Why Every Company Will Eventually Become a Space Company

At some point, every company will become a space company. Sounds stupid at the moment but we’ve already claimed that they’ll be a Cloud/ Mobile/ AI/ Metaverse/Big Data* company so why not space? *delete as appropriate

It’s not as daft as it sounds, some companies have a foothold in space already without realizing it whilst others, like luxury brands have already been to space.

OMEGA SA can claim to be the first luxury brand in space. Since then Pepsi, Coca-Cola, John Smith’s, KitKat, Specsavers, Robinson Squash, and Suntory have all launched products into space for whatever PR reasons known to the cosmos.

But brands aside, the easiest way to become part of the future of space is through satellites.

More and more companies are making use of satellite data provided through third parties. Aside from satellite imagery, the data itself streaming back to Earth has a variety of use cases including -

• Agriculture: crop monitoring

  
  

• Forestry: forestry planning and prevention of illegal logging

  
  

• Fishing: prevention of illegal fishing

  
  

• Energy: pipeline and right-of-way monitoring, new deposits

  
  

• Insurance: infrastructure integrity monitoring

  
  

• Land use: infrastructure planning and monitoring of building activity

  
  

• Sea traffic: iceberg monitoring, oil spills detection, coastal traffic monitoring

  
  

• Disaster response: fast response to natural catastrophes

Providing satellite data and accompanying analytics have pretty much become the lowest common denominator when it comes to the space sector, it’s the lowest-hanging fruit a startup can attack if they can secure customers willing to pay for the data.

But frankly, time is running out — with the cost of launches dropping like a dud rocket and CubeSats costing next to nothing, the plethora of satellite companies will one day face competition from the very customers they sell to.

Why would you pay someone else for the data you don’t own when you could launch a ride-share satellite into orbit and own the data itself directly?

And that could mean a competitive edge in your own industry if you have access to the right type of data under your own direction and analytical capabilities rather than someone else’s.

It also means growing the space sector from across different industries, allowing for the cross-skilling of workers who could take up roles in satellite data analysis, mission control, space logistics, and more. I would rather see this happen than billboards on the moon!

It speaks volumes that the majority of UK Space Agency funding these days is towards supporting the satellite industry. For which, as a small space nation, there are around 150+ companies in this sector — and that’s a huge risk long term if it doesn’t support others with the same focus.

It’s recently announced a £50m investment drive into the satellite sector but its strategy is becoming increasingly short-sighted — much like the 200 launcher startups saturating the space industry globally, having the same amount of satellite startups on one island is a recipe for disaster.

This is all hypothetical and far off, but while everyone is enamored with generative AI, someone will be pitching to their own company to have a stake in the final frontier of business.

Can you afford not to be a space company?

Also published here