SpaceX is a $200bn company[1], making it the second most valuable private company in the world. Launch costs have dropped by nearly 45x since the days of the space shuttle. Over the past decade, thousands of satellites have been launched into low Earth orbit. Some $78.5bn of investment has been poured into companies building space infrastructure—satellites, rockets, payloads—since 2015[2]. Private investment is on track to exceed government space-related R&D for the first time in history[3]. Space, it seems, is open for business. 

However, investors with long memories will ask: haven’t we been here before? After years of breathless investor enthusiasm, Iridium’s 1999 entry onto the list of 20 largest bankruptcies in US history. The eerily Starlink-esque Teledesic’s quiet exit in 2002. Globalstar’s 2002 Chapter 11 after over $4bn in debt and equity investment. A precipitous decline in space venture funding following the dot-com bubble, and a decade-long recovery. 

How should today’s capital allocators evaluate the current market, and gauge whether or not history will repeat itself? Is space investable?Â