How high can Washington state’s space industry rise?

Preliminary findings suggest that the economic impact of the state’s space sector more than doubled between 2018 and 2022, and nearly doubled again between 2022 and now. But at the same time, some leaders of the space community are questioning whether the Pacific Northwest can keep pace with other regional clusters in, say, Florida, Texas and Colorado.

That good news, bad news situation made headlines this week when Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa questioned whether he’d pick the Seattle area as his home base if he had to do it over — just before taking the stage as a member of Gov. Bob Ferguson’s Washington Space Council.

Ferguson isn’t the only elected official trying to make sure the Seattle area keeps up on the space frontier. Dana Ralph, the mayor of Kent, Wash., where Stoke is headquartered, made that clear in her remarks during the kickoff for Seattle Space Week at the Museum of Flight.

“We don’t take you for granted,” said Ralph, addressing a gathering of CEOs, investors and other VIPs. “I want you to hear that out loud: We don’t take you for granted.”

Seattle Space Week — highlighted by Tuesday’s Space Northwest Symposium in Federal Way — provided plenty of opportunities for discussing the challenges facing Washington state’s space ventures. Here are four problems to face, and four prospects to look forward to.

‘We have a problem’

The launch crisis: The availability of launch opportunities has shrunk dramatically. “It’s just crazy how there’s this mismatch between supply and demand right now in the industry,” said Tim Beard, Stoke Space’s chief financial officer. “It’s becoming a crisis.”

One factor is the increased demand for deploying satellite constellations for broadband data services (such as Starlink and Amazon Leo) and for future AI data processing (such as Starcloud, SpaceX’s Starmind and Google’s Project Suncatcher).

Another factor is reduced supply: Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance are dealing with setbacks in their next-generation rocket programs. Meanwhile, SpaceX is talking about phasing out its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as it makes the transition to Starship. The resulting launch crunch is an industry-wide problem, but it hits Seattle’s satellite ventures especially hard.

The workforce challenge: There’s also a limited supply of skilled technicians and engineers. Bill Bruner, CEO of New Frontier Aerospace, ranks that as his No. 1 challenge. “It’s finding skilled, trained people to do, not just the hard engineering work, but the Grade 13, Grade 14 graduate technical work,” he said. “We need a national solution to that problem.”

Ralph said Kent and other Seattle-area municipalities need to partner with state government and commercial ventures to address the challenge. “We should be able to make it easier for employers to invest in apprenticeship, credentials and on-the-job training,” she said. “We need to build a workforce system that moves with industry, not several years behind it.”

Funding from faraway: Much of the funding that fuels Seattle’s space ventures comes from elsewhere. “There are a lot of VCs in Seattle, but they’re not necessarily space VCs,” said Mike Reilly, chief strategy officer for Varda Space Industries. “I feel like a lot of the space money comes out of L.A. and San Francisco.”

Brian Monnin, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Sophia Space, said midsize space ventures need to find ways to fill their funding gaps. “Debt financing is one way,” he said. “But I think there should be more public-private combinations of firms, traditional banks working alongside debt financiers, working alongside the public for us to fill that vast middle.”

Regional rivalries: Several executives said other states are much more aggressive than Washington when it comes to attracting space ventures. “The incentives just aren’t here,” Monnin said. “We’re looking at where we build our Factory One for Sophia Space tiles, and you have to look at the incentives from sovereign funds in New Mexico, Louisiana and others. They’re far more attractive than they are in this state currently.”

The inter-regional competition was one of the challenges cited by Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa — and by his CFO as well. “I need to be pretty direct in that we’re being actively courted by any number of states: Colorado, Texas, Florida,” Beard said. “They want us to move there, but Washington state is the right place for Stoke. … I hope our policymakers in Olympia, throughout the state, our senators hear this. We want to stay in Washington state. Help us do that.”

‘Light this candle’

Public-private partnerships: The newly announced Washington Space Council isn’t likely to set up a multibillion-dollar fund for space ventures anytime soon, but it could serve as a forum for business executives and government officials to work out realistic ways to foster the state’s space industry.

Will the work of the council go beyond virtue-signaling? Last year, the Governor’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Fund awarded $350,000 to support Portal Space Systems’ expansion into a 50,000-square-foot satellite manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. Such grants may serve as a model for future financial incentives.

Satellite offices: Space ventures don’t need to be headquartered in Washington to benefit the state’s space industry. Cowboy Space, for example, is based in California but recently announced the opening of a 291,035-square-foot spacecraft design and manufacturing facility in Kent. BlackSky is based in Virginia, but its satellites are built in a 22,000-square-foot factory in Tukwila, Wash. SpaceX may have moved its corporate headquarters from California to Texas, but it still makes more than half of the world’s satellites at its facilities in Redmond and Woodinville, Wash.

