NASA’s decision to abandon its 15-year, $11 billion mission to Mars to bring back samples could create a startup feeding frenzy, TechCrunch reports. Describing its plans as too slow and too expensive, NASA is going back to the drawing board, hoping to get help from the space industry. Sure, you might worry that NASA won’t be able to manage its own mission on a schedule and budget it deems acceptable, but the possibility of a deluge of dollars swallowing up startups working to make space more accessible could s prove to be a huge boon.
Not all startups are NFT-based social media apps, business software, and online games. There are quite a few that focus on the bits and atoms side of the technology fence, even though the idea of building advanced hardware without a software element is virtually unthinkable. Ergo, hardware startups are actually working on both sides of the digital divide at the same time.
But space startups aren’t worried about that. Looking at TechCrunch’s recent space headlines, we can see that Dark Space is working on a way to remove space debris; True Anomaly works on moon landing; Varda Space’s work to make drugs in space and bring them back to Earth appears to be working, raising another $90 million; Orbital Fab wants to refuel satellites; The list is lengthened increasingly.
So, NASA’s money could hold a bunch of startup-sized buckets, and I’m here for it. Yes, I’m a gigantic sci-fi idiot, but I’m still just giddy with the hype regarding our future as a species in space. To that end, if a startup that’s working with NASA on the Mars mission needs to send a human there to check the dials and such, I’m your guy. Press play, let’s have fun!
techcrunch
