Spotlight On: Mark Gittleman, Chief Strategy Officer, Aegis Aerospace, Inc.
July 2024 — Aegis Aerospace, Inc.’s Chief Strategy Officer Mark Gittleman sat down with Invest: to discuss the dynamics of the industry, how several companies are innovating and diversifying their potential footprint in space, and to highlight the possibilities of what is to come in the next five to 10 years.
What have been Aegis Aerospace’s most significant achievements in the past 12 months?
We’ve raised our profile considerably within the space and defense community, and we’re now seen as one of the leading small businesses in the space and defense industry. That is because we have a 32-year track record of success and innovation, including in the commercial space industry. We own and operate the busiest facility on the International Space Station, permanently installed outside. It’s called MISSE, and we have flown and returned over 2,000 experiments and individual material samples in the last six years. We’re enabling customers across the industry to bring their technologies to market faster and more effectively. Our service is turnkey, which means that if you have an experiment you want to fly in space, we do everything except develop that experiment. We coined the phrase STaaS, or space testing as a service to describe this service. We’ve extended that to the moon now, so before the end of this year, we will launch our first STaaS platform to the moon.
How do you see Texas’ establishment of a Space Commission impacting Aegis Aerospace, and what opportunities might this create?
It’s a step change for the state of Texas to recognize our industry as important enough to do this. This is well funded, and they are already moving out on a big new technology institute in the Clear Lake area that Texas A&M is building. It is going to attract more industry and people to the region. Houston is already the center of human space flight in the world, and the startups and commercial space companies are growing by leaps and bounds in the area. With the state recognizing the importance of the space industry through this Commission, including the investments in technology development and research, more companies and people will move to the area, and it’s only up from here.
What trends are you observing in client needs and demands?
That has changed a lot in the last five years. NASA has been a real leader in promoting commercial space through public/private partnerships like ours. Launch costs have come down dramatically in the last 10 years, with a 90% reduction in the cost of getting something into low Earth orbit. These two things alone have opened new opportunities for entrepreneurs, technologists, researchers, and small businesses. As a result of that, plus very low interest rates for a long time, we had a lot of new entrants into the market with new technologies and ideas. That’s one of the big trends: more private capital available has meant more entrants into the market, which is good for the whole industry. Our STaaS enables these new entrants, and established organizations too, to get their products to market faster.
NASA’s public/private partnerships, with us and many other companies, help bring these commercial services to market. Our customers include NASA and other government agencies. Recently the Department of Defense started seeing the advantage to this approach, and they’ve started trying to do similar things and taking advantage by buying commercially with companies like ours. The last big thing is that space is suddenly cool again. For many years, looking around the room, everyone was just getting older. Now, young people are excited to go into the industry. We’re seeing this surge of new grads or people from other industries with the right skill sets. It’s become much more dynamic even in the last five years.
What opportunities for growth do you see for Aegis Aerospace, particularly with Houston’s expanding aerospace industry?
There are opportunities everywhere. The International Space Station is supposed to come to its end of life in or around the year 2030. At least half a dozen companies are working on some kind of replacement, privately owned, and some will make it into space. We like to think about those like developers putting up a mall. They need retail outlets to be successful. That’s what we do. We provide retail space access to everyone, but especially the smaller researchers, and give them a way to do what they need to do in space by aggregating their payloads onto a larger platform. In-space manufacturing may be the next big thing. Nothing has yet been proven to be economically viable to make in space and sell on the ground at a profit. But with all the R&D going into it and some clever ideas, there will likely be something soon. As the cost of working in space keeps falling, the economics keep improving. Economically, manufacturing in space doesn’t work yet, but I think it will.
How does the company ensure quality and innovation while maintaining a competitive edge in the market?
We have a saying in the industry: space is hard. What we mean is that it’s unforgiving. The smallest mistakes can cause the most expensive thing not to work. Boeing didn’t get their launch off recently because of a valve in the upper stage of the Atlas rocket. The slightest little thing can cause all kinds of problems, so quality has to come first, and it’s embedded in our culture. Typically, we put things in space three to five times a year.
We have about 350 employees, which is not that small. We’re a nice size to have some meaningful capabilities, but still small enough to be nimble. Anyone with an idea is easily heard, and as a small and privately owned business, we can make decisions pretty fast. The combination of bringing ideas forward and being able to put ideas into practice quickly and with our capital creates a dynamic environment for us.
What is the outlook for Aegis Aerospace in the near term, and what are the top priorities for the next five to 10 years?
It’s just the most exciting time ever to be in this industry, and we’re positioned well. Because we provide engineering services for the Department of Defense and NASA, and we have our commercial space services and our lunar payloads, we are everywhere that the industry is going. The industry is super-dynamic right now. The smaller, more agile companies with broad capabilities like ours will be able to pivot more readily. So, in the next 10 or 15 years, I think we’ll see strong growth. One of the challenges for the whole industry is finding enough people with the rare skill set we need. Houston is the place to be for our industry.
SpaceX is developing a big rocket in South Texas. They’re targeting $100 or less per kilo to orbit. If you think about it, I weigh 75 kilos. In theory, for $7,500, they could launch me into space from South Texas. Now, if that becomes true, it’s going to change everything.
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