requires increasingly larger amounts of new economic activity. At $686 billion, 12 percent growth requires roughly $82 billion of additional annual activity. At $2 trillion it requires $240 billion, while at $5 trillion it requires $600 billion.

That is a much higher hurdle, but it does not automatically mean growth has to slow. If new infrastructure produces attractive economic returns, capital formation and the creation of new Direct Space and Space Enabled markets could potentially produce enough new activity to clear that hurdle for some period.

What Does 12 Percent Actually Give Us?

Starting with approximately $686 billion and simply compounding at 12 percent, the economy reaches approximately $1.2 trillion after five years, $2.1 trillion after ten years, and $11.7 trillion after twenty five years.

I am not presenting those numbers as forecasts. They are reference points that allow us to test the economic assumptions against what the industry would actually have to produce.

The five year number does not strike me as particularly difficult to imagine given the markets and infrastructure already developing. The ten year number becomes more interesting because we have to ask whether orbital computing, manufacturing, Lunar development, communications, defense, and other markets can create enough additional activity to support an economy above $2 trillion.

The twenty five year number asks a much bigger question. Can commercial space reasonably become an economy approaching $12 trillion? If we define the space economy primarily as rockets, satellites, and government programs, I have a difficult time getting there. If commercial space becomes infrastructure for computing, manufacturing, energy, logistics, communications, defense, and other portions of the terrestrial economy, I am much less comfortable dismissing it.

That is why establishing a reasonable TAM matters.

We Owe Corporate America a Better Answer

The question that started this exercise was not really asking me to predict the future to the dollar. The director was trying to understand the scale of the opportunity his company may be looking at, and that deserves a better answer than an absurdly large number on one side and an overly conservative forecast on the other.

I do not know exactly how large the commercial space economy will become, and nobody else does either. What I think we should be able to do is establish a reasonable boundary for the economic territory available to it, explain the assumptions underneath that boundary, identify what has to happen for the industry to move through it, and be equally clear about what could prevent that from happening.

That is what I am trying to build, not the largest number I can defend or the smallest one, but a reasonable one.

What do you think the space economy’s TAM is? Put your comment in the chat.

Important note about the Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker: The public tracker will run one week behind. If you are interested in the most current data, paid subscribers receive access to the current week’s Capital Flow Tracker. The tracker is then archived and made available to everyone in the following week’s edition of Better Futures.

Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker

Reporting Period: August 10, 2026 – August 16, 2026

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Purpose

The Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker documents publicly disclosed capital commitments and publicly announced future capital opportunities within the commercial space industry.

The tracker maintains two independent ledgers:

• Actualized Finance records capital that has been publicly committed.
• Phantom Finance records publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

The tracker reports transactions only. It does not provide market analysis, forecasts, or investment opinions.

Actualized Finance

Market Signals

Allied Orbits Private Earth Observation Constellation Investment

Category
Strategic Investments

Recipient
• Allied Orbits Private Limited consortium, more than ₹1,200 crore

Consortium Members
• PixxelSpace India
• Dhruva Space
• PierSight Space
• SatSure Analytics India

Total Investment
More than ₹1,200 crore
Approximately $137 million

Summary
The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre signed a formal public private partnership agreement with Allied Orbits Private Limited, a consortium led by PixxelSpace India with Dhruva Space, PierSight Space, and SatSure Analytics India. Under the agreement, the consortium will invest more than ₹1,200 crore to design, build, own, and operate a 12 satellite Earth observation constellation scheduled to become fully operational by 2029. Because the agreement identifies a committed commercial investment amount and named commercial participants, the disclosed amount is recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• SatNews

Space Force Space Data Network Multi Vendor Connectivity Awards

Category
Government Contracts Awarded

Recipients
• Amazon LEO for Government, $12 million
• Lockheed Martin, $12 million
• Northrop Grumman, $12 million
• Rocket Lab, $12 million
• York Space Systems, $12 million

Total Award
$60 million

Summary
The U.S. Space Force awarded five companies a combined $60 million for Space Data Network multi vendor connectivity work. Each company received an agreement valued at $12 million. The awards support prototype demonstrations of ground to space and space to space data transport across vendor systems and seed the development of Space Exchange Point satellites for the Space Data Network architecture.

Sources
• Via Satellite
• Defense Daily

Impulse Space VICTUS SALO Contract Extension

Category
Government Contracts Awarded

Recipient
• Impulse Space, $28 million

Total Award
$28 million

Summary
Impulse Space received a $28 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract extension from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command. The contract funds two Mira orbital transfer vehicles for the VICTUS SALO 2 and VICTUS SALO 3 operational flight demonstrations in low Earth orbit, expanding Impulse Space’s role in tactically responsive space operations.

Sources
• SatNews
• Via Satellite

Deorbit as a Service Preliminary Design Awards

Category
Government Contracts Awarded

Recipients
• D Orbit
• Firefly Aerospace
• Katalyst Space

Total Award
Approximately $8.4 million combined

Summary
The Defense Innovation Unit and Space Development Agency awarded preliminary design and risk reduction contracts to D Orbit, Firefly Aerospace, and Katalyst Space for commercial Deorbit as a Service concepts. The awards support early design work for services that could capture and safely deorbit satellites. Because the disclosed combined award value is identifiable, the amount is recorded as Actualized Finance.

Sources
• Defense Daily
• SpaceNews

Actualized Finance Summary

Category | Amount

Government Contracts Awarded | Approximately $96.4 million
Venture Capital Raised | None identified
Private Equity | None identified
Strategic Investments | Approximately $137 million
Public Financing Activity | None identified
Debt Financing | None identified
Grants and Awards | None separately identified
Mergers and Acquisitions* | None identified

Mergers and acquisitions are reported separately and are excluded from capital totals.

Total Actualized Finance, This Week

Approximately $233 million

Note
Foreign currency items were retained in their disclosed currencies in the transaction entries. Approximate U.S. dollar equivalents were used only for tracker aggregation.

Largest Transaction

Allied Orbits Private Earth Observation Constellation Investment
More than ₹1,200 crore committed
Approximately $137 million

Largest Venture Capital Financing

No major venture capital financing transactions were identified during the reporting period.

Largest Debt Financing

No major debt financing transactions were identified during the reporting period.

Actualized Finance Running Total

Reporting Begins: Week of July 13, 2026
Previous Running Total: Approximately $119.025 billion
This Week: Approximately $0.233 billion
New Running Total: Approximately $119.258 billion

Actualized Finance Breakdown

Category | Running Total

Public Financing | $75.000 billion
Venture Capital & Private Equity | Approximately $11.247 billion
Strategic Investments | Approximately $0.147 billion
Debt Financing | $25.000 billion
Government Contracts | Approximately $7.864 billion
Grants and Awards | $0
Total Actualized Finance | Approximately $119.258 billion

Phantom Finance

Phantom Finance represents publicly announced future capital opportunities with publicly disclosed monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

Active Opportunities:

No new Phantom Finance opportunities with disclosed monetary values were identified during the August 10–16, 2026 reporting period.

