A New Approach to Space Transportation

A new generation of space start-ups is making access to space affordable for commercial use

Getting into space has historically come with an enormous price tag, since even the smallest payloads were the size of school buses. National governments were generally the only institutions that could foot the bill for space-related endeavors. But that’s changed. Today, many satellites are the size of dorm room refrigerators, and a new generation of space start-ups is focused on developing ways to get into space for the lowest possible cost per kilogram. Firefly Aerospace is one of these companies. Founder and CEO Tom Markusic shares how innovation is making space access affordable for many kinds of companies, large and small, enabling us to use space in new ways, such as providing wireless Internet access for an entire continent.

About the speaker

Tom Markusic is CEO and founder of Firefly Aerospace. An engineer by training, he has been a propulsion research engineer with NASA and a senior systems engineer at Blue Origin.

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