K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Candace Johnson is showing me a photo taken in Kourou, French Guiana, on Dec. 12, 1988. It’s a grainy, black-and-white picture. But her recollection of that day is crystal clear: The photo was taken on the eve of the launch of the first Astra satellite, made by European aerospace company SES, which Johnson cofounded. (Another visionary entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch, was her very first customer, and he used that inaugural satellite to launch his Sky Television Network.) The image, uploaded to Johnson’s computer and shared with me over Zoom, depicts two rows of people, the team behind the Astra-1A launch. Some are standing and some are crouching. Most of them are wearing white button-down shirts, khakis, and rectangular name badges. But Johnson is easy to spot. Out of the group of nearly 30, she’s the only one in culottes—and the only woman on the team. “Had I not been there, none of those men would have been there,” says the entrepreneur, who pushed and fundraised for years in order to pull off the ambitious launch. “So it didn’t really occur to me that I was the only woman.”
Since that day in Kourou, Johnson has helped put many more satellites into orbit. (It’s earned her the nickname “Satellady.”) She has also found herself the only woman in the picture—and the C-suite, and the boardroom—countless more times. Eventually that feeling started to wear on her, and she decided to do something about it: For the past three decades, she has devoted herself not only to innovating and investing in space-based technologies but also to connecting with and expanding the constellation of women who work in the field. “We’re always helping each other,” says Johnson.
The fact that women like Johnson have had to resort to setting up their own networks in a field traditionally dominated by men is not new. Since the days of Sputnik and Explorer 1, women in the space industry have largely toiled away in the shadows of men. (And women of color? Even more so—just watch Hidden Figures, the film that chronicles the careers of three Black, female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race days.) But here’s a new wrinkle: Back when Johnson was getting started, the commercial space sector was tiny. She was a rarity not just because she was a woman but also because she was an entrepreneur. Until the turn of the century, nearly every project that aimed beyond the Earth’s atmosphere was the domain of government-run space agencies, not commercial companies.
No longer. Today, private money is flowing into a range of space-based innovations at light speed. According to BryceTech, a research firm that tracks the sector, $36.7 billion was invested in space startups over the past two decades—with a full 72% of that pot doled out since 2015. This recent uptick in private funding is largely driven by venture capital firms that are betting space is quite literally the next big frontier.
It’s not just investors who are increasingly looking toward the heavens, though. The private space industry has also blasted its way into the public consciousness recently, thanks to the high-flying theatrics—and yes, incredible innovations—of a trio of billionaires: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, and Elon Musk of SpaceX.
These men and their companies are reshaping the way much of the world thinks about the future of space—and many people in the industry say that’s an overall plus for the sector. Their spectacular launches are adding to the allure of working in the field, and attracting more interest from investors.
But the adventures of the flyboy founders also cloud the reality of what’s happening in the industry. All three are emphasizing space tourism, which, while exciting, represents just a fraction of the innovation happening in the sector; the tourism market accounts for $1.7 billion of the $366 billion “space economy,” according to BryceTech. What’s more, the headline-grabbing prominence of Bezos et al. means that the private space sector is at risk of repeating some of the missteps of our earlier, public sector efforts, in which the essential contributions of women were minimized or overlooked.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/longform/women-space-tourism-industry-rockets-satellites-launches/
Since that day in Kourou, Johnson has helped put many more satellites into orbit. (It’s earned her the nickname “Satellady.”) She has also found herself the only woman in the picture—and the C-suite, and the boardroom—countless more times. Eventually that feeling started to wear on her, and she decided to do something about it: For the past three decades, she has devoted herself not only to innovating and investing in space-based technologies but also to connecting with and expanding the constellation of women who work in the field. “We’re always helping each other,” says Johnson.
The fact that women like Johnson have had to resort to setting up their own networks in a field traditionally dominated by men is not new. Since the days of Sputnik and Explorer 1, women in the space industry have largely toiled away in the shadows of men. (And women of color? Even more so—just watch Hidden Figures, the film that chronicles the careers of three Black, female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race days.) But here’s a new wrinkle: Back when Johnson was getting started, the commercial space sector was tiny. She was a rarity not just because she was a woman but also because she was an entrepreneur. Until the turn of the century, nearly every project that aimed beyond the Earth’s atmosphere was the domain of government-run space agencies, not commercial companies.
No longer. Today, private money is flowing into a range of space-based innovations at light speed. According to BryceTech, a research firm that tracks the sector, $36.7 billion was invested in space startups over the past two decades—with a full 72% of that pot doled out since 2015. This recent uptick in private funding is largely driven by venture capital firms that are betting space is quite literally the next big frontier.
It’s not just investors who are increasingly looking toward the heavens, though. The private space industry has also blasted its way into the public consciousness recently, thanks to the high-flying theatrics—and yes, incredible innovations—of a trio of billionaires: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, and Elon Musk of SpaceX.
These men and their companies are reshaping the way much of the world thinks about the future of space—and many people in the industry say that’s an overall plus for the sector. Their spectacular launches are adding to the allure of working in the field, and attracting more interest from investors.
But the adventures of the flyboy founders also cloud the reality of what’s happening in the industry. All three are emphasizing space tourism, which, while exciting, represents just a fraction of the innovation happening in the sector; the tourism market accounts for $1.7 billion of the $366 billion “space economy,” according to BryceTech. What’s more, the headline-grabbing prominence of Bezos et al. means that the private space sector is at risk of repeating some of the missteps of our earlier, public sector efforts, in which the essential contributions of women were minimized or overlooked.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/longform/women-space-tourism-industry-rockets-satellites-launches/
