Thinking On Paper The Space SPAC Bubble & NASA's $4.2bn Rocket Problem: Space to Grow Book Club
Why does it cost NASA $4.2 billion per launch when SpaceX predicts Starship could do the same job for $10 million?
Mark and Jeremy work through Part 3 of Space to Grow by Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau, the book the space industry is reading, and find two stories running in parallel: the wreckage of the space SPAC bubble, and NASA's uncomfortable reinvention in the commercial era.
This episode covers:
- How SPACs turned space startups into crypto: Virgin Orbit went from a $3.7B valuation to bankruptcy in two years; Astra went public at $2.1B with zero rockets that had ever reached orbit
- Why $100 invested in space startup stocks at IPO was worth $10 by early 2024
- The stag hunt problem: why genuinely big things in space require coordination and trust that the industry hasn't built yet
- NASA's Artemis programme explained, and why the South Pole of the Moon holds 100,000 Olympic swimming pools of frozen water that could become rocket fuel
- The $4B SpaceX and $3.4B Blue Origin contracts that signal NASA is finally learning to share
- Can NASA evolve from doing it to enabling it, before China gets there first?
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Chapters
(00:00) What is a SPAC?
(01:30) Why space SPACs failed
(03:20) Virgin Orbit & Astra: the worst examples
(06:00) SPACs vs Crypto: same story?
(08:30) The Stag Hunt: why space needs coordination
(11:00) NASA Artemis explained
(13:00) SLS vs Starship cost breakdown
(17:00) SpaceX & Blue Origin lunar contracts
(20:00) The Moon Race vs China
(22:00) Can NASA survive the commercial space era?