Making space for small businesses

nature.com ^ | 09/05/05 | Mark Peplow

[KevinDavis]

What proof do you have that small businesses can make their mark in space?

Well, every project we've done has come in on budget and on time. We have small teams, no bureaucracy, and we let engineers get on with being engineers. Some big companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars just thinking about a problem.

When I founded SpaceDev in 1997, I was told by people in the industry that it was impossible to do satellites for less than $40 million. CHIPSat, which carries NASA's Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer and was our very first craft, cost $7.8 million. We did mission control from a laptop computer, with all of the operations carried out over the Internet. None of that had ever been done before.

[KevinDavis]

This is the company that made the engine for Spaceship 1. This is the company to watch...

[KevinDavis]

[SunTzuWu]

You just need to find the right investor to get it going. You had Paul Allen on SpaceShipOne, now Richard Branson on SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic, and we still need to find our own backer for Dream Chaser. With US$15 million we could be up and flying in a couple of years.

Could they could go public? I know that there is alot involved but $15m isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.

[KevinDavis]

I think SpaceDev is public... The stock symbol is spdv and it is currently at 1.45..