Previously recorded active Phantom Finance items remain active unless later converted into actualized commitments, canceled, or superseded by new public disclosures.

Phantom Finance Running Total

Previous Active Phantom Finance Pipeline: Approximately up to $18.654 billion equivalent
New Phantom Finance: $0
Active Phantom Finance Pipeline: Approximately up to $18.654 billion equivalent

Excluded Items

Voyager Technologies Space Force Space to Space Communications Contract

Excluded from Actualized Finance because the August 10, 2026, announcement disclosed that Voyager Technologies received a U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command contract but did not disclose a monetary value.

Source: Autonomy Global

BlackSky Multi Year International Defense Contract

Excluded from Actualized Finance because the August 12, 2026, announcement disclosed a multi year international defense contract for satellite imagery and analytics but did not disclose a specific monetary value for the transaction.

Source: SatNews

Marlink Acquisition of GRC

Excluded from capital totals because mergers and acquisitions are reported separately and excluded under the tracker standards. The transaction value was also not disclosed in the reviewed announcement.

Source: SatNews

Novaspace In Orbit Servicing Market Projection

Excluded from Phantom Finance because the $3 billion figure described a market revenue projection, not a disclosed capital commitment, procurement ceiling, infrastructure funding authorization, or specific future capital opportunity.

Source: SatNews

Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund SpaceX Holding Disclosure

Excluded from Actualized Finance because the item disclosed an investment holding, not a newly announced capital commitment during the reporting period.

Source: SatNews

Reporting Standards

Actualized Finance Includes:

• Government contract awards
• Venture capital financing
• Private equity financing
• Public offerings
• Debt financing
• Strategic investments
• Grants with publicly disclosed monetary values

Phantom Finance Includes:

• Procurement ceiling increases
• Future procurement programs
• Infrastructure funding authorizations
• Publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values

Excluded:

• Mergers and acquisitions from capital totals
• Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs)
• Letters of Intent (LOIs)
• Partnership announcements without publicly disclosed funding
• Policy announcements without funding
• Undisclosed financing amounts
• Market size estimates
• Projected future investment values
• Speculative estimates
• Prior period announcements outside the current reporting period

Data Sources

Weekly updates are compiled from publicly accessible sources, including:

• Government agencies
• Regulatory filings
• Major financial publications
• Commercial space industry publications
• Official company press releases

Last Updated
August 16, 2026

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I am Sean Key, MBA, Head Producer of the show. We are always looking for knowledgeable guests who can provide practical insights and real-world experience.

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I started looking at China’s Lunar program from a slightly different direction. We spend a lot of time talking about China racing the United States back to the Moon, competing for Lunar resources, or simply trying to demonstrate that it is a technological peer. All of those things are probably part of it, but I think there may be another way to look at what China is doing.

China may be using its Lunar program as a strategic hedge against future economic and geopolitical vulnerability.

That does not mean China knows what the Lunar economy is going to become. None of us really do. It means China may not need to know. What China needs is a position.

The Economic Problem

China has some real economic problems to work through. Its property sector has weakened considerably, local governments are carrying significant debt, household confidence is weak, and the transition from an investment-driven economy toward greater domestic consumption has proven difficult.

That creates a longer-term problem that I find much more interesting: Where does the next generation of Chinese economic growth come from?

China has spent decades building infrastructure, factories, cities, transportation systems, and an enormous manufacturing base. There are limits to how long you can continue generating the same returns from building more of the same things. So China needs new industries.

This is where the Lunar program starts becoming interesting from an economic perspective. Going to the Moon requires launch vehicles, robotics, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, communications, navigation, advanced materials, precision manufacturing, energy systems, resource extraction, construction, and eventually logistics.

Notice something about that list: Almost none of those technologies are useful only on the Moon.

China can invest in Lunar development and still receive technological and industrial benefits even if the Lunar economy develops much more slowly than expected. That starts looking less like exploration and more like industrial policy.

The Moon as a Hedge

This is where I think the idea becomes useful. We do not know what the Lunar economy will look like twenty years from now. Maybe Lunar resources become commercially viable, or maybe they do not. Maybe we build permanent settlements, or maybe they remain small research and industrial facilities. Maybe cisLunar transportation becomes an enormous market, or maybe government activity continues to dominate it for decades.

We simply do not know yet.

China does not necessarily have to pick the correct answer. It can hedge.

If the Lunar economy develops slowly, China still gets better rockets, robotics, autonomous technology, communications, materials, manufacturing capabilities, and scientific knowledge. If the Lunar economy develops quickly, China already has a position.

That is a very different way of looking at the return on investment. China does not necessarily need the Moon itself to generate an immediate financial return. Some of the return comes from developing the capabilities required to get there and operate there. The rest comes from maintaining the option to participate if something much larger develops.

Then There Is the United States

There is another side to this that we cannot ignore. China does not have to believe that the United States will dominate cisLunar space. It only has to believe that allowing the United States to dominate it would create a strategic vulnerability.

China’s Lunar roadmap is increasingly moving from exploration toward operations. Chang’e 7 is intended to investigate the Lunar south pole and search for water ice. Chang’e 8 is expected to test technologies associated with using Lunar resources. Those missions feed into China’s longer-term plans for the International Lunar Research Station.

That progression matters. You explore, then you learn to operate. Then you build infrastructure, and eventually you begin creating an economy around that infrastructure.

We do not know whether that last step happens in ten years, twenty years, or considerably longer. But if it does happen, the countries that already know how to operate there are going to be in a very different position from those arriving afterward.

What About Resources?

Resources are probably part of the equation as well, particularly water. The focus on the Lunar south pole is not accidental. Water potentially gives you life support, industrial feedstock, and other capabilities necessary for sustained operations.

Again, though, we run into uncertainty. We do not yet know whether Lunar resources can be extracted economically at meaningful scale. But China does not necessarily need to know that today.

If Lunar resources turn out to be economically marginal, China still develops the technologies required to find them, reach them, extract them, process them, and operate equipment remotely in an extremely difficult environment. Those technologies have value.

If Lunar resources become economically important, China already has experience developing them. The downside is technological development. The upside could be strategic access to an entirely new resource base. That is not a bad hedge.

The Part I Find Most Interesting

This brings me back to something I think we sometimes get wrong when discussing the Moon. We keep trying to determine exactly what the Lunar economy is going to look like. I am not convinced China is doing that.

China may simply be looking at several possible futures and recognizing that being absent from cisLunar space creates more strategic risk than participating in it.

China’s own space policy connects space development with economic development, technological advancement, national security, national strength, and the future development of cisLunar space. That sounds less like a Moon program and more like positioning.

And positioning has value even when you do not know exactly what the eventual market will become.

More Than Another Moon Race

This is why I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with describing what China and the United States are doing as simply another Moon race. The original race was about getting there first. This one may be about something different.

