◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek February 10, 202022
spaceflight empire that’s been working on its
rocket for about a decade, has withdrawn from the
contest. Vector Launch Inc., the third finalist, filed
for bankruptcy in December. That’s left Astra in a
competition against itself and physics, which may
be why Kemp, a relentless ball of confident energy
who dresses all in black, is uncharacteristically try-
ing to set modest expectations for the Kodiak launch.
“It would be unprecedented if this was a success-
ful orbital flight,” he says. “We want to emphasize
that this is one of many launches we will do in an
ongoing campaign.”
The 42-year-old CEO spent almost five years at
NASA, but he’s not a rocket scientist by training. He
joined NASA in 2007 after running a string of inter-
net startups, eventually becoming the space agency’s
chief technology officer. While at NASA he shepherded
an open source software project called Open Stack,
which turned into a data center and cloud comput-
ing phenomenon. He left in 2011, hoping to capital-
ize on Open Stack’s success, but his next company,
Nebula, found itself outgunned by Amazon.com Inc.’s
cloud computing services; Oracle Corp. acquired
Nebula’s piece parts in 2015. Unsure what to do next,
he spent a couple of years hunting for fresh ideas,
which is when he ran into Adam London, Astra’s
co-founder and CTO.
London is the rocket man, a 46-year-old with a
doctorate in aerospace engineering from MIT and
a talent for calculating drag coefficients and gravity
losses in his head. He spent 12 years running a small
rocket company called Ventions in the heart of San
Francisco. Ventions’s handful of employees focused
on miniaturizing rocket technology in their make-
shift lab, living on NASA and Darpa contracts and
the odd consulting gig. By 2016, London had grown
determined to build the rocket of his dreams, but he
needed a lot more capital. Kemp and his talent for
winning over investors seemed like a good match, so
after many chats, they joined forces. “I liked Chris’s
enthusiasm, his ability to think about the story, and
certainly his network,” says London, the measured
counterpoint to Kemp’s bravado.
The rest of Astra’s 150-person team includes some
legit aerospace veterans—former SpaceX employees
such as Chris Thompson (part of the SpaceX founding
team), Matt Lehman (propulsion), Roger Carlson (the
Dragon capsule), and Bryson Gentile (the Falcon 9
rocket). But there’s also a large contingent that came
from gritty, bootstrapped rocket outfits or from other
fields entirely. Much of the engine building has been
done by Ben Farrant, a former Navy engine man
who’s spent the bulk of his career in the auto racing
world tuning vehicles. Les Martin, a launch and test
infrastructure engineer, built test stands for SpaceX,Virgin Galactic, and Firefly Aerospace after learning
electronics in the Marines. “I didn’t know the first
thing about rockets, whenever I got into it,” he says.
“But with these startups, you’re involved pretty
quickly in just about every single aspect.”
Astra has raised more than $100 million from
investors including Acme, Advance, Airbus Ventures,
Canaan Partners, Innovation Endeavors, and Salesforce
co-founder Marc Benioff. Billions of dollars have flowed
into commercial spaceflight ventures in the past few
years, often to newcomers that, like Astra, have shied
from competing directly with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
and government-backed makers of large rockets.
The jumbo end of the market centers on rockets
that fly roughly once a month and cost $60 million
to $300 million per launch, typically carrying tons of
cargo. Astra says its daily launches, meant to carry
about 450 pounds of cargo to orbit, will be pitched
to the dozens of companies making a new breed of
small satellites, such as Planet Labs, Spire Global,
and Swarm Technologies.
Whereas conventional orbital networks are com-
posedofa relativehandfulofsatellitesthesizeofa
car,Planetanditsrivalsproducetenstohundredsof
basketball-size satellites for use in specific orbits to
photograph, track, and connect things on Earth in
near-real time. At the moment no one really knows
how big or viable the market for smaller rockets to
ferry these satellites might be. Rocket Lab, a com-
pany founded by Peter Beck in Auckland in 2006, is
the only small-rocket maker that’s actively launch-
ing. Rocket Lab enjoyed a banner 2019, putting six
rockets into space, and has about a dozen more
launches scheduled for this year. Its success has
placed immense pressure on companies such as
Astra and Virgin Orbit to catch up.
Astra has operated in secrecy partly to avoid being
pushed to set unrealistic deadlines. Most of its work-
ers have online résumés that list their employer as
“Stealth Space Company,” and there hasn’t been a
website. At the former Alameda Naval Air Station,
Astra took over a decrepit building used decades ago
to test jet engines indoors, which has helped keep its
secrecy intact. The facility has two long tunnels that
send fire and scorching hot air up through exhaust
towers and thick concrete walls capable of absorbing
the explosive impacts of tests gone wrong.
This setup has allowed Astra to conduct thou-
sands of runs on its rocket engines without its neigh-
bors noticing much of anything. It’s also meant Astra
can put the engines through their paces on-site and
make adjustments to the hardware quickly, instead of
going to the Mojave Desert or an open field in Texas
where other rocket makers typically run engine trials.
Kemp says Rocket Lab’s going launch rate of about“Our strategy
is to always
focus on the
bottom line”