Once upon a time, space was cool. Little kids aspired to be space cowboys, astronauts had all the right stuff, and space was considered the final frontier. These days, the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, NASA critics, and public attention to a myriad of “earthly” problems have eclipsed the once-strong support for space exploration.  Or have they?

Tiny rumblings have begun calling for privatized, space tourism, and space has lately grabbed the hearts, and the purse strings, of some very influential people. Rebel billionaires like Paul Allen and Sir Richard Branson have invested their time and money in making space accessible to average people. And companies like SpaceDev are providing the affordable technology that may make their dreams a reality. But don’t worry: you don’t need an Oprah-level bank account or even a degree in astrophysics to blast into this industry. The right business minds can participate, helping tech junkies driving the new Space Age to transform their visions into viable companies.

Richard Slansky is walking proof of that. A 1979 Wharton grad with a concentration in economics, Richard is the President of SpaceDev, a growing company that has developed a usable hybrid rocket, micro-satellites, and a small launch vehicle. The company has worked with academia and NASA and captured the interest of the U.S. government. We sat down with Richard to learn how businesspeople can turn themselves into space invaders.

Did you always know that
you wanted to go into business?

I grew up in a family business, and every holiday, every vacation, I ended up participating in that family business. I grew up with a very good work ethic and with exposure to business in general.

What was that business?

We had a country inn in upstate New York. We had a restaurant, hotel, motel, activities.

You were at Wharton in the late
‘70s. What was that like?

I thought that the Wharton experience was outstanding.  The way they structured the curriculum—it was [and still is] about half liberal arts, half business courses—was wonderful. We even ended up taking some of the same courses as the MBA candidates at the time [which you can still do].

Did you know what you wanted
to do when you left Wharton?

For a couple of years I worked in the family business and grew the hotel restaurant aspect of it. We grew quite well, it was very profitable, and my father offered me the business. As my brother moved more into hotel management, I decided to move on and give him the business.

How did you wind up working
in the space industry?

Over the last 20-odd years, I’ve been in high tech and biotech. I’ve primarily worked with entrepreneurial founders. Operations and finance are the areas most entrepreneurial high-tech founders don’t really have experience in. Because of my strong business background and my intellectual curiosity for different types of technology, I’ve been able to associate myself with founders who didn’t have business acumen, didn’t have the financial wherewithal to grow the companies. And since I had a grass roots business upbringing, I had a good management style. In those partnerships, I was able to develop some very good relationships and grow a number of companies from a few million dollars to, in some cases, well over a hundred million dollars.

And SpaceDev?

I had been introduced to Jim Benson, who is the founder of SpaceDev.

He’d always been in love with space and intrigued by deep-space missions and asteroids and all the related technologies. Back in 1955, he joined a club that promised he would be notified about the first commercial space flight so he could take a ride on it. He never got contacted so he decided to do it himself.  He put some of his fortune into creating a company called SpaceDev, which was founded in 1997.

What does the company do?

In October 2004, we flew two astronauts into space, creating the first private-sector astronauts. We helped Burt Rutan win the X Prize, which is a $10 million prize to someone able to put a spacecraft into space twice within two weeks, with the equivalent of three people in it—one live person and two counterbalances.  This whole project was funded by Paul Allen, a Microsoft co-founder. We were the ones who provided the hybrid technology and the rocket motor so that flight could take place. We actually powered SpaceShipOne.

Pretty cool. What other
projectsdo you work on?

Part of what we’ve been announcing lately is our work with the missile defense agency, because we are actually developing small satellites, nano-satellites. The best way to think about this is to think about the computer industry 30 years ago. There were mainframe computers that migrated to mini-computers that migrated to microcomputers.

So now we have mainframe satellites, and mainframe satellites take anywhere from 7 to 15 years from design to launch. They cost anywhere from $250 million and up. They are anywhere from 2,000 kilos and larger—about the size of 3 SUVs, even with the solar panels folded together. It’s a fairly large payload to launch into orbit.

These micro satellites, in contrast, take anywhere from 1 to 3 years to design and launch, they cost less than $10 million, and they’re about the size of your dishwasher, maybe a little smaller. If you are carrying your PDA or your cell phone, you can imagine the amount of power you can generate in a small space. It shouldn’t take too much imagination to think that we can put the same power we used to put into a mainframe satellite into a micro-satellite.

Are there any in space right now?

There are. First of all we developed our initial micro-satellite with NASA funding and with the University of California, Berkeley. It is called CHIPSat–cosmic hot interstellar plasma spectrometer satellite, which is a mouthful.

It was a piece of equipment that Berkeley wanted to put up in orbit that would monitor interstellar gases. And they needed a way to collect that data and bring it down so it could be analyzed at Berkeley. We said, ok you have the piece of equipment, and we have the micro-satellite capability. We will put this up, watch it for you, integrate itinto the launch vehicle. We’ll do everything. You give us the payload, we’ll make sure it goes. We’ll even provide you with post-launch monitoring.

This went up in January 2003. It used TCP/IP as a communication technology. It was the first floating note on the Internet, meaning you could operate it from any laptop computer in the world. It was the first time that this had ever been done.

It all sounds top secret.

I’m able to talk to you about this today because most of our programs have not evolved yet into the classified arenas, but they’re all moving into the classified arena. The main reason is that China has announced that they’ve got nano-satellites and micro-satellites to protect and monitor their mainframe satellites. And we as a country are behind in that. So there’s a very large opportunity here to catch up rapidly by embracing the concept.

A big phrase in Washington these days is space superiority, which I think everyone would agree we don’t have today. That’s something that we are working towards, and SpaceDev is helping in that regard by providing new technologies and more rapid, affordable ways to deliver payloads into space.

Do you ever go, “Wow,
my job is really cool.”

We do that all the time. We were standing on the tarmac when SpaceShipOne launched. We were not too far from Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Buzz Aldrin—it was an exhilarating experience, and a historic experience. And we had the opportunity to bring all the company employees and their families. So, yes, being part of history, creating new private-sector astronauts, launching new satellites that never existed before—it’s like being a kid again.  But in order for a technology company to be a real company there needs to be a balance. There needs to be the technology side, and there needs to be the business side.

Do you think it’s a good industry
for a young businessperson?

We’re definitely interested in promoting this industry, attracting some of the real talent that’s coming up and getting them into this opportunity. It’s a wonderful business, it’s an exciting business, it’s a great place to work on new technologies and do things that are not ordinary. As we develop each step along the way, we want it to be a good business. Our CEO Jim Benson says all the time, “If we want to go to space to stay, space has to pay.” Each building block has to be a solid business unto itself as we develop more of a commercial space program. And that’s what we are doing, one building block at a time.

So do you want to go into space?

I definitely would. I think we’ve removed a large portion of the risk with use of the hybrid rocket motor.

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