It may be about who develops the transportation systems, communications, navigation, energy, resource extraction, logistics, standards, partnerships, and infrastructure that allow everyone else to operate there. That is a very different race.

China’s strategy appears to combine technological development, industrial upgrading, access to potential resources, national prestige, and geopolitical positioning. The research points toward strategic positioning, resource access, technological development, and industrial upgrading as considerably stronger explanations than short-term economic stimulus.

When I put all of that together, I come back to the same idea.

China may be buying options on the future.

If the Lunar economy develops slowly, China gets useful technology and industrial capability. If it develops quickly, China has a seat at the table. If Lunar resources become important, China has experience accessing them. If cisLunar infrastructure becomes strategically important, China is already there.

And if none of this develops quite the way anyone expects, many of the technologies China develops along the way still have economic and strategic value.

We tend to ask whether going to the Moon is worth the money. China may be asking a different question:

What happens if the Moon becomes important and we are not there?

That is a question I think we should be asking too. At the end of the Day, we are waiting for the other to Blink.

I have spent the better part of two years learning how to get AI to be my assistant and not my voice. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it horribly wrong. Usually, I realize it after the fact because someone points it out. It is embarrassing, and for anyone who knows me personally, embarrassment is a deep affliction of mine. It probably has something to do with insecurities I had growing up that were never fully resolved or healed.

But besides all of that, the criticism is ultimately appreciated because it helps me communicate more effectively.

I played music professionally because it was the medium where I could express myself fully and emotionally. I found great comfort in that, but it had its limits. I find business writing to be a place where I can potentially be my authentic self, where I can speak about my passions clearly without being as restrained by social norms.

Yes, I do drop the occasional F bomb, but that is subdued compared to my previous incarnations, and I find its use as something of a pressure valve. I also use it to draw the reader’s or listener’s attention. It is like adding a spice to your favorite food. Used correctly, it makes you pay attention to something that otherwise might have blended into everything else.

I try to keep my personal agenda subtle as well. It has been a personal agenda of mine to help the commercial space industry become less beholden to government dependency and more dependent on market forces. That is one reason I write in a more direct, business oriented, and realistic tone instead of the dreamer tone that is common in this industry.

I will always believe there is a duty to paint a realistic picture that the muggles can understand because, if any of this is going to happen, we need them. They do not necessarily buy the big dreams of a million people on Mars, or at least they do not believe those dreams are as close as some people in this industry claim. Nor do they rely on the Southern Baptist style evangelists of the industry, with their tent revival theatrics, as a reliable way to understand where the industry actually stands.

If we do not learn to speak to these people in a manner they are accustomed to, rather than relying solely on what has kept this industry going until now, we are going to lose many powerful allies and resources.

That is partly why I write the way I do.

I see a technological future with more human beings in space, but not as many as some claim. I see something closer to outposts in Antarctica, oil rig workers in the Gulf, hotshot firefighters, and the occasional skydiving junkie. I do not see Steve commuting to his 9 to 5 job on the Lunar colony anytime soon. In the near future, that is what I can realistically see.

As I have said before, anything after 25 years is mostly a dream. It is nice to have those dreams, and sometimes they are useful for pointing your compass in a particular direction. But the real work starts in the present and moves forward in five year increments until you reach the point where pretending you can assign a meaningful probability to the future becomes silly.

The thing is, if you want a permanent human presence in space, and you want it to remain relevant, you have to build something the rest of society wants. Because it is the rest of society that is ultimately going to help you make that dream come true.

Remember that as if it were bestowed upon you by Yahweh, Buddha, or Arthur C. Clarke. I would add L. Ron Hubbard, but I am trying to stay out of trouble

.

I woke up today with several seemingly unrelated thoughts running through my head. Some were quick gut reactions to things I had seen on LinkedIn, such as the idea that AI data is not thought, or that the required rate of return for a small emerging technology company is fundamentally different from that of a large company developing the same technology, partly because the larger company has revenue from other sources.

Those thoughts brought me back to several ideas that have been lingering in my mind. There is the historical Luddite response to new technology, the familiar criticism that someone “does not understand the physics,” and my growing view that academia is largely a process of reformulating, refining, and building upon existing knowledge, punctuated by a relatively small number of significant discoveries.

At first, these thoughts seem unrelated. I am beginning to think they are not. I even had AI help me break them down to identify the underlying thread.

What emerged was this: we repeatedly confuse our representations of reality with reality itself, and that mistake affects how we understand intelligence, technological change, scientific knowledge, institutions, and financial risk.

The Map Is Not the Territory

I fall back on one of the fundamental ideas of General Semantics, “the map is not the territory.”

In a general sense, we are building symbolic maps that are encoded into databases. AI retrieves and processes that information, using probability to calculate an appropriate response. Because of our natural tendency to anthropomorphize, we recognize the resulting language as something closely resembling human thought.

But this is not human thought. It is data that we encode and put into a machine, then teach the machine how to retrieve and process when we ask.

There is something more important here, however, and that is the quality of the data going into the system.

People record what they understand, but we often overlook that we are encoding limited maps shaped by incomplete knowledge, bias, and measurement constraints. Even in highly technical fields like physics, the map is still an approximation of reality, not reality itself.

Academia Primarily Refines the Map

This is where academia fits into the picture.

We often talk about academia as if its primary function is discovery. And while discovery absolutely happens, I am increasingly convinced that the dominant function of academia is something more subtle: it continuously refines, corrects, extends, and reorganizes the maps we already have.

This is not necessarily a conscious design choice. It is what emerges from the structure of the system itself. Researchers build on prior work, test existing models, challenge assumptions, improve measurement, and extend frameworks. Each step adjusts the map. Even when the intent is discovery, the mechanism is often refinement.

Major discoveries do occur, but they are relatively rare compared to the vast volume of incremental work that improves resolution, reduces error, or expands applicability.

In that sense, academia is less a factory of new territory and more a high-precision cartography system.

And like all cartography systems, it is constrained by the tools, assumptions, and prior maps it inherits.

Physics Defines the Boundaries

Physics describes the fundamental behavior and interactions of matter, energy, space, and time. It establishes boundaries within which technologies must operate.

But identifying those boundaries does not necessarily determine which problems cannot be solved.

Physics tells us where a solution cannot go, not necessarily that a solution does not exist.

This is why I find it ironic when people tell me that I do not understand the physics when they themselves may be missing this distinction.

I find engineering and economic arguments more compelling.

Engineering asks whether we can develop a workable solution within physical boundaries, and the range of possible solutions is often constrained not just by physics, but by capital availability, manufacturing capability, and system integration limits.

Economics then asks whether sufficient market demand exists, whether a market can be created, and whether the solution can ultimately be delivered at a viable cost.

Even here, however, the map depends on context. Consider the required rate of return for an emerging technology. A startup developing it may face a much higher required return because investors are carrying concentrated risk. A large company developing the same technology may have revenue, assets, infrastructure, and other business lines that help absorb that risk. The underlying technology has not changed, but the financial environment surrounding it has. Change the context, and you change the map of risk, valuation, and feasibility.

