New Space

A Second Decade of 'New Space'

Circa 2020-2030

Big Players, Big Companies, Big Nations, Big Change

To set the stage, we share two points of view of a larger geopolitics and the changes being set in motion by constellations of low-/high-orbit satellites

The numbers and scope to date of satellite launches has grown greatly and now orbiting satellites with operational communication-telecom/observation-surveillance/networking for government and business is projected to grow astronomically.

Read Arnaud Bertrand, ala 2026

What the SpaceX project is concretely about is:

- Building a new global communication infrastructure via Starlink

- Enabling the US security establishment to see and hear everything on Earth, all the time (via Starshield, its military division)

- Dominating access to space itself, from launch to orbital real estate

Each of these is very, very real.

Do the test one day and download the app “Stellarium” on your phone that allows you to identify stars, planets and… the satellites orbiting above you. I guarantee you that the sheer number of Starlink satellites right on top of your head at any given moment will genuinely shock you. There are currently over 10,000 of them up there - almost as many as there are planes in the sky at any given moment. Starlink satellites constitute roughly two-thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth, all belonging to a single private American company.

So it’s not conspiracy theories: the SpaceX satellites are up there, right above your head, right now. Starlink already has over 12 million subscribers across 160 countries. Starshield - the military division of SpaceX - already has multi-billion dollar contracts with the US defense establishment to "enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe". And SpaceX already controls the majority of global launch capacity.

In other words, every single one of my three points above is already well underway.

And, more worryingly, the roadmap for these satellites doesn't stop at surveillance: the US Congressional Research Service has documented plans for space-based directed energy weapons within the same SDA program that SpaceX Starshield is part of a 'missile defense system', with Congress having already granted the legal authority and budget to develop them.

So we're talking about a single private company, one deeply embedded in the US military-defense establishment, building the infrastructure to control global communications, conduct continuous planetary surveillance, and potentially project military force from orbit. And that company already has more hardware up in space than every other country and company on Earth, combined.

From the standpoint of China, or that of any country that cares about sovereignty, letting that go unchallenged would be an act of strategic suicide.

The question, therefore, isn’t whether China should develop its own sovereign capacities to challenge SpaceX, but whether it can.

That's the topic of my latest article (Ed: see JULY 3, 2026 article below): a systematic analysis of whether China can break SpaceX's grip on the sky...

Musk built a monopoly on space. Can China break it?

By Arnaud Bertrand

JULY 03, 2026

There is an argument being made that what Tesla did to boost the Chinese EV industry, SpaceX will do to boost China’s commercial space industry.

For instance, take what Ellis Scherer, the lead space analyst for ITIF (the world’s leading think tank for science and technology), recently said in this Reuters’ piece: “Everything SpaceX does is a bellwether for China’s space industry... I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a strong uptick in Chinese commercial-space listings and funding.”

And the facts, so far, seem to back this thesis up: many Chinese space startups received massive rounds of funding in recent months, or are on the way to IPO like SpaceX. Just a few examples:

LandSpace (蓝箭航天): Got its STAR Market IPO application accepted last December, seeking to raise 7.5 billion yuan (~$1B). It’s the first company accepted under a new regulatory framework in China that allows unprofitable rocket companies to list.

iSpace (星际荣耀): They closed a 5.04 billion yuan (~$700M) D++ round in February, shattering the record for the largest single funding round in Chinese commercial aerospace history. The company is developing the Hyperbola-3, a medium-sized reusable methane-oxygen rocket, with first orbital flight plus sea recovery planned for mid-2026.

CAS Space (中科宇航): Got its STAR Market IPO accepted in March, seeking 4.18 billion yuan (~$575M). Currently the only Chinese private rocket company to have launched foreign satellites.

Space Pioneer (天兵科技): They raised ~2.5 billion yuan (~$345M) across Pre-D and D rounds in October 2025. Its Tianlong-3 heavy-lift reusable rocket is in the final sprint before first flight.

GalaxySpace (银河航天): They closed a C round in the same week as iSpace’s record raise (early February 2026). They’re a satellite manufacturer building the satellites behind China’s “Satellite Internet” low-orbit constellation.

It’s a remarkably similar picture to the EV one: when the West had virtually only Tesla, China produced - at its height - more than a hundred EV companies. Now, where the West has SpaceX and (to a lesser extent) Blue Origin, China is fielding an entire fleet of rocket and satellite startups.