Just as Google and Meta maintain engineering hubs in the Seattle area, out-of-state satellite ventures are likely to establish Seattle-area outposts. “The fundamentals that made this region are still here: talent, a deep supply chain, industrial capacity, a culture of making things, and generations of knowledge that you simply cannot re-create overnight,” Ralph said.

Coming attractions: The silver lining to the launch crisis is that Stoke Space and other commercial space ventures plan to fill the gap. And when SpaceX’s Starship enters service, that could dramatically change the parameters of the launch market. Ron Faith, CEO of RBC Signals, said this week’s first orbital Starship flight was “a pretty big milestone event.”

“Having Starship go into orbit and deploy real satellites … that’s a significant increase in capacity for launch,” he said. “But with that said, we’re also seeing many, many more launchers come online.” The list includes Blue Origin’s New Glenn, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha, Relativity Space’s Terran R — and yes, Stoke Space’s Nova.

A pad of our own: When it comes to space facilities, the Seattle area lacks two big items: a nearby NASA center and an orbital launch pad.

During a recent visit to Redmond, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman didn’t offer much encouragement for the space agency’s fans in the Pacific Northwest. “I think it’s unlikely we’re going to be adding any additional centers right now,” he told me.

But at the Museum of Flight, Ferguson said the Washington Space Council “will look for ways we might be able to develop Washington-based commercial launch capabilities.”

At the Space Northwest Symposium, Monnin wondered why the Seattle area’s space ventures haven’t forged closer ties with the region’s military installations. “It’s a shame that over the last few decades we haven’t seen the affinity toward Fort Lewis-McChord or the naval base in Bremerton as innovation centers … because from an orbital compute standpoint, the biggest need is defense- or security-related,” he said. “How we haven’t tapped into that as a state, I think, is a miss.”

The Pacific Northwest’s geography would make it difficult to put a launch pad in a place that avoids posing a significant risk to populated areas. That’s why Blue Origin and Stoke Space have their orbital launch pads in Florida instead of Washington. But when Beard was asked about the prospect of using a pad closer to home, he wasn’t dismissive.

“Launching from the Washington coast would be fantastic,” he said. “Also, my geography is not great, but I think it’s slightly closer to ship a rocket to the Washington coast than it is all the way down to Cape Canaveral. So, that’s one advantage as well. We’d love to see launch here, and I think that we’d be good partners to do that with.”

Check out the Space Northwest website for the Seattle Space Week event calendar.

The preliminary results of a study commissioned by Space Northwest, an association focused on regional space ventures, suggest that Washington state’s space economy contributes $8.1 billion in direct economic output annually.

The newly reported figures show that the space industry’s economic impact in the Evergreen State has nearly doubled since a similar study in 2022. That earlier report also documented a doubling effect over the course of four years, from $1.8 billion in 2018 to $4.6 billion in 2022.

Kelly Maloney, Space Northwest’s co-founder and the chair of the association’s board of directors, shared the latest figures today at the Space Northwest Symposium in Federal Way, Wash. She said the preliminary findings, developed by BERK Consulting and Alliance Velocity, reinforce the view that space is not just a niche industry in Washington.

“We are effectively the Space Tech State,” Maloney said.

She said the state’s space sector directly supports about 12,300 jobs and $2.3 billion in labor income. When indirect and induced impacts are included, the figures rise to about 34,200 jobs, $12.4 billion in statewide economic output and $3.9 billion in labor income.

“For every direct space job in Washington, another 1.8 jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy,” Maloney said.

She noted that the space sector’s direct labor income averages about $188,000 per worker.

“That is twice the statewide average,” Maloney said. “So, this is not just a growing industry in terms of employment. It is an industry generating significant economic value and exceptionally strong labor income here in Washington.”

Maloney added that 94% of the state’s direct space sector jobs are concentrated in three highly technical areas. “Nearly 6,500 people work in space vehicle and propulsion manufacturing; more than 3,000 in research, engineering and computing; and just over 2,000 in space electronics and hardware,” she said.

Washington’s space workers play a central role in the satellite industry. More than 68% of all active satellites in Earth orbit were built in the state, according to the analysis. Most of those made-in-Washington satellites were produced at SpaceX’s Starlink operation in Redmond.

The study also found that 24 space startups headquartered or operating in the state have collectively raised more than $4.3 billion, including more than $3.7 billion since 2021.

Space Northwest is lending support to eight space startups through a new program called the Space Technology Accelerator for Growing Entrepreneurship, or STAGE. The selected startups will participate in a 12-week program, with each startup receiving three hours of personalized coaching alongside specialized workshops.

