Stop Pretending Space Business Is Simple

What Generic Courses and Playbooks Leave Out

As a person who is an “impostor” in the industry, I have spent significant time learning on my own, reading and using freely available resources on space business and space education. Some are published by EUSPA, others by accelerators or educational platforms. They are usually meant to explain how the space industry works, how companies are built, and how business decisions are made.

Most of them are well-intentioned. But they tend to describe how space business should work. You know, the version you usually see in pitch decks, accelerator playbooks, and LinkedIn carousels.

What they do not really show is how the space business actually works.

I am not saying it is wrong… But it certainly is incomplete.

So this article is about observations from actually working in the space industry.

How space business is usually explained

In educational materials, the space business is presented in a super straightforward and logical way:

Define what you sell
Define who you sell to
Customer will compare offers
…and decide based on: price, characteristics, and timelines.

But where are funding, politics, and national interests? They are mentioned either only briefly, if at all. It exists somewhere in the background, but is not treated as something actively shaping decisions.

But… this makes the story easy to follow. It also makes it unrealistic.

How space business actually works

In real life, space business is done by people under immense pressure.

Stressing out about launch opportunities shifting, hardware being expensive, other delays, money running out, things being politically sensitive, etc.

Most decisions are made with very little room to choose. Often, there are not several good alternatives. Sometimes there are barely any alternatives at all. (Let’s not launch with a Falcon 9… sure, then, who do we launch with? :))

And when things go wrong, the consequences are rarely “dramatic” in the way outsiders imagine. Failure is often absorbed, explained away, or quietly forgotten, depending on who paid for the project and why it existed in the first place. Because “space is hard” narrative.

Overselling and hype

The biggest disconnect comes from pretending that space is a normal market and normal industry.

It is not.

In terms of demand, my good friend said:

“On Earth, you tend to have thousands or millions of potential customers. For most space, even 100 is really pushing it; for some, even a dozen is really pushing it.”

In terms of offer, from the customers’ perspective, it is even worse:

Some companies are cheaper because they are new and unproven.
Some are cheaper because they are heavily supported by public money.
Some are chosen because they fit a national or political story, not because they are the best option.

Grants and venture capital make some companies very visible very early. That visibility is often mistaken for readiness. Because flashy marketing, fancy booths, etc.

Optimism is often rewarded. Saying “we are not ready yet” rarely is.

Overselling is common. Not because everyone is lying, but because the system pushes people to promise progress, even when reality is slower (or quite different).

And customers often fall for the datasheet promises…

In this environment, price does not really mean cheap.
And datasheet numbers do not tell the full story on their own.

Who actually makes decisions

A lot of educational material talks about defining the “ideal customer”, as if decisions are made by roles or categories…

They are not. They are made by real human beings with very real fears:

One guy worries about technical risk.
Another one worries about spending public money.
And another one worries about how this decision will look to management, a ministry, or a board.

When space companies communicate, they often forget this and speak in abstract terms.

But the people on the other side are asking very simple questions:

Will this make my life easier or harder?
Who takes responsibility if this fails?
How exposed am I if this goes wrong?
Will I regret this decision later?

If your communication does not answer these questions, it will not work.

The part no one likes to say out loud

Geopolitics is always part of the decision.

Supply chains, export controls, data ownership, and national influence over who can be chosen and who cannot, even when nobody says it explicitly. Sometimes this matters more than price or features.

Ignoring this does not make your message clearer. It just makes it incomplete.

Why this matters

The problem with staying at a theoretical level is not that it is wrong.
It is that it creates false expectations for the newcomers in the newspace field.

Companies then wonder:

Why their “perfectly clear” message does not convert.
Why interest and demand do not turn into contracts.
Why being cheaper or technically better is not enough.

Space business is messy, limited, and very human.

Understanding that does not make things easier. But it does make the communication more honest.
And honesty is usually what makes decisions possible.