I have watched companies attempt to bring emerging technologies to market with mixed success. That is why I tend to be less skeptical about whether many of these technologies will eventually come online. I am much more skeptical about the timelines, costs, and paths they will take to get there.

Fear of Technological Change Is Nothing New

I make no bones about what I am trying to do with my writing. Based on my limited knowledge and skill, I try to map the path we appear to be traveling and identify the signposts ahead.

That separates my perspective from the Luddite response to technological change.

But historically, we have always had Luddites among us. Sometimes people fear for their livelihoods. Sometimes they fear that a world they understand and value is being destroyed. Sometimes those fears are legitimate.

Consider a few examples and see if you recognize the pattern:

• Writing, ancient Greece: Socrates criticized writing for weakening memory and encouraging reliance on recorded knowledge.

• Printing press, 15th and 16th centuries: Critics feared cheap printing would spread misinformation, heresy, and poor-quality ideas.

• Industrial machinery, early 1800s: Workers feared machines would undermine skilled labor, wages, and working conditions.

• Railroads, 19th century: Critics worried about safety, speed, and disruption to communities and established ways of life.

• Telephone, late 19th and early 20th centuries: Critics feared loss of privacy and declining face-to-face communication.

• Automobiles, early 20th century: Cars were criticized as dangerous, disruptive, and threatening to existing transportation industries.

• Television, mid 20th century: Critics worried about declining reading, shorter attention spans, and cultural degradation.

• Internet, 1990s and 2000s: Critics warned about misinformation, fraud, privacy loss, social isolation, and job disruption.

• AI today: Critics worry about job displacement, misinformation, weakened skills, concentrated power, and changes to education and knowledge.

We look back at these technological transitions, and humanity somehow moved forward and prospered regardless.

That does not mean the critics were always wrong. In many cases, they correctly identified real problems. Technology destroys some jobs, creates others, shifts power, introduces new risks, and forces institutions and individuals to adapt.

The pattern is not that technology arrives without consequences. The pattern is that technology changes the problem space we must operate within. As human beings, we will always have problems to solve no matter how advanced we become.

Technology Changes, and We Adapt

Yes, I am a glass half full type of guy.

If human history were as relentlessly gloomy as some commentators and propagandists would have us believe, we simply would not be as robust as we are today. Humanity has faced far worse challenges than many of the problems dominating today’s online discourse, although you might not think so from the drama presented through traditional and social media.

We whine more than there is wine at a Catalina Wine Mixer.

There is an argument that our material and technological progress has advanced faster than our humanity. I think there is something to that, but I am not necessarily talking about humanity as a whole.

I am talking about the humanity within each of us as individuals.

Technology will continue to change. AI will continue to develop. New industries will emerge, existing industries will be disrupted, and some of today’s assumptions will eventually look as strange as earlier fears about telephones, automobiles, or the Internet.

So my conclusion is fairly simple.

Technology is coming regardless. Be part of it, and be a good steward of it.

If we can do that, perhaps we can spend a little less time fearing the future and a little more time building a better one.

Read more

Beyond SpaceX: A Better Way to Analyze the Commercial Space Industry

The Space Industry Needs a Better Barometer Than SpaceX

For the article AI was used as an editor for grammar, flow, and as a research assistant. For the capital flow tracker AI was used as a research assistant and updating the format.

I just watched a video on LinkedIn where a guy asked a developer, I assume, whether he should sell his 18 hole golf course in South Carolina. The developer started by asking some basic questions. What does the course make on a good day? How often does it have good days, considering weather and other factors that can affect business? From the answers, he concluded that the golf course was profitable. In fact, it was pretty profitable.

The developer then pivoted and asked about the owner’s other properties and how they were performing. The owner said they were even more profitable.

At the end, the developer advised him to keep the nine best holes, get rid of the rest, and build senior living facilities in their place. His reasoning was that the senior living facilities would create more valuable property, while the remaining nine holes would add value to the senior community by providing recreation and walking opportunities.

I bring up this story because, at its heart, it is not really about creating profit. It is about creating value.

You have to create value that the world can recognize and use. Profit is a guide mechanism that can signal how valuable an enterprise is by showing the difference between what the market is willing to pay and what it costs to provide that value. Something can already be profitable and still have the potential to create substantially more value through a different use of the same underlying assets.

It is for this reason that I find value chains immensely useful in industry analysis. A value chain forces you to look beyond the artifact or business that exists today and ask what functions are actually creating value, where that value is being created, who uses it, and whether those same resources could create greater value somewhere else.

This is particularly important in the space industry, whether you are looking at the industry as a whole, a specific sector, or an individual enterprise. To create a value chain, you start with the target sector you want to analyze. From there, you map the downstream side, which includes customers and clients, and the upstream side, which includes the supply chain and vendors.

This provides a way to understand the relationships surrounding that sector. Once those relationships are mapped, you can build a tracking system that charts changes upstream and downstream. This allows you to identify how developments elsewhere in the commercial space value chain may affect your target sector and how changes within the target sector may affect the rest of the industry.

This is what I can assume SpaceX did on an enterprise level. It mapped itself within the space industry and identified the critical enterprises upstream and downstream that could strategically strengthen SpaceX’s value. The company has been highly effective at strengthening its position through upstream and downstream acquisitions and internal capabilities, while coupling that strategy with a high tolerance for risk and an ability to ignore noise. The result has been an extraordinary level of success.

It is also one reason SpaceX is an outlier. Most investors do not have the same tolerance for risk, certainly not at that scale. Nor are most organizations as effective at ignoring noise and concentrating on the signals that matter. Ideally, someone would come along and copy the SpaceX playbook, but for these reasons, I do not see anyone seriously challenging its position for a long time.

Some cite Blue Origin as a potential challenger to SpaceX, but I do not see it that way. Blue Origin has significant resources and technical capability, but it still appears to operate more like a side project than the centerpiece of a larger strategic system. That distinction matters. SpaceX is not simply a launch company. Its upstream and downstream activities reinforce one another and strengthen the value of the enterprise as a whole. Until another company develops that kind of integrated strategy, I do not see SpaceX facing a true peer competitor.

The value chain lies at the heart of the Tier Ratio methodology I use for industry analysis. It provides the underlying structure for mapping the relationships between a critical sector, the upstream sectors that enable it, and the downstream sectors that depend on its capabilities. The Tier Ratio provides a way to analyze how activity and development are distributed across that structure.

Once you understand these relationships, you can see where funding is flowing within the industry and identify potential investment opportunities by looking for emerging bottlenecks elsewhere in the value chain. If capital and activity are accelerating in one sector, the relationships within the system can help identify where additional capacity, technology, products, or services may eventually be required.

This does not eliminate uncertainty, but it can take some of the guesswork out of financial and strategic planning. Instead of evaluating an opportunity in isolation, you can evaluate it according to its relationship with the rest of the value chain and the signals emerging across the industry.