STAGE’s first cohort includes:

• Beyonders: “We’re opening the door to the wonder of cosmic discovery by creating your own spacecraft … gram-scale picosatellites,” said founder Mike Antares.
• Godel Space: Founded by Vikash Kodati and named after famed mathematician Kurt Gödel, this startup is building autonomous AI agents for satellite payloads.
• Kynthos: Co-founders Selvan Viswanathan and Priya Srinavasa are working on software that maintains continuous custody of high-value assets and non-cooperative space objects.
• Luthien Space: “We are in the business of making lunar landings and missions safe with a decision-grade intelligence tool that is physics-validated,” said founder Tammy Payne.
• Ora Biomedical: “What Ora Biomedical is focused on is creating the therapies that enable longer, safer spaceflight and crewed missions,” said co-founder and CEO Ben Blue.
• Signal Sights: This venture is developing systems that convert radio frequency signals into intuitive visual information to improve situational awareness and decision making.
• SQK: This three-year-old startup provides guided computational AI to reconstruct and validate complex scientific data from noisy, incomplete or low-signal measurements.
• Wave Motion: “What we want to do is turn the rocket equation on its head. … We essentially take the rocket fuel and beam it to the rocket as it’s needed,” said co-founder James Penna.

The preliminary findings reported by Space Northwest were produced by BERK Consulting and Alliance Velocity. Additional data sources include company-reported information, Crunchbase, and satellite data from Jonathan McDowell. The full report is still pending.

Check Space Northwest’s website for a schedule of Seattle Space Week events.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has created a public-private council to elevate the Evergreen State’s profile as regional clusters compete for primacy in America’s space industry.

The 23-member Washington Space Council was introduced tonight at the Museum of Flight during a kickoff event for Seattle Space Week, a celebration organized by Space Northwest.

“The council will help keep us competitive by comparing Washington with other leading states in the industry and identifying ways we can continue to improve and compete,” Ferguson said.

Washington state already ranks as one of the nation’s space industry hotspots. “We’re proud to have a cluster of more than 90 space companies employing more than 13,000 workers, generating over $4 billion in annual economic activity and $1.6 billion in annual payroll,” Ferguson said.

But Andy Lapsa, co-founder and CEO of Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space, told tonight’s crowd that several other regions are competing with the Pacific Northwest for space-related investments. “States like Florida and Texas and Colorado want this industry, and they want it bad,” he said. “They compete for it every day. Washington has every advantage it needs to lead them all, and the window to use those advantages is open right now.”

Boeing has historically been the state’s leading venture in aerospace, but when you focus on ventures that concentrate strictly on space, Blue Origin is high on the list. Seattle is particularly strong in the satellite sector: More than half of the world’s satellites are built in the Seattle area, thanks to SpaceX’s Starlink facilities in Redmond and Woodinville, plus Amazon Leo’s factory in Kirkland, BlackSky’s production plant in Tukwila and Xplore’s operation in Bellevue.

Gravitics, Interlune, Portal Space Systems, Starcloud and Starfish Space are among other space ventures represented on the Washington Space Council. The list also includes elected officials, union leaders, educators and investors, plus representatives from space-related tech companies and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Ferguson said the council will “identify barriers for the industry and find opportunities for growth.”

“That includes, by the way, workforce development, infrastructure and much more,” he said. “And the council will look for ways we might be able to develop Washington-based commercial launch capabilities. That would be a very exciting addition to what we’re doing right here in Washington.”

Ferguson brought a member of the audience, 10-year-old Sebastian Yu, to the stage when he signed the executive order that officially created the council. After the signing, the governor handed the pen to Yu.

“Your assignment, Sebastian, is that when we do that first launch, you have to save this pen and bring it with you to the first launch,” Ferguson said. “Take care of this pen, OK? I’m going to expect to see it again someday.”

Notes from the kickoff:

• Space Northwest presented three awards to recognize contributions to the region’s space industry. The Shooting Star award for municipal support went to the city of Kent, Wash. Portal Space Systems won the Rising Star award for emerging space companies, and SpaceX won the North Star Award for large space companies.
• Kent Mayor Dana Ralph noted that her city’s connection to the space industry goes back to Boeing’s work on the lunar rovers for NASA’s Apollo moon missions in the 1970s, while acknowledging that Kent can’t rest on its laurels. “Our job is to make it possible for companies to build and grow and hire. That means reinvesting in the basics: roads, great mobility, water, sewer, plentiful and easily accessible energy and industrial land,” she said.
• Mehran Mesbahi, professor and chair of the University of Washington’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, highlighted efforts to boost careers in the space industry. “We have Husky Satellite Lab, a group of energized students at UW, and we’re going to create a certificate program around space systems going forward,” he said.

Seattle Space Week continues on Tuesday with the Space Northwest Symposium at the Federal Way Performing Arts & Event Center.