Startups, Space, and Boundless Frontiers: A conversation with Steve Isakowitz, President and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation
Speaker: Steve Isakowitz, President and CEO - The Aerospace Corporation
Moderator: Pae Wu, General Partner, SOSV & CTO, IndieBio
Date: March 27, 2025
Time: 6:00 - 8:30 PM ET
There's no deep tech tougher than space tech, and there is no commercialization frontier more vast than what's beyond the Kármán line.
No one knows that better than Aerospace CEO Steve Isakowitz, whose career spans NASA, where he helped open the door to the commercialization of space, to Virgin Galactic, where he raised $1 billion and positioned the private space venture as a leader in space tourism and micro-gravity research.
At Aerospace, a leading architect for the nation’s space programs, Isakowitz leads a team of more than 4,600 as they work alongside government and industry partners to outpace threats to the country’s national security while nurturing the innovative technologies needed to further a new era of space commercialization and exploration. This includes a strong focus on enabling new capabilities and helping drive adoption of the innovations coming out of the space startup ecosystem.
By making payloads 20x cheaper (so far!), the most famous space startup, SpaceX, has opened a world of cosmic possibilities, including permanent moon colonies and human exploration of Mars, not to mention asteroid mining, zero-gravity pharmaceutical manufacturing, giant space stations, better climate change monitoring, and defense against adversaries.
In 2021, venture investment reached an all time high of $12B across 514 deals as investors saw the possibilities in a category where the first customer is typically the US government and dual-use nature of the technologies are a hedge against investment risk. All that said, the technical challenges of working in zero gravity, at temperatures near absolute zero, combined with withering radiation while orbiting at 17,500 miles / hour, pose the most extreme challenges a deep tech founder can face.
In a conversation with SOSV GP and IndieBio Chief Technical Officer, Dr. Pae Wu, Steve Isakowitz will discuss the unique demands of space tech, the rapid evolution of the space tech category, and the role Aerospace plays in encouraging and supporting startups as well as its role directing various government entities to private space companies that can deliver sought after technologies.
Seats are limited. Register Now!