From Value Chain to Analytical System

The use of value chains for industry analysis is not new. Organizations such as the World Bank and OECD use global value chain analysis to understand relationships among industries, companies, countries, investment, and trade. The World Bank maintains datasets that examine upstream and downstream relationships across industries, while the OECD has developed indicators for determining where industries and economies are positioned within global value chains.

Consulting firms also use value chains as strategic tools. McKinsey, for example, has applied value chain analysis to industries such as mining to identify constraints and bottlenecks across interconnected systems. Researchers have gone further by developing quantitative measures of upstreamness and downstreamness, attempting to determine mathematically where industries sit relative to one another.

These examples demonstrate that a value chain does not have to remain a simple diagram showing suppliers on one side and customers on the other. Once data is added, it can become an analytical system.

This is where the Tier Ratio methodology I use builds upon traditional value chain analysis. A critical sector is identified, upstream sectors that provide the capabilities, products, and services necessary to support it are mapped, and downstream sectors that depend upon the capabilities of the critical sector are mapped in the other direction.

Historical and current data can then be applied to those relationships. Over time, this allows you to identify, within reasonable proximity, how sectors relate to one another and establish ratios between individual sectors and the critical sector. Instead of simply knowing that two sectors are connected, you can begin measuring how strongly they are connected and how that relationship changes.

That distinction is important.

Traditional value chain analysis often asks where an organization or sector sits within the chain and where value is being created. The Tier Ratio adds another question: What should the relationship between these sectors look like, based on historical evidence, and what does it mean when the current relationship begins moving away from it?

Consider a simplified example. Suppose historical data indicates that for every unit of activity within the critical sector, a particular upstream sector typically requires approximately 0.35 units of activity. If the critical sector continues expanding while the upstream sector falls to an equivalent ratio of 0.22, something has changed.

That difference is a signal, not necessarily an answer.

It could represent an emerging bottleneck. It could indicate an investment opportunity, technological substitution, excess demand, productivity improvements, or a structural change in the industry. It could even mean that the historical relationship is no longer useful. The purpose of the ratio is not to tell you automatically what happened. It tells you where to look.

The same analysis can be applied downstream. If investment and activity are accelerating within one part of the value chain, the relationships within the system can help identify where additional capacity, technologies, products, or services may eventually be required elsewhere.

This becomes particularly useful when examining capital flows in the commercial space industry. Once you understand the relationships among sectors, you can see where funding is entering the industry and then look across the value chain for potential secondary effects. Heavy investment in one sector may create demand or capacity constraints somewhere else. Those constraints may represent opportunities that are less obvious than the sector receiving the original investment.

This does not eliminate uncertainty. Markets are too complex for that. What it can do is take some of the guesswork out of financial and strategic planning.

Instead of evaluating an investment, technology, or enterprise in isolation, you can evaluate it according to its relationship with the rest of the industry. The value chain stops being merely a descriptive map and becomes a monitoring system for identifying signals, relationships, bottlenecks, and potentially overlooked opportunities.

Conclusion

The space industry has reached a point where it needs to stop using SpaceX’s success as a barometer for the health and maturity of the industry as a whole. SpaceX is an outlier, and measuring the rest of the commercial space industry against its success can obscure what is actually happening across individual sectors.

Instead, the industry should look at what can be learned from SpaceX’s strategic planning. SpaceX appears to understand where it sits within the broader value chain, which upstream capabilities strengthen its position, which downstream markets create demand, and where greater integration can create additional value.

The lesson is not that every company should try to become SpaceX. The lesson is to apply the same kind of systems thinking to its own strategic planning. Value chain analysis provides a practical way to do that. By understanding the relationships among sectors, tracking capital and activity across those relationships, and identifying emerging bottlenecks, the commercial space industry can make better informed strategic and financial decisions based on the signals within the industry itself.

Bibliography

For the article as currently written, I would use these sources:

• Antràs, Pol, Davin Chor, Thibault Fally, and Russell Hillberry. “Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows.” American Economic Review, vol. 102, no. 3, 2012, pp. 412–416. American Economic Association

• Gereffi, Gary, and Karina Fernandez Stark. Global Value Chain Analysis: A Primer. 2nd ed., Duke Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness, 2016. Duke Global Value Chains Center

• McKinsey & Company. “The Mine to Market Value Chain: A Hidden Gem.” McKinsey & Company, 2020. This is particularly useful for supporting your discussion of using value chains to identify bottlenecks and constraints. McKinsey article

• OECD. Mapping Global Value Chains. OECD Trade Policy Papers, No. 159, OECD Publishing, 2013. Useful for the discussion of upstream and downstream positioning and quantitative value chain analysis. OECD report

• Porter, Michael E. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. Free Press, 1985. This is the foundational business strategy source for the modern value chain framework.

• World Bank. “Global Value Chains.” World Bank. Useful as institutional support for the application of value chain analysis to industries, trade, investment, and economic development. World Bank Global Value Chains

• World Bank. An Investment Perspective on Global Value Chains. World Bank Group. This is especially relevant to your argument connecting capital flows, investment decisions, and positions within value chains. World Bank investment and value chains research

Note on the Tier Ratio

The Tier Ratio methodology described in this article is my own analytical framework, developed as part of my work on mapping and analyzing the commercial space industry. While it builds upon established concepts in value chain analysis, the Tier Ratio itself, including its use of a critical sector and the relationships between upstream and downstream sectors, represents my application and development of those concepts.

If you have questions about the Tier Ratio, its methodology, or how I apply it to industry analysis, feel free to DM me directly.

Important note about the Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker: The public tracker will run one week behind. If you are interested in the most current data, paid subscribers receive access to the current week’s Capital Flow Tracker. The tracker is then archived and made available to everyone in the following week’s edition of Better Futures.

Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker

Reporting Period: August 3, 2026 – August 9, 2026

---

Purpose

The Better Futures Capital Flow Tracker documents publicly disclosed capital commitments and publicly announced future capital opportunities within the commercial space industry.

The tracker maintains two independent ledgers:

• Actualized Finance records capital that has been publicly committed.

• Phantom Finance records publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

The tracker reports transactions only. It does not provide market analysis, forecasts, or investment opinions.

---

Actualized Finance

Market Signals

Telesat Arctic Military Satcom Contract

Category

Government Contracts Awarded

Recipient

• Telesat LEO ULC, C$2.3 Billion

Total Award

C$2.3 Billion

Potential Total Including Options

Up to C$2.7 Billion

Summary

Telesat LEO ULC signed a C$2.3 billion Telesat Lightspeed services contract with Canada’s Defence Investment Agency to deliver secure Military Ka-band Arctic connectivity to the Canadian Armed Forces under the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar program. The contract includes two five-year option periods valued at approximately C$200 million each, bringing potential total value to C$2.7 billion if exercised.

