“The Coming Reality of Space Business: Growing Organs, Mining Asteroids, and Commercial Space Stations”

Organs grown outside the Earth’s atmosphere, mining minerals from asteroids and commercial space stations are not science fiction, but a reality in the coming years, according to space startup financier Rafael Roethgen.

Roethgen, who began his career on Wall Street working in the financial sector, has been an entrepreneur in the space industry for several years. He has created a venture capital fund that invests in space startups. Regarding its creation, he says that at one point – after the clients asked to study “SpaceX” – he realized that space is now in the same situation as the Internet was in the 90s, that is, the industry is expanding rapidly and at the same time prices for services are being reduced.

He predicts that in the coming years more and more practically oriented companies will appear, which will create goods and products for consumption on Earth in space. His own space biotech company could in the near future grow organs in microgravity to save human lives on Earth.

Where are we now with business in space? Billionaire Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic could finally begin flights, it is said. However, this industry is still quite expensive.

This question must be answered on several levels.

If you look at the space business, you can see that there are several businesses that have been operating since the very beginning. For example, the satellite industry. It’s a billion-dollar business. Another thing is observing the Earth or other space bodies. The third is navigation – GPS, GLONAS and others. These are traditional areas of space business that continue to grow. Now there are many private companies entering these industries.

But now we also have new development businesses. Space tourism is one of them. It has been active for a while. If I’m not mistaken, the first case was Denis Tito in 2001 (Tito is the first space tourist who paid 20 million for the opportunity to stay in space, – ed.). There were several more flights. All this was organized by the US company “Space Adventures”, but then there was silence for a while. You are right – these flights were very expensive.