In fact, a strong argument can be made that the space industry is even more strategic, and potentially far more consequential, than the car industry. Stripped of Musk’s PR spin about saving humanity by colonizing Mars (something you need to be hopelessly naive to believe), what the SpaceX project is concretely about is:

Controlling the world's communication infrastructure via Starlink

Enabling the US security establishment to see and hear everything on Earth, all the time

Dominating access to space itself, from launch to orbital real estate

Each of these is very, very real.

Do the test one day and download the app “Stellarium” on your phone that allows you to identify stars, planets and… the satellites orbiting above you. I guarantee you that the sheer number of Starlink satellites right on top of your head at any given moment will genuinely shock you. There are currently over 10,000 of them up there - almost as many as there are planes in the sky at any given moment. Starlink satellites constitute roughly two-thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth, all belonging to a single private American company. And they have existing approval and plans to quadruple that.

So it’s not conspiracy theories: it’s real, the SpaceX satellites are up there, right above your head, right now. Starlink already has over 12 million subscribers across 160 countries. Starshield - the military division of SpaceX - already has multi-billion dollar contracts with the US defense establishment to “enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe.” And SpaceX already controls the majority of global launch capacity. Every single one of my three points above is already well underway.

And, more worryingly, the roadmap for these satellites doesn't stop at surveillance: the US Congressional Research Service has documented plans for space-based directed energy weapons within the same SDA program that SpaceX Starshield is part of, with Congress having already granted the legal authority and budget to develop them.

So we're talking about a single private company, one deeply embedded in the US military-defense establishment, building the infrastructure to control global communications, conduct planetary surveillance, and potentially project military force from orbit. And that company already has more hardware up in space than every other country and company on Earth, combined.

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Next up is an op/ed contribution from a future-oriented thinker, Shanaka Perera.

Arnaud and Shanaka see New Space in ways that are revealing, ominous, connecting and shifting humanity's vision as we have looked upward and outward, inward and around over the eons and ions...

A Million Satellites?

By Shanaka Anslem Perera

JULY 2, 2026

We may be the last generation to see the stars, and the reason is that we are teaching machines to think. Just maybe.

Astronomers just published a hard number.

If more than 100,000 satellites orbit Earth, ground-based astronomy suffers drastic losses.

We are at roughly 14,000 today.

Companies have already filed to launch 1.7 million.

The largest single plan is SpaceX's proposal for a million satellites, and its own filing says why: Earth cannot supply enough power and water to cool them, so it wants the data centers in orbit, run on endless solar power and cooled by the vacuum, to feed the AI boom.

That is the whole story of this era.

Artificial intelligence grew so hungry it strained the power grid and drained the water table, and now, chased off the planet, it threatens the oldest science we have.

The lead astronomer, asked about the extreme case, did not soften it. Past a certain point, he said, “there is no reason to run the telescopes, because the data will be corrupted”. The study finds almost every image from the largest camera ever built, the new Rubin Observatory, would be rendered “unusable”.

However the surreal part sits in the same regulatory file.

A second company wants 50,000 giant mirrors to reflect sunlight down at night, each as bright as the planet Venus, together enough to make the sky three to four times brighter.

So in one docket, humanity is quietly deciding whether to trade away both the stars and the dark.

One firm would dim the heavens to power the machine. The other would wash out the night.

Elon’a answer to the warning was four words. “Space is really big”

For 400 years, since Galileo turned a lens upward, the sky was how we learned what we are, where we are, etc.

[Warning} Now we may be the first generation to build a mind that sees everything, and the last that can still see the stars....

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The First Decade of 'New Space'

Circa 2010-2020

In the early days of space flight and earth observations and science from space, the nation-states capable of aeronautic programs, launching and managing satellites were few. The United States and Russia's Soviet Union led the world in capabilities and programs in beginning in the 1950s.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of space-capable missions were launched, moving beyond military missions with a first generation of earth science/research from space. These programs developed the first remote imaging with digital instruments and data storage, sharing and applications.

After the U.S. space agency, NASA, was directed by Congress in the early 2000s to develop private-sector space partnerships and 'competition', in addition to the government space programs and their large costs of operation with a handful of corporate providers, a new era referred to as "New Space" rapidly began....

The small-satellite, New Space era is now powering up next generation remote imaging capabilities.