Sources

• [Telesat](https://www.telesat.com/press/press-releases/telesat-secures-2-3-billion-arctic-military-satcom-contract-expanding-telesat-lightspeed-network-and-capacity-by-44/)

---

Rocket Lab Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator Contract

Category

Government Contracts Awarded

Recipient

• Rocket Lab, $397 Million

Total Award

$397 Million

Summary

The U.S. Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397 million contract under the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program. Rocket Lab will develop, launch, and operate multiple Flatellite spacecraft using its Neutron launch vehicle and provide data and track information to the Space Force.

Sources

• [Rocket Lab](https://investors.rocketlabcorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/rocket-lab-awarded-397-million-contract-build-and-launch)

---

Neuraspace Space Domain Awareness Financing

Category

Venture Capital Raised

Recipient

• Neuraspace, €15.6 Million

Total Financing

€15.6 Million

Approximately $17.1 Million

Summary

Neuraspace announced €15.6 million in new financing to expand its artificial intelligence platform, proprietary optical sensing network, autonomous satellite maneuver operations, and NeuraspaceDEF service for defense and institutional customers. The financing included private venture capital from Lince Capital, Explorer Investments, and Armilar Venture Partners, as well as public grant funding under Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan. Because the public/private split was not disclosed, the full disclosed amount is recorded as a financing transaction.

Sources

• [SatNews](https://satnews.com/2026/08/05/neuraspace-secures-e15-6-million-to-expand-space-domain-awareness-platform/)

---

Actualized Finance Summary

Category Amount

Government Contracts Awarded Approximately $2.067 Billion

Venture Capital Raised Approximately $17.1 Million

Private Equity None identified

Strategic Investments None identified

Public Financing Activity None identified

Debt Financing None identified

Grants and Awards None separately identified

Mergers and Acquisitions* None identified

*Mergers and acquisitions are reported separately and are excluded from capital totals.

---

Total Actualized Finance (This Week)

Approximately $2.084 Billion

Note

Foreign-currency items were retained in their disclosed currencies in the transaction entries. Approximate U.S. dollar equivalents were used only for tracker aggregation.

---

Largest Transaction

Telesat Arctic Military Satcom Contract

C$2.3 Billion committed, up to C$2.7 Billion including options

---

Largest Venture Capital Financing

Neuraspace Space Domain Awareness Financing

€15.6 Million

---

Largest Debt Financing

No major debt financing transactions identified during the reporting period.

---

Actualized Finance Running Total

Reporting Begins: Week of July 13, 2026

Previous Running Total $116.941 Billion

This Week Approximately $2.084 Billion

New Running Total Approximately $119.025 Billion

---

Actualized Finance Breakdown

Category Running Total

Public Financing $75.000 Billion

Venture Capital & Private Equity Approximately $11.247 Billion

Strategic Investments $0.010 Billion

Debt Financing $25.000 Billion

Government Contracts Approximately $7.768 Billion

Grants and Awards $0

Total Actualized Finance Approximately $119.025 Billion

---

Phantom Finance

Phantom Finance represents publicly announced future capital opportunities with publicly disclosed monetary values that have not yet become actual capital commitments.

Active Opportunities;

Telesat Arctic Military Satcom Contract Options

Category

Future Government Procurement

Official Contract Ceiling

Up to C$2.7 Billion

Committed Contract Value

C$2.3 Billion

Future Option Value

Up to C$400 Million

Status

Active

Summary

Telesat’s Arctic military satcom services contract includes two five-year option periods valued at approximately C$200 million each. Because those option periods were disclosed but not yet exercised, the C$400 million option value is recorded as Phantom Finance rather than Actualized Finance.

For this reporting period:

• Official Contract Ceiling: Up to C$2.7 Billion

• Actualized Finance Recorded: C$2.3 Billion

• Phantom Finance Recorded: Up to C$400 Million

Sources

• [Telesat](https://www.telesat.com/press/press-releases/telesat-secures-2-3-billion-arctic-military-satcom-contract-expanding-telesat-lightspeed-network-and-capacity-by-44/)

---

Greece Hellas-Space 2.0 National Space Programme

Category

Future Government Space Infrastructure Funding

Official Program Budget

€350 Million

Funds Obligated to Named Commercial Recipients

Not identified

Status

Active

Summary

Greece’s Ministry of Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence unveiled the Hellas-Space 2.0 national space programme, allocating €350 million for national space infrastructure, satellite procurement, satellite data integration, domestic aerospace research, and workforce development. Because no specific commercial contract recipients were identified in the disclosed item, the programme is recorded as Phantom Finance rather than Actualized Finance.

For this reporting period:

• Official Program Budget: €350 Million

• Funds Obligated to Named Commercial Recipients: Not identified

• Phantom Finance Recorded: Up to €350 Million

Sources

• [SatNews](https://satnews.com/2026/08/03/greece-unveils-e350-million-hellas-space-2-0-national-space-programme/)

---

Phantom Finance Running Total:

Previous Active Phantom Finance Pipeline Up to $17.981 Billion

New Phantom Finance Approximately Up to $673 Million Equivalent

Active Phantom Finance Pipeline Approximately Up to $18.654 Billion Equivalent

---

Excluded Items:

K2 Space Series D Financing

Excluded from this reporting period because the financing was announced July 30, 2026, which falls in the prior reporting period, not August 3–9, 2026.

Source: [K2 Space / PR Newswire](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/k2-space-raises-500m-series-d-at-6-8b-valuation-to-scale-large-high-power-satellites-302838793.html)

ispace-Europe MAGPIE ESA Contract

Excluded from this reporting period because the contract was announced July 24, 2026, outside the August 3–9, 2026 reporting period.

Source: [ispace](https://www.ispace-inc.com/2026/07/24/esa-awards-ispace-europe-contract-for-execution-of-magpie-esas-first-lunar-rover/)

MDA Space Telesat Lightspeed Follow-On Order

Not separately added to Actualized Finance totals to avoid double-counting capital already represented by the Telesat government services contract. The MDA order was treated as a downstream supplier commitment tied to the Telesat award.

Source: [MDA Space / PR Newswire](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mda-space-awarded-474-million-to-expand-the-telesat-lightspeed-leo-constellation-302841785.html)

---

Reporting Standards

Actualized Finance Includes:

• Government contract awards

• Venture capital financing

• Private equity financing

• Public offerings

• Debt financing

• Strategic investments

• Grants with publicly disclosed monetary values

Phantom Finance Includes:

• Procurement ceiling increases

• Future procurement programs

• Infrastructure funding authorizations

• Publicly announced future capital opportunities with identifiable monetary values

Excluded:

• Mergers and acquisitions from capital totals

• Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs)

• Letters of Intent (LOIs)

• Partnership announcements without publicly disclosed funding

• Policy announcements without funding

• Undisclosed financing amounts

• Market size estimates

• Projected future investment values

• Speculative estimates

• Prior-period announcements outside the current reporting period

---

Data Sources

Weekly updates are compiled from publicly accessible sources, including:

• Government agencies

• Regulatory filings

• Major financial publications

• Commercial space industry publications

• Official company press releases

Last Updated

August 9, 2026

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Commercial space has a capital problem, but it may not be the one we normally talk about.

