“The sky’s the limit” – implies an indefinite yet seemingly limitless upward bound, well the opportunity set for the space commercialization industry is literally well beyond the sky. This is an important moment in the development of the space industry and D.C. and the DMV generally is home to some of the industry’s basic infrastructure for government, the private sector, and academics. Some examples include: NASA’s headquarters, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Airforce, U.S. Space Force, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and GW’s Space Policy Institute.
The landscape is changing rapidly and the frontier is out there. We are aiming to think of ways to participate in the evolution of the space industry. This past spring semester we had student teams in the GW Investment Institute associated venture course study and work on ideas that could be part of the new space industry. Here are their ideas:
- Lunachix – create the technology behind products that women need to ensure that they have freedom to decide how they treat their period – whether on Earth or in space.
- 4MY Partners – outer space asset management and services.
- Buzz Solutions – provide comprehensive master planning and project management solutions to investors and clients working on the mining of water in space.
- VantaBlack – lunar nuclear reactor using kilopower nuclear reactor technology.
- Scobo – empowering people analytics with big data and machine learning.
This fall semester we’ll be asking a new set of student teams to develop their own ideas for the space industry. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.
Best regards,
Rodney
August 11, 2020