Is there enough money to go around?

03/02/13 22:21:00    

By Michael Mealling

Over the past year many new beyond LEO space companies have been created: Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, Inspiration Mars, and Golden Spike. Between just these four new companies the capital requirements are some of the highest in the industry. I estimate roughly a billion per company. In other mature industries a billion dollars in capital for a well understood return is common.

But ours is not a mature industry. The time needed to mature it enough to support those kinds of capital requirements is long. Every company on that list has a plan for incremental revenue and dual use technology development. But until someone somewhere demonstrates profitability on the scale of the return from the Bakken formation oil fields I'm not sure there is enough capital available. Our industry needs an economy firing on all cylinders to create that capital and I don't see an economy like that anytime soon.

Or maybe its just the cold, gray winter sky outside and I just need to see the blinding bright blue of the high desert to put the optimism back in my heart.