There is plenty of discussion about whether enough investment is flowing into the industry. Less attention is paid to whether the capital being used is appropriate for the stage of development an enterprise has reached.

That distinction becomes particularly important when venture backed companies begin developing infrastructure.

Venture capital is particularly effective at financing uncertainty. It can support companies before predictable cash flows exist, tolerate technological failure, and accept substantial risk in exchange for the possibility of outsized returns. It is also inherently temporary capital, structured around fund lifecycles and eventual liquidity requirements.

A venture fund therefore operates under its own temporal constraints. Investments must ultimately produce realizable returns, and limited partners expect capital to be returned within a defined horizon. The development period of a launch system, satellite constellation, orbital manufacturing platform, Lunar transportation architecture, or other infrastructure asset does not necessarily conform to that financial schedule.

This creates two clocks operating in parallel. The first is the technological clock, governed by research and development, demonstration, regulatory approval, manufacturing scale, infrastructure deployment, operational stabilization, and market formation. The second is the capital clock, governed by financing rounds, valuation cycles, fund lifecycles, return expectations, and liquidity requirements. In capital intensive frontier industries, these clocks can become increasingly asynchronous.

A company may successfully progress through seed investment, Series A, Series B, and Series C financing while steadily reducing technological uncertainty. Yet it can reach the end of this progression without having developed the scalable market necessary to support conventional scale financing. The technology may work, and the potential market may eventually be substantial, but the infrastructure still has to be built. The venture investor cannot necessarily wait for technological capability, market formation, and infrastructure deployment to converge.

This creates a missing transition between venture development and infrastructure scale.

The Exit Threshold and the Maturity Threshold

Two different thresholds emerge from this mismatch. The maturity threshold represents the point at which a technology and its associated business model have achieved sufficient technological, operational, and market stability to support sustained commercial activity. The exit threshold represents the point at which an existing investor can transfer ownership risk and obtain liquidity.

These thresholds do not have to coincide. A company can become transferable before becoming mature, and this divergence helps explain the attraction of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, within commercial space.

A SPAC can create access to public equity while simultaneously providing earlier investors with a pathway toward eventual liquidity. The company continues developing, but the original capital is no longer required to remain exposed throughout the entire development period. Technological, operational, and market risks do not necessarily disappear as a result of the transaction. Instead, some portion of those risks moves from private investors into the public markets.

Astra provides a useful example. The launch company entered public markets during the 2021 SPAC cycle at a reported valuation of approximately $2.1 billion. Although Astra subsequently reached orbit, it struggled to establish reliable launch operations, suspended launches, and eventually returned to private ownership in 2024 at $0.50 per share.

Virgin Orbit illustrates a similar structural problem. Its SPAC transaction generated approximately $228 million, substantially below the amount originally anticipated. Following a failed launch in January 2023 and unsuccessful attempts to secure additional financing, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2023.

Neither case demonstrates that the SPAC caused the underlying difficulties. They demonstrate something narrower and more relevant to the financing structure. Public market access did not eliminate technological, operational, market, or financing risk. Both companies were capable of crossing the exit threshold while significant elements of the maturity threshold remained unresolved.

SPACs as Transitional Capital

Not every space company entering the public markets through a SPAC lacked substantial technological or operational evidence. Rocket Lab provides a useful counterexample.

Before completing its merger with Vector Acquisition Corporation in August 2021, Rocket Lab had already demonstrated orbital launch capability and reported delivering 105 satellites for more than 20 public and private organizations. The transaction generated approximately $777 million in gross proceeds. However, that capital was intended not only to expand existing activities, but also to support development of Neutron, Rocket Lab’s larger reusable launch vehicle.

The transaction therefore did not represent the completion of technological development. It provided capital for the next stage. Rocket Lab represents a stronger version of the SPAC pathway because substantial operational evidence existed before the transaction, yet public equity still functioned as transitional rather than terminal capital.

This makes it difficult to characterize SPACs themselves as the underlying problem. They have been performing a function within a capital system that lacks a reliable mechanism for bridging venture development and infrastructure scale. The concern is whether public equity is the appropriate capital pool to perform that function when substantial technological, market, and infrastructure risks remain.

The Missing Capital Transition

Infrastructure presents a distinctive financing problem because technological viability can precede market scalability. A company can demonstrate that an infrastructure system works without demonstrating that enough customers currently exist to justify financing its deployment at scale.

This becomes particularly difficult in later venture rounds. The technology may have advanced sufficiently that continued financing through expensive equity becomes inefficient, while revenue predictability remains insufficient for conventional lenders. The enterprise is no longer behaving entirely like an early stage technology company, but it is not yet behaving like a mature infrastructure asset either. It sits between capital classes.

A SPAC can bridge this period by extending equity risk absorption into public markets, but there is another possible approach. Instead of structuring the venture pathway around an eventual IPO or SPAC transaction, the investment could be designed around reaching a financeability threshold.

Under such a model, venture capital would not be expected to finance the infrastructure through maturity. Its function would be to finance the reduction of uncertainty until another form of capital could rationally assume responsibility for the asset.

The Financeability Threshold

The financeability threshold differs from technological maturity. The infrastructure does not need a fully developed scalable market at the point of transition, but there must be sufficient evidence that future financial obligations can reasonably be supported.

That evidence can take multiple forms. Technological demonstrations reduce engineering uncertainty, while operational history reduces execution uncertainty. Anchor customers can reduce demand uncertainty, and offtake agreements can establish future revenue. Government procurement commitments can provide predictable demand, physical assets can provide collateral, and credit guarantees can reduce lender exposure. Different infrastructure systems will require different combinations, but the underlying principle remains consistent.

Capital structure should mature with the asset.

The resulting progression could resemble:

Venture capital → technological development → demonstration → financeability threshold → infrastructure capital → deployment → mature operations

The transition instrument does not necessarily have to be a conventional corporate bond. Depending on the asset, it might involve project finance, revenue backed debt, infrastructure bonds, export credit, government supported lending, or hybrid structures combining several mechanisms. The instrument matters less than its function. The new capital must be capable of carrying an asset whose primary challenge has shifted from demonstrating feasibility toward financing deployment and operation.

Structured Demand as Financial Infrastructure

SpaceX’s development under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program provides an example of how demand formation can become part of the financing architecture. NASA used milestone based public private financing to support development of commercial cargo capability, and SpaceX subsequently received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract covering 12 cargo flights to the International Space Station.

The significance of the structure extends beyond government funding. NASA provided identifiable demand tied to a defined service, converting part of an uncertain future market into contracted revenue. Anchor customers can therefore become a form of financial infrastructure themselves, particularly when private demand has not matured sufficiently to support infrastructure finance independently.

This relationship between demand formation and capital formation may become increasingly relevant as commercial space moves toward larger infrastructure systems. A lender evaluating a project without established scalable demand faces substantial uncertainty. The same project supported by long duration contracts, capacity reservations, offtake agreements, or credible anchor customers presents a materially different financial profile. The underlying technology has not changed, but the bankability of its future cash flows has.

From Space Technology to Space Infrastructure

Satellite communications provides evidence of what becomes possible once these financial characteristics become sufficiently bounded.

Iridium NEXT offers an early example. In 2010, Iridium announced a fixed price agreement with Thales Alenia Space for its next generation constellation alongside a financing structure in which the French export credit agency Coface guaranteed 95 percent of a $1.8 billion credit facility. The overall program was expected to cost approximately $2.9 billion. The structure combined an existing operator, defined infrastructure requirements, fixed price contracting, and government supported credit, allowing long duration debt to participate.

Telesat Lightspeed provides a contemporary variation. In 2024, Telesat finalized C$2.54 billion in financing agreements with the governments of Canada and Quebec for deployment of its low Earth orbit broadband constellation. The Canadian portion included a C$2.14 billion loan with a 15 year maturity, interest payment flexibility during construction, and amortization aligned with the later operating period. Quebec provided an additional C$400 million under similar arrangements.

Neither structure resembles a conventional venture round. They represent capital architectures designed around infrastructure lifecycles, with the financial characteristics of construction distinguished from those of eventual operations. This is the type of transition that becomes possible when technological capability, identifiable demand, assets, contractual arrangements, and credit support combine to make an infrastructure system financeable.

Engineering the Venture Exit

If infrastructure requires different capital at different stages, the venture exit can potentially be designed around that progression rather than treated as an external event determined primarily by market conditions.

An infrastructure focused venture investment would not necessarily have to aim toward creating an IPO candidate. Its objective could instead be to reduce uncertainty until the enterprise reaches the conditions necessary for infrastructure grade capital to assume the next phase of development.

Venture capital would carry technological risk through development and demonstration while the enterprise simultaneously develops contractual demand. Anchor customers or offtake agreements could establish portions of future cash flow, while credit enhancement or government participation could reduce risks that private lenders cannot reasonably assume. Once predetermined financeability conditions are satisfied, infrastructure capital becomes available, providing the capital required for deployment while potentially creating the liquidity necessary for venture investors to exit.

This remains an exit, but it changes what creates the exit. Rather than relying on the availability of another equity market willing to assume the remaining uncertainty, the enterprise creates its exit pathway by reducing enough uncertainty to qualify for another class of capital.

The Entrepreneur Remains

Changing the capital structure does not eliminate responsibility. It redistributes it. Venture investors may exit, but the enterprise remains bound by the obligations associated with the capital structure that replaces them.

Debt introduces constraints that equity does not impose in the same form. Interest must be serviced, covenants maintained, and principal eventually repaid. Management must therefore understand the instrument being issued and the obligations the enterprise is assuming. Premature transition into debt could be every bit as destabilizing as premature transition into public equity.

The objective is therefore not to replace one inappropriate instrument with another. It is to match the financial structure to the risk characteristics of the asset at each stage of development.

When the Transition Fails

OneWeb illustrates what can happen when infrastructure scale collides with an incomplete capital transition. After raising substantial private capital to develop and deploy its low Earth orbit communications constellation, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 when it could not secure the financing required to continue deployment.

The subsequent recapitalization is revealing. A consortium led by the United Kingdom government and Bharti Global committed approximately $1 billion to acquire and restart the company, with each contributing roughly $500 million. The underlying infrastructure did not disappear with the failure of the original financial structure. Instead, a different class of strategic and sovereign capital ultimately assumed responsibility for carrying it forward.

OneWeb does not demonstrate that sovereign capital was the only possible solution. It demonstrates that an infrastructure system can advance technologically while still failing at the transition between financial regimes. Financial architecture can therefore become as consequential to scale as technological architecture.

Capital Maturation

Commercial space financing is often described as a problem of capital availability, but that framing may be incomplete. Capital already exists across a spectrum of risk, duration, and return expectations, including venture capital, public equity, project finance, sovereign lending, export credit, infrastructure funds, and bond markets. The discontinuity may lie in moving an enterprise successfully between them.

SPACs provided one mechanism for bridging this discontinuity by extending equity risk into public markets and creating potential liquidity for earlier investors. They do not, however, resolve the underlying technological or market uncertainty. Infrastructure finance approaches the problem differently because uncertainty must first be reduced, contracted, guaranteed, collateralized, or otherwise made financeable.

Venture capital remains essential within this model, but its role becomes more precisely defined. It finances uncertainty until that uncertainty can be converted into an asset another form of capital is structurally designed to carry.

Conclusion

The commercial space SPAC cycle exposed more than the strengths and weaknesses of a particular financial instrument. It exposed a structural gap in the capital architecture supporting long duration technology.

Venture capital can carry technologies through early development, while infrastructure capital can finance assets supported by sufficiently predictable future cash flows. Between those regimes lies a transitional period in which technological feasibility may already have been demonstrated while market scalability remains incomplete. SPACs have functioned as one bridge across this gap by extending equity risk into public markets, but the alternative is not simply replacing SPACs with bonds. It is deliberately engineering the transition between capital classes.

Anchor customers, contracted demand, credit enhancement, government procurement, asset collateral, structured debt, project finance, and eventually bond markets can all contribute to that transition depending on the characteristics of the infrastructure being developed. The common objective is to reach financeability without requiring either venture investors or public equity markets to carry risks for which they may be poorly structured.

For infrastructure intensive commercial space companies, the venture investor may not need to carry an asset until the market reaches full maturity. The investor may need to carry it only until technological, operational, and commercial uncertainty has been reduced sufficiently for infrastructure capital to assume the next stage.

The endpoint of venture investment therefore does not necessarily have to be an acquisition, IPO, or SPAC. It can be the point at which the enterprise has matured sufficiently that it no longer requires venture capital at all.

Maturation creates the exit.

Bibliography

Astra Space. “Astra Space Announces Closing of Take Private Transaction.” 2024.

Iridium Communications Inc. “Iridium Announces Definitive Agreement with Thales Alenia Space for Iridium NEXT Satellite Constellation.” SEC filed press release, 2010.

NASA. “NASA Hails Success of Commercial Space Program, Private Space Station Resupply Underway, Plans Readied for Astronauts.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

OneWeb. Bankruptcy and recapitalization reporting, 2020. Contemporary reporting documented the approximately $1 billion rescue led by the United Kingdom government and Bharti Global.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. “Rocket Lab Completes Merger with Vector Acquisition Corporation to Become Publicly Traded End to End Space Company.” August 2021.

Space.com. “Virgin Orbit Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.” April 2023.

Telesat. “Telesat Completes $2.54 Billion Funding Agreements for Telesat Lightspeed Satellite Constellation with Strong Government Backing.” 2024.

Via Satellite. “Former SPAC Astra Is Once Again a Private Company.” July 2024.

Better Futures uses AI assisted tools in the research and editorial process. Sources and factual claims are reviewed as part of our editorial process.