BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Gilmour Space Is Launching Rockets To Space By Focusing On Simplicity

Following
This article is more than 6 years old.

Mike Batterham / www.couriermail.com.au

We benefit from rockets every day. This may seem hyperbolic, but it’s not. Rockets launch satellites into orbit, which we are using all the time. Every time we use GPS, every time we use the ATM, every time we look up the weather, we’re interacting with satellite technology. Tellingly though, each time we interact with these satellites, we’re indirectly benefiting from the rockets that launched them into space in the first place. The role of rocket technology is deceptively ubiquitous.

But the industry has also been historically cost expensive and time intensive, which poses a restrictive barrier for satellite innovation to get to market.

Size matters

Gilmour Space is an Australian startup that has identified these inefficiencies and hopes to redefine the industry’s approach.

The startup was founded by Adam Gilmour in 2012 and focuses on "developing and launching low-cost rockets for the fast-growing small satellite market.” This offering was born out of a market deficiency. Smaller sized satellites, primarily used for mapping, imaging and weather forecasting, require proportionately small sized rockets to launch to orbit.

The majority of the industry, however, focusses on developing larger sized rockets.

Companies like SpaceX (founded by Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (founded by Jeff Bezos) invest the majority of their resources into developing rockets geared towards ambitious visions. Building large scale reusable spacecrafts, making Moon travel accessible to the public, sending humans to Mars. These big visions demand rockets significantly larger than those required to launch small satellites into orbit. As such, the subset of the industry dedicated to small satellites is being under-represented.

This imbalance has created an opportunity for Gilmour Space to service an unsatisfied demand. In my conversation with Gilmour, he described how technology has reduced the size of satellites but the market has failed to respond with an adequate supply of suitable rockets.

Simple and effective

“In the old days, satellites were very big," he says. "The average satellite was as big as a minibus and even a small one was as big as a car. We’ve seen that technology has enabled satellites to get smaller in the same way that it allowed mobile phones to shrink. But all the main rocket companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are still focussing on the mini-van ones. There is no launch company designed to take the lighter satellites in operation at the moment.”

Gilmour Space / www.gspacetech.com

More on Forbes: Why Asia's Entrepreneurial Space Sector Deserves Its Very Own Spotlight

But more than developing rockets in a niche with few other players, Gilmour Space hopes to differentiate itself with a contrarian philosophy to design.

According to Gilmour, the space industry is underpinned by a foundational belief that rocket technology needs to be complex and therefore justifies being cost intensive. He believes that the industry, as a whole, is being hamstrung by a veiled unwillingness to experiment with different methods. "We have a strong view that space activities don’t have to be expensive. The industry currently is massively risk averse and that truly drives up costs.”

In addition to its cost implications, such a risk averse psychology has the potential to inhibit innovation. It is indicative of a subconscious preference to maintain existing practices. Such a strong focus on the psychological status quo can lead to an oversight of potentially innovative alternatives.

Gilmour hopes to counteract this psychological resistance by taking a counterintuitive approach to rocket design — focusing on simplicity. "We believe simplicity in design will result in lower costs. Costs relate to complexity. The simpler your product is, the cheaper it is. That’s exactly how we’re designing our rockets.”

This motivation to simplify is an important psychological pre-requisite to innovation. It represents a way of approaching problem-solving when complexity is seen as prohibitive. In the space industry, which seems characterized by change-resistance, such a contrarian mindset to simplify is positioned as Gilmour Space's impetus for innovation.

Reaching new heights

The Australian startup looks to now also expand the reach of its technology having recently raised a $5 million Series-A round. Gilmour Space has almost doubled the size of their engineering team in the last year and appears focussed on R&D in anticipation of launching their first commercial rocket by 2018.

But in terms of its wider financial vision, Gilmour believes his business model is driven by a dearth of suppliers in the small satellite niche.

"We are looking to make revenue from sounding rockets in the next 12 months and orbital satellites in 3 years.  We are looking at serving the growing community of small satellite constellation providers.  There is currently a backlog of small satellites waiting to launch and we see demand for small satellite launches growing constantly over the next 10 years”.

Revealingly though, the startup has plans for its current innovation beyond just commercialization. Gilmour hopes to apply his company’s approach to rocket design simplicity in a way that will have wider implications on our everyday lives beyond only satellite integration.

The long-term objective for Gilmour Space is more ambitious.

"Our vision is to enable humanity to engage activity in space much easier and in the long run we would like to be involved in deep space exploration and human space flight."

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn