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Should be launched for the first time by the end of 2022 and transport a ton of payload:
The planned "Spectrum" launcher from Isar Aerospace (here a computer-generated image)
Photo: Isar Aerospace Spectrum / youtube
Heavily rich men, very large rockets: This is the denominator that the reports of the past few months about privately financed space travel can be summed up in. The first billionaire in
space
was Virgin founder
Richard Branson
(70), who took off in a rocket into space on July 11th. "Just magical" was the view of the earth from above, he reported after his one-hour flight.
Amazon founder
Jeff Bezos
(57) went into space nine days later in a rocket from his space company Blue Origin. It was "the best day ever," he said after his ten-minute flight, which was fully automated. And
Elon Musk
(50), head of the electrical engineering company Tesla and founder of the space company SpaceX? He doesn't get into a rocket himself yet. In September, SpaceX wants to send a capsule manned by four people into space and let it orbit the earth for three days.
The crazy race of the super rich for space tourism has really started this summer.
Big business, however, promises to become a related line of business: shooting up small, light satellites into orbit.
SpaceX is doing this as part of its Starlink project, Bezos is countering this with its Internet satellite project "Kuiper".
But three German start-ups are also involved in the "Star Wars" - and are gaining increasing clout in the race for global satellite networks.
Isar Aerospace wins prominent investors
The Munich start-up "Isar Aerospace", which reached a milestone last week, is particularly promising.
In a financing round, the company received 140 million euros - and a prominent investor: Porsche SE.
The car manufacturer now holds a stake in the "low single-digit percentage range" in the Bavarian rocket manufacturer, which is valued at around 450 million euros.
Isar Aerospace does not want to shoot people into space, but rather build comparatively small rockets that can only fly unmanned and can only carry small loads in the direction of space.
These so-called microlauncher hide a large area of business.
The background: The technology for satellites is getting smaller and smaller - and there is a great need to transport them into space more cheaply.
In the early days of space travel, weather or communication satellites were the size of a bus, then the technology was roughly the size of a washing machine.
Today some satellites only reach the size of a wine bottle gift box, explained
Thomas Jarzombek
, the Federal Government's coordinator for the aerospace industry, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".
This shrinking process not only enables more cost-effective series production on earth.
The lower weight of such artificial satellites makes take-off and landing cheaper.
And such small satellites shouldn't even leave space junk behind.
At the end of their term, they should completely burn up when they enter the earth's atmosphere.
Isar Aerospace plans to launch the first satellites into orbit with its "Spectrum" launcher as early as next year.
The rocket can carry more than 1000 kilograms, Isar Aerospace started production this year.
Engine tests are to begin shortly in Kiruna, Sweden, and a launch site is to be put into operation in Norway.
An ex-SpaceX engineer for Bavaria
Some time ago, the Bavarians brought a highly qualified advisor, chairman of the supervisory board and investor on board:
Bulent Altan
.
The engineer, who graduated from Stanford University in the United States, was born in Istanbul, attended an Austrian school there and later studied at the Technical University of Munich - before he went to the USA and, after studying at Stanford, was hired at Musks SpaceX in 2004.
Altan is considered one of the main architects of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher and the Dragon capsule, but also worked on the Starlink Internet satellite project. In his mid-forties, he has been CEO of the Munich-based company Mynaric, which specializes in laser communication, since 2020. With Mynarics technology, satellites will in future be able to transmit huge amounts of data in fractions of a second - similar to a fiber optic cable, only between ground stations and a satellite. The laser transmission technology now fits in a shoe box and is to be mass-produced shortly.
Altan wants to help develop a new European space industry - as a counterbalance to Musk's SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin.
At Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018, Altran is the chairman of the supervisory board and also an investor.
The start-up is managed by co-founder
Daniel Metzler
, a 29-year-old aeronautical engineer who studied in Vienna and Munich.
Airbus Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of the aviation group, has also acquired a stake in Isar - as have venture capitalists Lakestar and Earlybird.
Isar Aerospace has already achieved great success in competition with its German competition: In April, the company won a microlauncher competition from the German Aerospace Center - and with it eleven million euros.
RFA counts on Bremen space specialists OHB
The start-up Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), in which the Bremen-based space specialist OHB has a 53 percent stake, is also pursuing a "microlauncher" approach.
RFA is currently looking for investors.
In February it was said that the young company wanted to raise 25 million euros in a financing round.
Like the Isar, RFA has not yet built a rocket or fired it into space, but the Augsburgers also want to have lifted off into space by the end of 2022.
The planned rocket should be 25 meters long and be able to carry 1.3 tons of payload into space.
Not enough to send people into space - but enough for a few small satellites.
The third start-up in the rocket network is currently looking for investors: Hyimpulse Technologies from Baden-Württemberg is currently developing two rockets.
One is supposed to enable gravity experiments and atmospheric research in the suborbital area at an altitude of around 200 kilometers with a payload of 350 kilograms.
The other can carry a payload of up to 500 kilograms into near-earth orbit.
As with its competitors, the same applies to the Swabians: engines and rockets are currently being designed and the first prototypes are being built.
German politics supports the start-ups as much as possible
Politicians are also increasingly interested in the space race. The construction of a new broadband Internet that works via satellite connection is considered to be the future third pillar of the European Union in space activities - after the company's own GPS network Galileo and the Earth observation program Copernicus. There are already corresponding EU plans and a tug-of-war about which companies will be involved in the all-Internet.
It has already been agreed that the European Ariane rockets, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and an Airbus subsidiary, should not be eligible for this. According to reports, ESA bills international customers around 180 million euros per Ariane 5 launch if they want to send their satellites into space. Too expensive. And the first flight of the Ariane 5 successor will not take place until mid-2022.
The Ariane program offers rockets from the age of "agency space travel", which is why industry experts say it pointedly.
That is to say: The time of space programs financed by states with billions is drawing to a close - space flights are now being privatized and thus made more cost-effective.
German start-ups and their donors are apparently determined to play an important role in this market opening.
wed