New Paths to Space: Jeff Bezos Discusses our Industry’s Greatest Challenge
Hello SATELLITE 2017 Community!
We are now one month away from opening the doors to the big show and we have some very exciting news to share with you! Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and founder and CEO of Amazon, will be our special guest keynote speaker at SATELLITE 2017 and will kick off our Tuesday morning opening general session program at 8:15 a.m., followed by our big Global Satellite Operator CEO panel at 9:00 a.m. I will be conducting a fireside chat-style interview with Jeff during his appearance to discuss new developments in launch technologies that lower costs and increase access to space.
Blue Origin is a significant addition to the broadening U.S. commercial launch services landscape that now includes Elon Musk’s SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Orbital Sciences, Spaceflight Industries and dozens of other new entrants and alternative services. The rapid growth of privately-funded space enterprises has not only revived the United States’ standing and capability as a space-faring nation, but also provided satellite manufacturers and operators more options to orbit. With drastically increasing international demand for launch services over the next decade, the question about the health of the launch market has shifted from “Is there enough business for the existing launchers?” to “Are there enough launch services and options to get all those new constellations in orbit on time?” This doesn’t even include the need for launching manned exploration and tourism missions.
The need for international launch options outside of the U.S. is also growing, especially for U.S. space enterprises getting into the small satellite business and emerging economies requiring space infrastructure for growth. Arianespace, for example, just completed 2016 with 11 successful missions under its belt and just recently sent Hispasat’s 36W-1 to GTO on a Soyuz. It wasn’t too long ago that 9 missions in a year (with less than half a dozen major launchers in the market) would have been considered a near-impossible feat. Now, we’re very quickly approaching a time when we’ll need to see multiple launches per week just to keep the planned future space segment on schedule.
I say this all the time, but each new day continues to be the most exciting time to be involved with space, rockets and satellites. It is the defining science and technology of our future and I’m thrilled and excited to be involved with an event and community that plays a critical role in shaping that future!