Stephen Altemus, CEO, Intuitive Machines

In an interview with Invest:, Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, discussed Houston’s role in building the next era of the commercial space economy. “Houston has been critical to the success and the growth of Intuitive Machines,” Altemus said.

What changes over the past year have most impacted Intuitive Machines and the broader commercial space industry?

The space sector has continued to get hotter and hotter. As civil and national security space converge, the aerospace sector is now growing rapidly. Before that, it had been growing but was largely unappreciated by the public markets.

We went public as a company in 2023, landed on the South Pole region of the Moon in 2024, and did it again in 2025. There has been exponential growth in opening up the economy in and around the Moon. Years before, people would look at you funny when you mentioned landing on the Moon. But because we turned that into reality, it has gotten the attention of the public markets.

You see the convergence of civil and national security space, and there is a lot of investment pouring into the aerospace sector right now. It has been a remarkable change in the past year. They say it is the best time to be an aerospace engineer. It is not Apollo, it is today.

How would you describe the intersection of the commercial space economy, government, private investment, and national security interests?

NASA has been leading the way in trusting the commercial sector of the economy. The industrial base and the commercial sector are being asked to do more with a strained federal dollar.

The ability to bring in investment to advance technologies and build the systems that will be required is critical. NASA and civil space are leaning on a company’s ability to raise venture capital and capital through the markets, and then put that to work increasing production, strengthening the supply chain, and stretching the economy to do things that are more difficult, like landing on the Moon within four years on a fixed budget for less than $100 million.

That takes innovative business practices, investment strategies, and technologies. The commercial sector has been an accelerant to how we can move faster in exploring space and opening up the lunar economy.

How is Intuitive Machines’ shift from individual missions toward long-term space infrastructure changing the way the industry thinks about the Moon?

We were initially focused on a mission. The catalyst was NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract, which asked commercial companies to fly to the Moon on a fixed price within about 48 months.

In the process, we had to fly our own mission to the Moon and communicate with our spacecraft. We contracted with large-aperture radio astronomy dishes around the world that study deep space. We contracted with them to point toward the Moon while we were flying there to pick up the signal from our lander.

In the beginning, we thought we were building a lunar lander. Then we built a mission control center to control the lander. Then we built the ground segment to communicate while the lander was flying to the Moon, and that included eight different dishes in six different countries. All of that became a lunar program.

As a result of doing that commercially, we were able to work with NASA on a near-space network from Earth to about 2 million kilometers out in space. That includes commercial communications from the ground, data relay satellites around the Moon, and position, navigation, and timing services around the Moon.

Suddenly, we grew from having a lunar program to having a communications network. Now you have the ability to build complex systems, connect them into a network, and operate infrastructure in space as a service.

What role does Houston and the broader Texas aerospace ecosystem play in supporting innovation, workforce development, and growth?

Houston has been critical to the success and the growth of Intuitive Machines. I stepped out of Johnson Space Center in 2013 and said the business I wanted to create should begin where I was. I was going to start in Houston.

We have the Texas Medical Center, energy, oil and gas, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center. We started in those sectors and got traction as a business.

One of my strategies was cultivating community relationships. We worked closely with San Jacinto College to train a technician workforce for space programs. We worked with regional economic development organizations like the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership and the Greater Houston Partnership. We worked with local council members, the mayor, the Houston Airport System, and Johnson Space Center.

As a result, we have our headquarters at Spaceport Houston and more than 300,000 square feet of production area there. That partnership created jobs and training opportunities with San Jacinto College, and everyone became an advocate for growing the space footprint at Spaceport Houston.

That has been key to our success. When you incubate a company locally like that, several years later, you are a global corporation. Houston has its own recipe for success. You have the people here to build and manage large corporations all the way to the C-suite. You have innovation at the technology level, but you also have the skilled workforce to take you into any size business you want to grow.

How is the industry working to attract the next generation of talent and retrain the current workforce?

Reputation helps. When you are seeding a business, working closely with colleges and universities helps you grow your own workforce.

There were major aerospace competitions to bring business into the Houston area, but the region did not win those because it did not have the workforce, specifically the technician workforce for space systems in electronics, composites, machining, and related areas.

Building a program with San Jacinto College called the EDGE Center helped address that. It built the curriculum to train individuals. They would get a certificate, and from there, Intuitive Machines would give them an internship. They would then get a full-time job.

For everyone who came in, I offered an engineering technology degree reimbursed by the company through San Jacinto College. Everyone who graduated from that program was promised an engineering degree if they wanted to continue. It has built a loyal, passionate workforce that is the bedrock of Intuitive Machines.

Where do you see the strongest intersections between AI, defense, energy, advanced technologies, and the future space economy?

We see the need for advanced computing and edge computing in space, combined with AI algorithms that can take the data collected in space, fuse it, and send it back to Earth as an information product.

We are using AI extensively to improve production flow, software coding, processes, and procedures. It helps us determine where to put investments and how to streamline processes to move faster.

Historically, space systems have taken decades to build, and we do not have that kind of time in the global space race with China. Those innovations and that cross-coupling with AI help us move faster and go further in space exploration.

What are your top priorities over the next several years, and what opportunities will define the next era of the commercial space industry?

The commercial sector is moving to the forefront and investing its own dollars to open up and sustain a lunar economy. As we get more systems in space, more communications, and more infrastructure to operate, it becomes a more sustainable economy.

What I would like to see for the state of Texas, and the Houston region in particular, is an investment in all the lunar data that will be collected over the coming years. All the sensor data, images, position, navigation, and timing data should come back to Houston and Texas. Let Texas be the steward of the lunar economy.

As a company, we are ready to manage the lunar archives for the United States and all the data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and ShadowCam. We already have a footprint to begin capturing and stewarding one of the largest parts of the lunar economy right here in Texas.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Recently, we have been growing organically by winning contracts with NASA and the government. Since taking the company public, we also have access to capital that allows us to grow through mergers and acquisitions.

We have expanded our footprint to more than 1,800 people. We have IM Central located here in Houston, IM East in Maryland, which is our Center of Excellence for Mechanisms and Robotics, and IM West in Palo Alto and San Jose, where we do satellite manufacturing for commercial, civil, and national security space satellites.

Now you see us globally with the acquisition of Goonhilly Earth Station, with antennas in the United Kingdom, Connecticut, and California. We have been growing exponentially, and it all started from the seeds that we planted here in our local community to start this business.